Étienne Dolet, the martyr of the renaissance 1508-1546 : a biography

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£TIENNE DOLET

fiTIENNE DOLET

The Martyr of the Renaissance

i 508 - i 546

A BIOGRAPHY

BY

RICHARD COPLEY CHRISTIE

M.A., OXON. J HON. LL.D., V1CT.

HEW EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1899

All rights referred

PREFACE

NINETEEN years have elapsed since the publication of the
first edition of this book, which aroused considerable interest
in Dolet, and met with a very favourable reception from the
leading organs of the Press, not English only, but also
American, French, and German. Having profited — I hope
— by the friendly criticisms which the book then received,
and having in the past nineteen years gathered a certain
amount of new matter, I now issue this second edition
thoroughly revised and corrected, and embodying such
fresh materials as have come to my knowledge. But
although I have found in the original edition a considerable
number of trifling and verbal errors, some of the press,
others of the author, all of which are, I hope, corrected in
this new edition, and though I have been able to add
important and interesting additional matter, I have not
discovered any material error of fact, nor any reason for
altering any of the views I expressed in the original volume,
as to Dolet, his opinions, writings, or the causes of his
misfortunes.

vi ETIENNE DOLET

The most important of the additions to this volume
are, first, the Act of Association, or Partnership between
Dolet and Helayn Dulin, as printers, which, besides giving
us other information, lets us know how Dolet obtained
the capital with which to commence business ; and secondly,
the Documents relating to the arrest of Dolet at Troyes
in 1543, and his subsequent removal to Paris, which clear
up several hitherto obscure points in this period of his
life. The Act of Association and these Documents are
curious and interesting, and I have accordingly printed
them in full, as far as they can be deciphered, in the
Appendices to this volume. In 1881, M. O. Douen wrote
two articles in the Bulletin de la Societe d'Histoire du
Protestantisme, in which he controverted my view of the
religious opinions of Dolet, and I have given at some length
(pp. 493-95) my reasons for adhering to the view I origin-
ally held and expressed on this point.

The Bibliographical Appendix has been partly re-written,
and, I think, considerably improved, although somewhat
condensed. I am now able to enumerate eighty-four books
as printed by Dolet, having discovered the existence of three
since 1880, while on the other hand two volumes which I
then attributed to his press I have ascertained were not
printed by him. Copies of forty-five of the books are in
my own possession, while there are only nine out of the
eighty-four of which I am unable to refer to a copy as now
or lately existing. I have also discovered several additional

PREFACE vii

reprints of his more popular books, and also one book
edited by him for Sebastian Gryphius. Much of the biblio-
graphical and descriptive matter which was in the edition of
1880 is omitted, but all this, together with considerable
corrections and many additions, will be found in the Biblio-
graphy prefixed to the French translation of the work by
M. Casimir Stryienski, Professor of the University of
France, published at Paris by the Librairie Fischbacher in
the year 1886. The book in its French dress met with a
very cordial reception, and one result of the attention thus
called to Dolet was, that in 1889, a statue of him was
erected at the cost of the Municipality of Paris, in the Place
Maubert, where he met with his death.

My thanks are due to M. Stryienski for undertaking
the search in the National Archives at Paris, resulting in
the discovery of the documents relating to Dolet's arrest
at Troyes in 1543, and for obtaining a transcript of them,
and revising the proofs of these documents.1 I have to
thank Mr. W. Stebbing for the assistance he has rendered
me in reference to some passages of Dolet's Latin com-
positions ; but my thanks are especially due to Mr. John
Cree, without whose aid it would have been impossible —

1 M. Stryienski was also so good as to cause the documents comprised
in the Proces <T Estienne Do/et, published by M. Taillandier in 1836,
to be compared and collated with the originals, with the satisfactoiy
result that the omissions and errors, although fairly numerous, are so
unimportant, being almost entirely confined to errors of spelling, that I
have made very little use of them.

viii ETIENNE DOLET

owing to my long and still continuing illness — for the book
to have appeared in anything like a correct and satisfactory
form. I am indebted to him for many corrections of clerical
and printer's errors in the first edition, for the correcting
of the proofs of the present edition, for suggestions as to
many notes, and for the compilation of the present Index.

RlBSDEN, WlNDLESHAM,

August 1899.

CHAPTER I
ORLEANS AND PARIS

* There are but two events in history : the siege of Troy and the French
Revolution.' — LORD BEACONSFIELD.

'Le monde est vide depuis les Remains.' — ST. JUST.

Renaissance was at
once the precursor and
the parent of the Revolu-
tion ; a voice crying in that
wilderness which mediaeval
Christianity had made of
the world, crying against
asceticism and against
superstition ; pleading for
a restoration of the true,
the real, the natural ; pro-
claiming, though some-
times with stammering
lips, the divinity of nature ;
preparing the way for the Revolution ; and yet, like the
Baptist of old, unconscious of what it was the forerunner.
But at its commencement the Renaissance looked only for
a revival of the spirit of classical antiquity — it may be of
paganism — a restoration of the divinity, of the joyousness
of nature, discerning little or perhaps nothing of that

2 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

steadfast faith in humanity, that eager aspiration after
justice, that recognition of the equality of rights amongst all
mankind, which it was reserved for the Revolution first to
teach dogmatically.

Between Poggio or Valla (two of those who gave the
greatest impetus to the Renaissance in its earlier stages)
and Rabelais, in whom its work was complete, the distance
at first seems immense, yet the chasm when bridged over
by Erasmus almost disappears from view. But between
Rabelais and Voltaire — the father of the Revolution certainly
in one, and that not the least beneficial of its aspects —
the distance seems, and perhaps really is, much greater.
Yet they are united by Montaigne and Moliere, and a close
examination shows them to be really at one. Intense love
of the human race, intense desire for its social and intel-
lectual progress, intense hatred of hypocrisy, bigotry, super-
stition and ignorance, are to be found in both.

The revival of letters had produced a contempt for
mediaeval ideas, a disgust for the theological legends and
superstitions of the Middle Ages, and at the same time an
ardent thirst for that knowledge and culture which the
classical writers could alone supply. But as there was little
in the actual life, in the actual interests of the times, that
was in harmony with the ideas of classical antiquity, utterly
opposed as these ideas are to mediaeval Christianity, it was
form rather than substance that at first took the highest
place. The students of the Renaissance, however, were not
exclusively occupied with form. It is indeed sometimes
said that the Renaissance gave birth to nothing. But surely
this is not so. The Renaissance gave birth to mental
freedom. It taught the true mode of looking at things
and opinions. It revived the classical as opposed to the
mediasval method of thought. It examined things as they
are, and opinions according to their absolute truth or false-

i ORLEANS AND PARIS 3

hood, and not according as they are in accord or discord
with authority and orthodoxy. It appealed ab auctoritate
ad rem ; and a system which was the parent of Erasmus
and Rabelais, and a more remote ancestor of Moliere and
Voltaire, cannot be called unfruitful or unworthy of attention,
whatever be the value at which we appraise its fruits.

That (except in Sadolet and perhaps in Erasmus) there
was not in any of the men of the Renaissance either any
recognition of Christianity, or even any consciousness of the
need of religion as an element in human happiness or human
goodness, was the fault of the times in which they lived and
of the institutions which professed to inculcate this religion,
and though this may diminish our respect for their doctrines,
it ought not to take away from our admiration of the men
themselves. To each of them, religion, Christianity, the
Catholic Church, represented as it could not but represent,
all that was odious, all that was opposed to freedom of
thought, to freedom of action, all that in one aspect (the
religious) was cruel and brutal, in another (the mundane) all
that was degrading and immoral.

For mediaeval Christianity, for the Catholic Church, and
for the See of Rome itself, in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, it is impossible not to feel a
certain sympathy and admiration, however little their
doctrines and practices may commend themselves to our
reason ; their aims were lofty and their influence on the
whole beneficial. But the Church generally at the era of
the Renaissance, and the French Church from that time to
the Revolution, present absolutely no points for the approval
of those of us who are in harmony with the spirit of the
nineteenth century and have no sympathy with the so-called
Catholic revival. Admiration for the lofty oratory of the
great preachers, for the polemical skill of the leaders of the
Gallican party, for the pious mysticism of the persecuted

4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Jansenists, we cannot fail to have, but it seems impossible to
conceive of an institution more calculated to bring Christianity
into disrepute, on the one hand among thoughtful men,
on the other among the still larger class which is neither
thoughtful nor reasonable, than the Church of France during
the three centuries which preceded the Revolution.

The fact that during this period France produced an
abundant crop of men and women who lived and died in
the communion of the Church distinguished by those
virtues and graces which Christianity specially claims as
its own is not inconsistent with this opinion. Happily all
Churches and sects have furnished, and will probably
continue to furnish, abundant examples of men who are
more and better than their belief. In the worst and most
corrupt period of pagan Rome the philosophical historian
could say, Non adeo tarn sterile seculum ut non et bona
exempla prodiderit.

But an institution which could sanction and applaud the
burning of Berquin and Dolet, the massacre of the Hugue-
nots, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the dragonnades
of Languedoc, the judicial murders and horrible tortures of
Calas and La Barre (not a century and a quarter since), is
wholly out of harmony with and antagonistic to Christianity
as I understand it.

Bossuet may be taken as the ablest and the most favour-
able representative of the Catholic Church of France. He
could melt his audience to tears over Louise de la Valliere
taking the veil. He could exalt the selfish and frivolous
Henrietta Maria of England into a saint. His eloquent,
noble, and harmonious language almost makes us believe,
whilst reading it, that Louis XIV. was really the King after
God's own heart, and prevents our feeling the absurdity—
or the profanity — of the parallel which he draws between
the character of the chancellor Le Tellier — who shed tears

i ORLEANS AND PARIS 5

of joy on sealing with his own hand the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, and then repeated the Nunc Dimittis — and
that of Jesus Christ ! But Bossuet has no word of sympathy,
apparently no thought, for the wretched and oppressed
millions ; in fact, as Vinet has remarked, ' during all that
triumphal era the people escape our search.' For them at
least the Church had no message.1

The paganism of the Renaissance was the natural out-
come of the condition of the Catholic Church. When
religion was wholly dissevered from morality, and so far
from being treated as a rule of life, appeared to have no
more connection with it than had the religion of the
Romans in the days of the Empire, it is not to be wondered
at that the restorers of letters, occupied with the great minds
of antiquity, looked back with some fondness and regret to
those more human and natural, and therefore, as it seemed
to them, Jess injurious superstitions of paganism. With the
Church itself, indeed, the earlier humanists had no quarrel.
Devoted purely to the study of classical antiquity they
contented themselves with simply ignoring and disbelieving
her doctrines, and were well pleased to share in her dignities
and revenues and to enjoy her protection. Bishops,
cardinals, and even popes took part for some time in the
enthusiasm, the triumphs, and the paganism of the Re-
naissance. From Nicolas V. to Leo X. the Church was the
nursing mother of the new studies ; and still later the pure
paganism of Bembo, who would not read the Epistles of St.

1 Great as was the genius, many as were the virtues of Bossuet, I
prefer the Christianity (or non-Christianity) of Voltaire to that of the
Eagle of Meaux, nor can I forget that his beak and claws displayed them-
selves not only in the flights of his pulpit oratory, or in his admirable
denunciation of the variations of the Protestant Churches, but in the
active persecution of Fenelon and in the warm approval which he gave
to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the dragonnades of
Languedoc.

6 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Paul lest they should spoil his style, was no more a bar to
his advancement in the Church than was the licentiousness
— to use no harsher word — of the Capitolo del Forno to
that of La Casa. The pagan revival for the cultivated,
with the forms and formulas of the Church for the vulgar,
was what best suited the enlightened rulers of the Church in
the latter half of the fifteenth and the commencement of the
sixteenth century. But, unfortunately for them, this was
a state of things which could not continue. In Italy
Savonarola, though with strict orthodoxy of doctrine, almost
alone had dar"ed to proclaim the uselessness of a faith which
had no influence upon life, but with the flames that con-
sumed him his influence disappeared. He had besides no
sympathy for the classical revival, and it was reserved for
the hardier races of the North, where religion had never
been so completely dissevered from morality and action, to
discover and declare that there was a practical side of
humanistic studies. Even before Luther commenced his
war against Rome, the scholars of the North, without adopt-
ing the classical paganism of Italy, but equally without any
conscious hostility to the Church, had begun to question the
expediency of the intellectual life and education of the
people being given over to ignorant monks, and even to
doubt whether the ecclesiastical revenues were always
devoted to the best or most useful purposes. The monks
were not slow to perceive whither the Renaissance was
tending, and long before the Church in Italy had shown
any symptoms of opposition to humanistic studies the
ecclesiastics of Germany and the Netherlands were in arms.
The writings of Erasmus, whilst ostentatiously orthodox as
to theological dogmas, pointed to a state of things in-
compatible with the existing religious system, and immedi-
ately after the publication of the Praise of Folly in 1511
(if not earlier) that opposition of the Church to intellectual

i ORLEANS AND PARIS 7

progress, at least in Germany, the Low Countries, and
France, commenced which has ever since continued. In
Italy, indeed, the rulers of the Church, until awakened by
the tidings of the preaching of Luther, were blind to the
real tendency of the age ; and even when roused so as to
recognise and attempt to meet the danger, they must have
the credit of still for some time seeking to encourage
literature and learning provided no doctrine or practice of
the Church was attacked.

ETIENNE DOLET, whose life I am about to narrate, was
a child of the pure Italian Renaissance, more truly and
thoroughly so than any other of the scholars and students
whom France produced. Though constantly stated to have
been an atheist, and probably condemned and burnt as such,
his writings afford no ground for the general belief. He
was no doubt a pagan of the school of Bembo and Longolius,
and with them thought the religion of Cicero more suited to
the man of culture than a system which held out for the
worship or adoration of the faithful the wine of the marriage
feast of Cana, the comb of the Virgin Mary, and the shield
of St. Michael the archangel. Yet there is nothing in any
of his writings inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church
or disrespectful to her authority. He was no believer in,
and indeed had no sort of sympathy with the doctrines of
Luther and Calvin, and desired nothing better than to be
allowed to pursue in freedom his literary studies relating to
this world without troubling himself about the next, but he
lived in a time and place especially unfortunate for one of
his character. Half a century earlier, before the Church had
awaked to the idea that intellectual progress of every kind
was altogether subversive of her authority, he would have
been hailed as one of the restorers of letters in France, would
probably have become an ambassador, and possibly a cardinal.

He was born at Orleans in the year 1508, on the 3rd of

8 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

August, the day of the invention of the relics of the saint
whose name he bore, the day on which, thirty-eight years
later, he was to be added to the number of those men, some
eminent for their genius and learning, some for their piety
and moral excellence, some known only for their half-crazy
yet harmless absurdities, whom religious bigotry, disguising
itself under the cloak of Christian and Catholic orthodoxy,
has brutally deprived of life. The place and year of his
birth, as well as most of the details of the biography of his
earlier years, we learn from his own writings. In the preface
to his Commentaries on the Latin Tongue, addressed to
Bude, and dated the 22nd of April 1536, he tells us that he
was then twenty-seven years of age, and that he was sixteen
when Francis I. was taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia
(24 Feb. I525).1 In the same volume of his Commentaries?
and in a poetic epistle to the Cardinal de Tournon,3 as well
as in many other places, he refers to Orleans as his birth-
place. Of his family and parentage we know nothing with
certainty, nor have his admirers been able to discover any-
thing which throws light upon them, or to connect him in
any way with the very few persons who are known to have

1 Following M. Boulmier and Dolet's other biographers, in the first
edition of this work I gave 1509 as the year of Dolet's birth, but in that
case he would have been only fifteen and a half at the date of the battle
of Pavia, and thirty-six and a half at the date of the preface to the Com-
mentaries. It may be noted that in the pardon of Francis I. (P races
d'Estienne Dolef) dated June, 1543, his age is stated as 'de trente-six a
trente-sept ans ou environ.'

The authority for the actual day of his birth is Le Laboureur, who in
the Additions aux Memoires de Castelnau (vol. i. p. 348), after quoting
Beza's epitaph on Dolet, appends these words, ' Stephanus Doletus Aurelius
Gallus, die Sancto Stephano sacro et natus et vulcano devotus, in Mal-
bertina area Lutetias 3 Augusti, 1546.' These words, however, are not
in either of the editions of Beza's Juvenilia, in which the ode appears.

2 Col. 938, and Oratianes Du<£ in Tholosam, p. 105.

3 Carmina, Book ii. No. Iviii.

j ORLEANS AND PARIS 9

borne the same surname.1 There seems indeed to have been
some mystery about the matter, though we may at once
dismiss the absurd story first narrated in print by Amelot de
la Houssaye.2 'It was said at that time,' he writes, 'that
Dolet was the natural son of King Francis and an Orleans
damsel named Cureau, but that he was not acknowledged on
account of a story which was told the king of the lady's
intimacy with a certain courtier.' For at the date of Dolet's
birth Francis, then Duke of Valois, was not quite fourteen
years of age.3 But while we reject this fable we cannot
accept with confidence Dolet's own statement as to his
parentage. In his second letter to Bude he says, * I was
born at Orleans, in how honourable and indeed distinguished

1 Martinus Dolet Parisiensis is the author of a very rare Latin poem,
De parta ab invictissimo Gallorum Rege Ludovico duodecimo in Maximilianum
Ducem victoria cum dialogo pads ... apud Joannem Gourmontium (s.a.
but about 1510), 410, 56 pp. Besides the poem and dialogue mentioned
in the title there are several short poems, one of which is addressed to the
author's brother, ad eruditissimum fratrem suum Matheum Dolet. This
Mathieu Dolet appears to have been a clerk in the Criminal Records
Office of the Parliament of Paris. He is mentioned by the continuer of
the Annales of Nicole Gilles (Paris, Oudin Petit, vol. ii. fol. 128) under
the date 17 Feb. 1523 [1524], as having read before the people the
pardon granted by Francis I. to Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint
Vallier, who had been condemned to be beheaded. ' Christofle Dolet de
Sens transporte a Jehan Cousin ung jardin 17 Janvier 1533,' La France
Protestante, 2«ne edit. vol. iv. col. 851. Except these three I have not
found any persons bearing the name of Dolet until a later period. These
later Dolets are noticed in a subsequent chapter of this book. There
was a Guillaume Doulet in 1460, ' auditeur des comptes' to the Duke of
Orleans, whose name is signed to a receipt of that date, described in the
Catalogue of Bachelin-Deflorenne, 1873-4, No. 4845.

' Memoir es historiques politiques et litteraires, vol. ii. p. 33. See also
Patiniana, p. 37.

3 Bayle, Maittaire, and Boulmier all treat this fable as it deserves.
M. Boulmier (p. 6) remarks, ' L'histoire s'est deja montree assez liberale
envers Francois ler quand elle a cru devoir le gratifier du surnom de Pere
des lettres : il est inutile d'en faire encore le pere des litterateurs.'

io ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

a position among my fellow-citizens I leave those to speak
of who place virtue below birth.' And in his second oration
in answer to Pinache, who had reproached him with the
obscurity of his family and the lowness of his birth, he says,
' I was born of parents who were in no mean or low position,
but in an honourable and indeed distinguished station ; the
circumstances of my family were flourishing, and if my
parents possessed neither antiquity of race, nobility of birth,
the dignity of high rank, nor those other advantages which
are rather gifts of fortune than such as entitle their possessors
to praise, yet they enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, and
passed their lives to the close happily and void of offence.
It may indeed be that they neither attained very exalted rank
nor became in any other way conspicuous, but they lived as
eminent citizens among their fellows, nor were civic honours
wanting to them.'

To what extent this is strictly true we do not know, but
certain it is that rumours were current of a very different
nature, and knowing as we do the gross exaggeration which
Dolet seems to have been unable to avoid in speaking of
himself and his own merits, we may not unreasonably hesitate
to accept his statement as to his parents as absolutely true.
Two odes of Voulte, written it is true after his quarrel with
Dolet, speak in very disparaging terms of the latter's father,
and certainly imply that he had suffered death at the hands
of the public executioner.

In the one Voulte says it is not strange that Dolet seemed
the worst of men, for that he was born of a father like him-
self, and that it would be very unusual for the son of a bad
father to be himself an excellent man : 1 —

Quod sis pessimus omnium virorum
Res est non nova, nam tuo parent! es

1 Vulteii Hendecasyllabi (Paris, 1538), fol. 91.

i ORLEANS AND PARIS u

Natus ipse simillimus : sed esset
Certe res nova, si mali parentis
Esses films optimus virorum.
Quod vulgi esse frequens in ore suevit
l3 falsum bonitas tua approbaret :
Patrem nee sequeretur ipsa proles.

In the other, equally clearly intended for Dolet, and
addressed ' In quendam ingratum^ 1 after prophesying for him
all kinds of evil and a violent death, he continues,

Et superstites si

Parentes tibi forte qui adfuissent
Dum spectacula talia exhiberes,
Et jussas lucres miselle poenas,
Exemplo miseri tui parentis
Nonne illos oculi tui impudici
Vidissent tibi proximos ? crucisque
Testes nonne tuae tui fuissent ?

A violent death in those days, even were it at the hands
of the public executioner, does not necessarily imply any
great amount of moral turpitude in the accused ; and we
can hardly imagine, had there been anything especially
disgraceful in the character of his father, that Dolet would
have so ostentatiously and constantly called attention to the
fact that he was a native of Orleans, and treated himself as a
citizen of no mean city. That his parents had died before
we find him at Toulouse in 1532 we may infer with tolerable
certainty. Whether, however, he owed it to them or to
other relations and friends, certain it is that those to whose
charge he was committed in early life gave him a liberal
education, and allowed his taste for letters to have full play,
instead of forcing upon him the sordid cares to which most
of their class were necessarily devoted. But at this time
substantial inducements to literary pursuits were not wanting.

1 Vulteii Hendeeasyllabi (Paris, 1538), fol. 9.

12 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

During the period of the Renaissance — the Renaissance of
which Dolet was the child, the panegyrist, and the martyr —
learning was a ladder leading to every kind of advancement.
The power of the pen had successfully rivalled that of the
sword ; it had raised Tommaseo Parentucelli to the highest
place in Christendom ; it had made Aretin feared, caressed,
and bribed by all the princes of Europe ; it had given to
Erasmus a reputation both in extent and in kind unknown
to the world since the Augustan age of Rome. Nor were
lesser incitements to the pursuit of letters wanted. The
Universities had awaked from the dreams of scholastic
philosphy and theology, and were everywhere demanding
as professors men who could teach the new learning which
the students were so eager to profit by, while the embassies
which in the last few years of the fifteenth century had so
enormously increased in number and in frequency, furnished
another means of employment for the same class of men.
We can scarcely find a literary man from the middle of the
fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century who had not
been engaged in some diplomatic negotiations either as
ambassador or as secretary.

The first twelve years of Dolet's life were passed at
Orleans, where he received an education which he speaks
of more than once in terms of high praise, describing him-
self in these years as ' liberaliter educatum.' Yet it is
certain that he did not intend by this expression that he
advanced far in his studies, for in the words immediately
following he tells us that he then went to Paris, where he
received the first rudiments of (Latin) literature.1

He went to Paris at twelve years of age, and remained
for five years ; it is there that for us his life begins. It

1 ' Gennabi duodecim annos liberaliter educatum excepit Parisiorum
Lutetia ubi primarum literarum rudimenta posui.' — Letter to Bude, in
Or at. Du<e in Thol. p. 105.

j ORLEANS AND PARIS 13

was there that he imbibed that love of Cicero which was
so marked a feature in his character and his writings, and
which he shared with so many other scholars of the Re-
naissance. The worship of the Ciceronians for their idol —
a worship (as the anti-Ciceronians said) rather of form and
style than of matter — seems to us indeed at first sight
exaggerated and even absurd. Yet few would be found
to deny the advantages that modern literature has derived
from the study of Cicero, and especially how much the
style of the best French authors is indebted to him. If,
however, we consider the matter more closely and impar-
tially we shall cease to wonder at and shall sympathise with
the Ciceronians, not indeed with any desire to worship at
their altars, or with any risk of falling into the absurdities
of Nosoponus, but at least with a recognition that among
the religions of the past the Ciceronian is one of the least
vulgar superstitions, and one which in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries could hardly avoid commending itself
to the enlightened and cultivated man. For in truth it was
a real worship, a cultus, not a mere literary opinion. The
plenary inspiration of Cicero was held as absolutely by
Longolius, by Hortensio Lando,1 by Dolet, and by the
Ciceronians generally as is a similar doctrine applied to
other writings in our own day held by men whose learning
and virtues entitle their opinions to the highest respect.
' What can I better follow,' writes Dolet in explaining a
word in his Commentaries, ' than the exposition of it given

1 In a letter of J. A. Odonus to Gilbert Cousin (Opera G. Cognati,
vol. i. p. 3 1 3) he says of Lando : ' Hoc nobis repetebat apophthegma ; alii
alios legunt, mihi solus Christus et Tullius placet, Christus et Tullius
solus satis est ; sed interim Christum nee in manibus habebat nee in libris ;
an in corde haberet, Deus scit. Hoc nos ex ejus ore scimus, ilium cum
in Galliam confugeret, neque vetus neque novum Testamentum secum
tulisse pro itineris ac miseriae solatio, sed familiares Epistolas M. Tullii.'

i4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

by the father of the Latin tongue, Cicero himself? There-
fore without any interpretation of mine receive certain ex-
amples of our god Cicero which will place the meaning
of the word before your eyes.' l Even Erasmus, bitterly
as the Ciceronians attacked him for treating their deity
and his great disciple Longolius with disrespect, and whose
sound common sense kept him from the follies of the more
devout adherents of this cultus, recognised the eloquence of
Marcus Tullius as being divine rather than human ; 2 and in
his Colloquies he says,3 ' While the first place in point of
authority is ever due to the Holy Scriptures, I do sometimes
meet with sayings in the writings of the ancient heathens,
even in the poets, of so pure and holy and divine a nature
that I cannot help feeling that some gracious power was
at work in the soul when they wrote them. And it may
possibly be that the spirit of Christ was shed forth over a
wider space than we generally suppose. Many truly are to
be ranked among the saints who do not find a place in our
lists of them. I freely acknowledge to my friends my own
feeling, which is this. I cannot read the writings of Cicero
on Old Age or Friendship, or his works entitled De Officiis
and Tusculan^e Qutestiones, without sometimes pausing to
kiss the page and to think with reverence on that holy soul
inspired by a celestial deity.'

Cicero was one of the first and greatest idols of the men
of the Renaissance. Few were able to read, fewer still to
appreciate, Greek literature and Greek philosophy. Plautus
and Terence, although popular, were looked on as light
and frivolous writers. Besides, really to understand them
required a greater knowledge of the usages of classical
antiquity than was generally possessed. Livy and Caesar

1 2 Comm. col. 917. The marginal note is, Cicero in lingua Latina
deus Doleti.

2 Epist. 1430. 3 Convivium religiosum.

i ORLEANS AND PARIS 15

were left to soldiers and statesmen, while Tacitus, lament-
ing over the past and looking gloomily to the future, could
hardly have been in sympathy with a renascent age. The
day of Horace was yet to come ; the calm good sense,
the unruffled cheerfulness, the thorough content of the
disciple of Aristippus, was altogether opposed to the spirit
of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries.
The charm of Cicero's style, his general tone of intelligence,
his sensible but shallow and commonplace philosophy, his
scholarly contempt for the ignorant, his sometimes acute and
always polished sarcasms, his utter disbelief in and disregard
(except so far as propriety required) for the superstitions
and creeds not only of the vulgar but of the orthodox, and
even his ill-concealed vanity, wrapped up but not disguised
by the pomp of flowing and well-chosen words, in short, his
defects as well as his merits all contributed to his influence.

Five years were passed by Dolet in Paris, but of the
details of his life there we know little. The only fact that
he has told us, except as to his Ciceronian studies, is that
when sixteen years of age he studied rhetoric under Nicolas
Berauld,1 himself a native of Orleans, and reputed one of the
greatest masters of eloquence and of Latin scholarship of the
time, and, in the judgment of Erasmus, one of the pearls
and stars of France. Like many others of the scholars of
the Renaissance, the man was greater than his books. ' His
conversation,' says Erasmus, ' was more than his writings.'
' Etiam nunc,' he continues, ' audire mihi videor linguam
illam explanatam ac volubilem suaviterque tinnientem et
blande canoram vocem.' His books have indeed passed
into utter oblivion, and perhaps have had no influence in
the world's history, yet the man himself can never be with-
out interest for the student, not only of literature, as the

1 ' Nicolaus Beraldus quo praeceptore annos natus sedecim Rhetorica
Lutetiae didici.' — Comm. vol. i. col. 1158.

16 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

friend and correspondent of Erasmus, but of history, as the
tutor of the three great Colignys, the Admiral, the Cardinal,
and the General, who sowed in their minds the seeds of
those principles which have made their names so illustrious
in the annals of the French Protestants. Suspected, and
not without reason, of a sympathy with the reformers,
Berauld was hated by Beda and the bigots ; but he always
acted with such prudence that he afforded no handle for his
persecution. In fact, although many eminent French
Protestants owed to him their first acquaintance with
evangelical truth, like others of his contemporaries who
sympathised with the reformed doctrines, he had no objec-
tion to the practices or forms of the Church of Rome, and
no desire to separate from her, but remained in her com-
munion until his death. Like Erasmus he possessed that
toleration and breadth which was no less distasteful to
Calvin than to Beda.1

But though we know little of Dolet's life during these
five years, there can be no doubt that the influence of
Berauld on his character, his opinions, and his whole future
life was great. Berauld was an enthusiastic Latin and
Greek student, a devoted Ciceronian, a friend of and
sympathiser with every kind of intellectual progress : with
him Dolet formed a friendship which lasted for many
years, as we find Berauld among the friends who in 1537
met to congratulate Dolet on his pardon. During these
five years he tells us he assiduously cultivated his intellect

1 Of Berauld we have no good biography. The best is that contained
in Haag's La France Protestante. Several of his letters are printed (for
the first time) in the excellent work of A. L. Herminjard, Correspondance
des Reformateurs dans les pays de Langue Fran$aise. There is no life of
him in Les Hommes illustres de FOrleanais (Orleans, 1852), although the
Nouvelle Biographie Generate refers to that work as one of the authorities
for its meagre biography of Berauld.

i ORLEANS AND PARIS 17

and learned to think ; he gave himself up more especially
to the study of Cicero,1 and before he left Paris he had
conceived the idea of and begun to plan, and even to
collect materials for, his great work, the Commentaries on
the Latin Tongue.

1 Letter to Bude, Orat. Du<e in Tholosam, p. 105.

CHAPTER II

PADUA

Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth.

SHELLEY.

OLET was now eighteen
years of age, and his
thoughts naturally turned
to that country which,
ever since the close of
the Roman Republic, the
inhabitants of the rest of
Europe have desired to
visit, but which was then
in a special degree and
for special reasons the
goal of all students.
Art, science, and litera-
ture flourished in Italy

to an extent which rendered it not unreasonable in the
Italians to look on the nations of the North and West as
barbarous. There was scarcely a scholar who attained
eminence who did not seek to pass some time in one of the

CHAP, ii PADUA 19

Universities of Italy.1 Padua, Bologna, Pavia, were all
crowded with French and German students ; but it was at
Padua that they were found in the greatest number. The
University was then at the height of its popularity ; in
literature, philosophy, and medicine no University could
compare with it. Founded two hundred years before, its
reputation had been gradually rising, though suffering
temporary eclipse when the fortune of war and the change
of masters had occasioned it to close its lecture-rooms.
Early in the fifteenth century it had come into the posses-
sion of the Venetians, and under the sheltering aegis of the
great republic (not then the close and jealous oligarchy
which she afterwards became) the studies of the University
were encouraged, liberal stipends were assured to the pro-
fessors, and learned men from all parts of Italy, and
occasionally even from Greece, Germany, and France, were
invited to fill her chairs. From 1509 to 1517 the war of
the League of Cambrai had caused the lecture-rooms of the
University to be closed, but with the peace of Noyon they
were again opened, and students and teachers flocked from
all parts of Europe. The quarter of a century which
followed forms the most brilliant chapter of the literary
history of Padua. During this period nearly every scholar
of mark among the Italian men of letters passed some time
there either as a teacher or a student, generally as both.
There Romulo Amaseo, then at the height of his fame, for
whose possession the Pope, the King of England, the
Marquis of Mantua, and the Universities of Bologna and
Padua contended, and to whose lectures so great a crowd of
students flocked that fights for admission were not in-
frequent, lectured for four years upon eloquence. There

1 We find scholars from the still more barbarous Britain looking on
France as the French scholars and students looked on Italy. See
Buchanan's poem, Adventus in Galliam.

20 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Longolius, the Ciceronian far excellence, restored the purity
of the Latin tongue, and (as his contemporaries and disciples
thought) rivalled his master in style if not in matter. It
was as a professor at Padua that Lazarus Buonamici (too
sensitive or too indolent to commit the results of his studies
to the press) acquired by his lectures the reputation of being
the first scholar of his day — a reputation which the few
poems and letters he left behind certainly do not justify —
and that Lampridio lectured on Demosthenes with such
vehement eloquence that Aonio Paleario thought him almost
the equal of the great Athenian orator himself, and wrote
in raptures to his friend Maffei that a single lecture of
Lampridio was worth all the magnificence and glory of
Rome.1 At Padua an independence and liberty of thought
existed which would have been sought in vain elsewhere.
There Pomponatius discussed with learning and freedom the
immortality of the soul and other kindred problems, and (at
a somewhat later date) Vesalius devoted himself in safety to
those anatomical investigations which have been of such
signal service to humanity, but which when pursued in the
dominions of the King of Spain brought on their student
persecution and exile.

But it was not its professors and lecturers that constituted
the sole glory of Padua at this time ; the city was the home
of many learned men, who found there freedom, books, and
learned society. ' At Padua,' wrote Paleario in 1530, ' dwell
poets, orators, and celebrated philosophers. Learning has
taken refuge there from choice, and has there found an
asylum where Pallas teaches all the arts : in short, there is
no place where we can better gratify a taste for reading and
learning.' 2

It was at Padua that Erasmus, probably in company
with his pupil the young Archbishop of St. Andrews,

1 Palearii Opera (Amsterdam, 1696), p. 431. 2 Id. p. 414.

ii PADUA 21

attended the lectures of Musurus, who was at once the first
Greek scholar of the day, an excellent Latinist, and a most
indefatigable worker. It was during the five years he passed
at Padua that Reginald Pole laid the foundation of that
reputation to which perhaps his high birth, his gentle
manners, and his amiable disposition contributed more than
his learning or talents, and that he acquired the friendship
of the other eminent persons (Bembo, Contarini, Sadolet,
and Morone) whose elevation to the cardinalate reflects so
much honour on Paul III. It was in Pole's house at Padua
that Longolius expired, and the Life which is prefixed to
the orations of the Ciceronian, though it has been sometimes
attributed to Simon Villanovanus, is now generally admitted
to be the work of his English pupil. But to no single
person did Padua owe so much as to Bembo. After having
as a young man studied at that University for two years, he
fixed his residence there in December 1521, on the death of
Leo X., to whom he had been joint secretary with Sadolet.
That Leo should have selected two such men as his
secretaries must make us pardon many shortcomings in the
father of Christendom. Closely bound together by the ties
of friendship, equally able, equally learned, equally ready to
assist all poor scholars with their purses and rich ones with
their literary help, equally free from bigotry, these cardinals
are two of the brightest names in the history of the
Renaissance and of the Catholic Church at this period. In
one thing only they differed : Sadolet was a Christian,
Bembo a Pagan. I know of no one in the fifteenth or
sixteenth century in whom the Christian graces and virtues,
combined with a firm yet by no means bigoted attachment
to Christian doctrine, are more conspicuous than in Sadolet.
That his theological writings have passed into so much more
complete oblivion than the inferior works of inferior men of
his time, is owing partly to their semi -Pelagian common

22 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

sense, which if it brought upon them (to the author's intense
chagrin) the censure of the Court of Rome and (to his dis-
appointment) the dislike of Calvin and the Reformers, will
rather commend them to a generation which, if it sometimes
uses the language of Augustine, of Aquinas, and of Calvin,
in its actions adopts the conclusions of Pelagius. The voice
may still be Augustine's voice, but the hands are the hands
of Pelagius. As Sadolet was that rara avis of the sixteenth

O

century, a churchman who both believed in Christianity and
was an example of all the Christian virtues and graces,
Bembo was an equally illustrious example of what was then
of much commoner occurrence, the pure Pagan. To him
Christianity presented itself (as, if we did not know of such
men as Sadolet, Contarini, and Paleario, we should think it
could not have failed to do in Italy at the beginning of the
sixteenth century) much as the theology of Greece and Rome
must have appeared to Aristotle and Plato, Cicero and
Seneca — a system composed of words and ceremonies, useful
in many ways, but wholly without foundation in truth or
fact, without any relation to morals or actions, without any
message of consolation to mankind. Bembo was a Pagan
of the Pagans, Epicuri de grege porcus.

Handsome in person, graceful in manners, successful,
wealthy, learned, with a good temper, a good digestion, and
consequently good health and good spirits (Mens sana in
corpore sand), happy in the affection of his mistress and of
the children whom she bore to him, he passed seventy-seven
years in such a manner that even Solon would have allowed
him the appellation of happy. No thought of religion as
a real or living thing, no thought of the unseen or of the
future life, ever seems to have crossed his mind. Until
Paul III. in 1539 made him (then sixty-nine years of age)
a cardinal, not the smallest trace of or taste for theological
studies is found in his writings. But the Reformation

ii PADUA 23

obliged men of letters who were raised to the purple to
assume a virtue if they had it not, and Bembo was induced
by the rank of a Prince of the Church to conform himself
to what was required. He laid aside profane literature,
and devoted himself to the study of Scripture and the
Fathers. But in that part of his life which is connected
with Padua he was still the Pagan.

In his youth he had passed some years in the most
cultivated society in Italy, that which surrounded his relative
Catherine Cornaro, the widowed Queen of Cyprus, who
for the twenty years following her forced abdication held
at Asola a court distinguished above all others in Italy for
literary culture, polished manners, and regal magnificence,
and where, as was fitting to the court of a Queen of Cyprus,
the chief cultus was that of the Paphian goddess. Of this
court Bembo, though still a youth, was the life and soul,1
and he has dedicated to its memory, and to that of the
charming sovereign who presided over it, the most popular
and graceful of his works — Gli Asolani. As a young man
he had studied philosophy at Padua under Pomponatius,
and shortly before the death of Leo X. he revisited the city
for the benefit of his health, which was somewhat impaired
by devotion to study and to the duties of his office, and for
which the air and baths of Padua were recommended.
During this visit the death of Leo occurred, and he at once
decided to withdraw from Rome, and to spend the rest of
his life at Padua in study and in the society of learned men.
Two rich commanderies of the Order of St. John of
Jerusalem, two deaneries, three abbeys, several canonries,
and divers other benefices, assured him an ample income.

1 ' Nel bel' Asolo, Caterina Cornaro Regina di Cipro tenea tre corti
ad un tempo, quella delle muse, quella dell' amore, e quella della
magnificenza e dignita regale, e di tutti tre era il Bembo 1' anima e
1' ornamento.' — Bettinelli, // Risorgimento negli Studi. Bassano, 1775-

24 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

From 1521 to 1539 he passed eighteen years of uninter-
rupted happiness at Padua, varied by occasional visits to
Venice and by one journey to Rome. His house is described
by his biographers as a temple of the Muses ; he formed
there a splendid library, a collection of medals and antiquities
unequalled by that of any private person, and a botanical
garden filled with all kinds of rare and beautiful plants.
His hospitality to all men of letters was unbounded and
generous ; at his house were to be met all the learned men
who taught or studied at Padua, as well as the strangers and
foreigners whom the reputation of the University, or of
Bembo himself, brought as occasional visitors. Every
stranger sought an introduction to him. The summer and
autumn he passed at a delightful villa in the neighbourhood,
his paternal inheritance. His library contained among its
treasures the most ancient manuscripts of Virgil and of
Terence that were known to exist, specimens of early
Provencal poetry, and pages written by the hand of Petrarch.
It was there that his friends were wont to assemble, there
Luigi Cornaro read to them portions of his essay Delia Vita
Sobria, there Lampridio recited verses that his hearers
thought worthy of Pindar, and there, we cannot doubt, the
host himself read or recited some specimens of that polished
prose and verse which, if wanting in vigour and substance,
leaves nothing to be desired in purity of diction and
form, and which for more than a century retained its place
' ut carmen necessarium ' which every educated Italian was
expected to know almost by heart.

The three years which Dolet spent at Padua were to him
and to his after-life most important. It was there without
doubt that he imbibed those opinions which, nearly twenty
years after, were the cause of his death, and which have
induced his enemies to brand him with the name of atheist.

The University of Padua was at this time, and during

ii PADUA 25

the whole of the century, the headquarters of a philosophical
school altogether opposed to the doctrines of Christianity,
but which was divided into two sects — one pantheistic, and
the other, if not absolutely materialist, at least nearly
approaching to it. Both professed adherence to the doctrines
of Aristotle, and in terms acknowledged him as their only
master and teacher. But as in the Christian Church we have
read of some who followed Paul and others Cephas, so
among the Aristotelians of Padua there were some who
followed the commentaries of Averroes, and others those
of Alexander of Aphrodisias. Both disbelieved the immor-
tality of the individual soul ; the former on the ground of
its absorption. The individual soul of man emanates from
and is again absorbed into the soul of the universe. The
other sect was in fact, if not in terms, materialist, and
absolutely denied the immortality of the soul ; nor could its
doctrine, so at least its opponents asserted, be distinguished
from pure atheism.1 Of this latter school Pietro Pomponazzi,
better known under the Latin form of Pomponatius, the most
distinguished philosopher of the day, was the acknowledged
representative. Born in 1462, he studied both medicine
and philosophy at Padua, where, being still young, he was
appointed one of the professors of philosophy, and dis-
tinguished himself by maintaining the pure doctrine of
Aristotle (i.e. as he interpreted it, materialism) against his
older colleague Achillini, who followed the doctrine and
teaching of Averroes. It was in 1516 that he published his
treatise De Immortalitate Animte, in which he maintains
that the doctrine of immortality is not to be found in
Aristotle, is altogether opposed to reason, and is based only
on the authority of revelation and the Church, for both of
which, when his work was attacked, he professed unbounded

1 Ritter, Gesch. der Ch. Phil., 390 et seq. ; Renan, Averroes, 353 ;
Tenneman, Manuel, 293.

26 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

reverence. His book was replied to by his pupil Contarini,
and was censured by the Inquisition and publicly burnt at
Venice. But it met with a defender in Bembo, the constant
friend and protector of freedom of thought, and by his
influence the book was permitted to be printed, with some
corrections and a statement by Pomponatius that he submitted
wholly to revelation and the Church, and did not in any
manner oppose the doctrine of immortality, but only the
philosophical arguments which were generally used in its
support. This however, as Hallam remarks, ' is the current
language of philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries which must be judged by other presumptions.' 1
Pomponatius died in 1525. His celebrity and influence
long continued, and were at their height when Etienne Dolet
arrived at Padua, where for three years he sat at the feet
of the disciples of Pomponatius, drinking in without doubt
those materialistic doctrines which, if they did not entirely
harmonise with the opinions of his master Cicero, were at
least contrary to mediaevalism and superstition, and there-
fore congenial to his mind. It is strange that his biographers,

1 Hist. Lit. i. 315. See as to Pomponatius, in addition to the
authorities cited in the last note, Brucker, Hist. Phil. iv. 164; Buhle,
Gesch. der neueren Philosophic, vol. ii. ; Pietro Pomponazzi : Studi storici
su la scuola Bolognese e Padovana del secolo xvi, per F. Fiorentino,
Firenze, 1868 ; Sulla Immortalita deW anima di Pietro Pomponazzi, per
Giacinto Fontana, Siena, 1869 [this work contains several unpublished
letters of Pomponatius] ; Quarterly Review, October 1893. Besides two
editions of the De Immortalitate in its author's lifetime, it was reprinted
at least four times in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(three times without date or indication of place, the fourth time with the
date, obviously fictitious, Moxxxiv.) See Brunei, Manuel; Maittaire,
Ann. Typ. ii. 805 ; and Vogt, Cat. Lib. Rarior. 466. In 1791 Professor
Bardili edited the De Immortalitate at Tubingen, with a life of the
author ; yet he does not appear to have seen the two original editions.
The earlier editions are all among the number of rare books. It is
noteworthy that Pomponatius was entirely ignorant of Greek, though he
read lectures on Aristotle.

ii PADUA 27

while discussing what his theological opinions really were,
and how he acquired them, have never adverted to the
teaching of Padua and the influence of Pomponatius.

But literature and not philosophy was the mistress of
Dolet. Of the latter he seems to have acquired little more
than was sufficient to show him how irrational, at least, were
the prevalent and orthodox opinions. The master at whose
feet he sat, whose affection and whose learning he never lost
an occasion of celebrating, whose untimely loss he never
ceased to mourn, and who owes such immortality as he has
obtained rather to the admiration of his pupil than to the
little of his own composition which has come down to us,
was, although without doubt a disciple of Pomponatius,
above all things a Ciceronian and a humanist. Simon
Villanovanus has wanted a sacred bard and a biographer.
Even a niche in the biographical dictionaries has been denied
him. Yet it is certain that he was a man of great promise,
that he was looked upon by many competent judges as a
scholar of great learning, industry, and genius, and that his
death at the age of thirty-five was lamented as an irreparable
loss to the republic of letters by several of the most learned
men of the day. Besides Dolet, his most attached scholar,
his praises are sounded by Longolius, the chief of the
Ciceronians, by Pierre Bunel, by Salmon Macrin, and
(probably) by that great man from whom a word of praise
is itself sufficient to confer an immortality, at least among
all the disciples of the divine Pantagruel — Francois Rabelais.

Which of the innumerable ' Newtowns ' is the place of
his birth we do not know. He is, however, spoken of by
Bunel as ' Simon Villanovanus Belga,' from which it may be
conjectured that it was Neufville in Hainault. That he
was born in 1495, an<^ studied at Pavia from 1515 to 1521,
we learn from the letter about to be cited. In the latter
year Longolius, writing to Egnatius, recommended Simon

28 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Villanovanus in these terms : ' I know that both age and
nationality make a man little fit for philosophical study, but
this man's age is in my judgment especially suited for it ; he
has reached his twenty-sixth year, and is endowed with such
prudence and moderation that old age itself would not
increase them. On the other hand, it does not escape me
what an evil reputation the French have in Italy, but I do
not hesitate to recommend Simon Villanovanus to you as
free from both the vices and follies of the French, and as
one who is distinguished as well by Italian gravity as by his
knowledge of the Latin language, and, what is of great
importance, by his correct pronunciation.1 Nor will you
find him wanting either in virtues which are the common
subject of praise, sincerity probity and conscientiousness,
or in talent judgment studiousness and learning, or, finally,
in a remarkable knowledge of the civil law. He has passed
the last six years at Pavia in that study, under excellent
teachers, and has far surpassed all his fellow-students.' 2

On the death of Longolius, Villanovanus seems to have
succeeded him as the chief professor of Eloquence (i.e. Latin)
at Padua, though neither of them held any official position,
and their names will be sought in vain in the histories of
the University by Tomasini, Riccoboni, Papadopoli, and
Facciolati. On Dolet's arrival in 1527 he was certainly
enjoying a great reputation as a lecturer and as a master of
Latin style. A Ciceronian, the friend, disciple, and successor
of Longolius the chief representative if not the founder of
the sect, it was no wonder that he received Dolet with open
arms, and that the latter fell completely under his influence.
* Simon Villanovanus taught Dolet the purity of Latin
style and the art of rhetoric,' he tells us himself in his

1 See post in the letter of Odonus as to the difference between the
French and Italian pronunciation of Latin.

2 Longolii Epist. lib. iii. epist. 26.

ii PADUA 29

Commentaries1; and in the second Oration he ascribes to
the instructions of Villanovanus his oratorical success. But
the epitaph which he wrote on his master, the odes in which
he celebrates his memory and laments his untimely death,
and the frequent reference to him in his writings, show us
how firm a friendship existed between the student and the
professor, and how great was the influence which the latter
exercised on his pupil's mind. It was in defence of the
venerated Longolius (whom Dolet had never personally
known 2) that he wrote his dialogue De Imitatione Cicero-
niana, in which Simon Villanovanus is one of the interlocutors.
The single composition of Simon Villanovanus which I
have been able to find is a letter in the Epistol<e Clarorum
Virorum, first published by Paulus Manutius in 1556, and
reprinted by Bernard Toursaint at Paris the same year. It
is written from Padua (without date), and is addressed
' Simon Villanovanus Hieronymo Savoniano.' But though
Simon Villanovanus left no literary work behind him, it is
certain that he impressed all with whom he came in contact
with the idea that he was a man of no ordinary abilities and
promise. The testimony of Longolius I have already
quoted. The admiration of Dolet must have had some
solid basis. Pierre Bunel wrote six verses on his death and
sent them to Emile Perrot,3 with this inscription below :
' Simoni Villanovano Belgas, Grasce Latineque doctissimo,
cum bonis omnibus disciplinis, turn sincerae Philosophise
imprimis dedito, ob mirificam scribendi elegantiam et
subtilitatem quam etiam suis scriptis, quas a nonnullis
premuntur,4 expressam reliquerat, testimonio Longolii toti

1 Vol. i. col. 1178.

2 Longolius died in 1522 at Padua, in the house of Reginald Pole.

3 Eunelli et Manutii Epistolte (Paris, 1581), p. 10.

4 La Monnoye (Menagiana, iii. 491, edit, of 1716) says that the
words qua a nonnullis premuntur seem to refer to Dolet, who, being at

30 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Italiae praeclare commendato, Galli, in demortui patriaeque
commendationem, placata Italia posuere.'

Salmon Macrin also placed Simon Villanovanus among
the most illustrious men whom France had produced, and did
not hesitate, in the following lines addressed to Guillaume du
Bellay, to class him with Budasus, Longolius, and Lazarus
Bayfius : —

Ilia (i.e. Gallia] Italorum nam studii aemula

Te Lazarumque et Longolium tulit,

Magnumque Budaeum, ac Simonem

Villa cui nova nomcn indidit.1

Three years were passed by Dolet in drinking in the
lessons, not only of Simon Villanovanus,2 but, as we cannot

Padua at the time of the death of Simon Villanovanus, was accused of
having appropriated and turned to his own use the writings of his master
(see post). [But the word premuntur which La Monnoye seems to have
taken to mean suppressed really means depreciated.] There was certainly
something mysterious about the death of Villanovanus. It seems to have
been thought, at least by his friends Bunel and Perrot, that he had met
with foul play (apparently from an Italian hand) ; but Bunel was after-
wards satisfied that he died of the plague. — Letter to Perrot of December,
1530, Bunelli Epist. p. 8.

1 Salmon Macrin, Hymnorum Selectorum, lib. iii. p. 77. Guillaume
Sceve calls him and Longolius ' et litterarum et Gallias ambo lumina.'
Ode prefixed to Doleti Orationes Du<e.

2 Except by the very limited number of the students of the Renais-
sance who have been interested in all that concerns Dolet, the name of
Simon Villanovanus would have been entirely forgotten if it were not for
a sentence of Rabelais, where ' le docte Villanovanus Francois ' is classed
with Cleon of Daulia and Thrasymedes among those who never dreamed
(Aussi furent Cleon de Daulie, Thrasymedes, et de nostre temps le docte
Villanovanus Francois lesquelz oncques ne songerent, book iii. ch. 13).
Now, according to Le Duchat, whom many of the commentators have
followed, the Villanovanus here spoken of is the celebrated Arnold of
Villeneuve, — one of the most learned men of the fourteenth century, —
physician, theologian, alchemist, the author of the Schola Salernitana,
and other medical and scientific treatises. La Monnoye, however, in the
Menagiana, vol. iii. pp. 488-92, has suggested and attempted to prove

ii PADUA 31

doubt, of the other professors of that most renowned
University, yet he has not referred to any of them by
name, and all his recollections of Padua seem bound up
with his dear master.

that ' le docte Villanovanus Francois ' was not Arnold, but Simon of
Villeneuve. He says : ' We are at a loss to know who is le docte Villano-
vanus Francois of whom Rabelais speaks as never having dreamed. It
cannot be Arnold of Villeneuve, since none of the three circumstances of
learned, French, or contemporary of Rabelais suit him. He was not, and
could not indeed be learned, in the period of barbarism and ignorance in
which he lived, that is to say, in the thirteenth century, and up to the
commencement of the fourteenth. There are stronger grounds for
believing him a Spaniard than a Frenchman, as Dom Nicolas Antonio
has shown in the second volume of his Bibliotheca veins Hispaniee.
Lastly, he could not be of the time of Rabelais, having died in 1310, or
at latest in 1315 ; and even if, as is sometimes erroneously stated, he was
living in 1350, he would still have died 150 years before the birth of
Rabelais. I am then persuaded that the Villanovanus here designated is
no other than Simon of Villeneuve.' After quoting the several testi-
monies of the learning of the latter, La Monnoye proceeds : 'It is then
with justice that Rabelais has named him le docte Villanovanus, and
especially le docte Villanovanus Francois, for fear of his being confounded
with the Spaniard Servetus, who in the time of Rabelais published several
books under the name of Villanovanus. It only remains for me to reply
to a conjecture of the commentator upon Rabelais (Le Duchat) concern-
ing Arnold of Villeneuve, " who perhaps," he says, " has in his treatise
on dreams declared that he had himself never dreamed." It is easy to
find a solution of this doubt at page 637 of the folio edition of the works
of Arnold of Villeneuve (Basle, 1585) : " Est igitur advertendum quod sub
quacunque specie animal aliquod insultum faciens, secundum conditiones
et modos insultus, et defensiones utriusque, debet visio judicari. Ita
recolo in somno me vidisse lupos quatuor quadam nocte qui ore aperto
insultum in me videbantur facere. Ego autem ense evaginato in ipsos
irruebam, et majorem eorum eviscerabam ad mortem. Infra triduum in
quadam causa vidi me quatuor inimicorum meorum victoriam habuisse." '
(La Monnoye does not give us the name of the treatise of Arnold from
which this passage is taken. It is to be found in a tract entitled Exposi-
tiones Visionum qua fiunt in Somniis.) Two of the reasons given by La
Monnoye for rejecting Arnold of Villeneuve appear to me conclusive.
He was certainly not a contemporary of Rabelais, and, at least on one

32 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

In the beginning of 1530 the friendship of Dolet and
Simon Villanovanus was broken by the untimely death of
the latter at the early age of thirty-five. His friend and
pupil composed the following not inelegant epitaph upon
him, which, as La Monnoye tells us,1 was engraved upon a
tablet of brass : —

occasion, he dreamed. It is true De 1'Aulnaye (a commentator on
Rabelais, to whom, notwithstanding his crotchets, the faithful are much
indebted), always desirous of displaying his own knowledge at the
expense of his master, thinks the passage quoted by La Monnoye shows
that Rabelais was in error. But La Monnoye's two other reasons are of
no weight. Rabelais, fortunately for us, did not live in the eighteenth
century, when only the sciolists of the day were accounted learned, and
when the dilettanteism of M. de Menage was considered of more worth
than the most profound learning of an age that had known neither the
Academy nor the Grand Monarch. To no writer of any age can the
epithet ' learned ' be given with greater propriety than to Arnold of
Villeneuve. Again, that he was a Spaniard is not now generally believed.
That Villanueva in Catalonia may have been his birthplace is possible,
but the weight of authority is rather in favour of Villeneuve, near
Montpellier, while the village of the same name in Provence also claims
him as its son.

When the Pantagruelist fathers and doctors, men who have devoted
their lives to the study of the master, are in doubt, it would be pre-
sumptuous in me to offer a decided opinion ; but I cannot agree with
Messieurs Burgaud des Marets and Rathery, who in one of the most
recent, and, in my opinion (pace M. Jannet), the best edition of Rabelais
for ordinary readers (Didot, Paris, 1870), consider Simon Villanovanus
could not be meant because of the epithet 'Belga' applied to him by
Pierre Bunel, and which, as they think, proves that he was not a French-
man. But in a would-be classical writer of the sixteenth century, a
native of any part of France north of the Seine, and certainly of Artois,
Picardy, or the northern part of Champagne (Ardennes), would be
described as ' Belga.' In the letter of Longolius already cited Simon is
described as ' Gallus,' a word intended to include a native of any part of
the region between the Rhine and the Pyrenees. Messieurs Burgaud
des Marets and Rathery forget that Longolius himself — so constantly
referred to by the French Latinists of the sixteenth century as the honour
of the Gallic name — was a native of Liege.

1 Menagiana, iii. 491.

ii PADUA 33

Salve lector,

Et animam hue paulum adverte.

Quod miserum mortales ducunt,

Felicissimum cito mori puto. Quamobrem

Et mihi mortuo mortem gratulare,

Et questu abstine,
Morte enim mortalis esse desii.

Vale,
Et mihi quiescenti bene precare.1

* I bid you welcome, reader, and ask your attention for a
moment. That fate which mortals consider to be a mis-
fortune, namely to die early, I think a most happy lot.
Wherefore congratulate me on my death and do not lament
me, for by death I cease to be mortal. Farewell, and pray

1 No epitaph on Simon Villanovanus is given by Tomasini, nor
appears to exist at Padua. I cannot agree with the commentary of M.
Boulmier, 'On sent dans ces quelques lignes, mornes et glaciales comme
le bronze qu'elles couvraient, cet incurable degout du monde, cet amer
mepris de la vie, cette sombre et froide aspiration vers le repos du neant
qui forme un des traits distinctifs du caractere de ce malheureux Dolet '
(pp. 11, 12). I can see nothing in this epitaph, or in the letters ot
Dolet, or in those other writings where he may be supposed to speak his
real sentiments, which shows either a disgust at the world, a contempt
for life, or any desire for the repose of annihilation. Under the bitter
persecutions of his enemies he no doubt expresses himself as though
death was to be desired. He has indeed an ode, Mortem esse Expetendam ;
but in the short intervals between his misfortunes he appears of a joyous
temperament, and earnestly to desire life, both for the sake of the cultiva-
tion of his own mind, and in order to produce works which should live,
and so procure for him that fame which he so eagerly longed for. In fact
the desire for posthumous fame was almost a disease with him, and this
feeling is seldom if ever combined with an 'incurable degout du monde '
or an ' amer mepris de la vie,' although in some of the Cynics, and
notably in Peregrinus, the latter feeling may have been assumed, and
even carried to the point of a voluntary death, with a view of acquiring
that fame and notoriety which, while professing to despise, they so
earnestly desired. The constant presence of the idea of death is, how-
ever, one of the best-known characteristics of the French writers of the
Renaissance.

34 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

for my repose.' Besides this epitaph Dolet celebrated the
death of Villanovanus in three Latin odes, written probably
about this time, and certainly not long afterwards, as they
were all published with the Orations in 1534. The first, in
elegiacs, is one of the best of Dolet's poems, both as to
language and sentiment, and alone would prove the utter
worthlessness of the criticism of Julius Caesar Scaliger, who,
himself a verse-writer without the least taste or genius for
poetry,1 finds no language too strong to express his contempt
for the poems of Dolet : —

O mihi quern probitas, quern vitae candor amicum

Fecerat, o stabili fbedere juncte mihi,
O mihi quem dederat dulcis fortuna sodalem,

O mihi crudeli morte perempte comes :
Jamne sopor te aeternus habet, tenebraeque profundas

Tecum ut nunc frustra carmine moestus agam ?
Quod nos cogit amor, surdo tibi forte canemus,

Sed nimii officii non pudet esse reum.
Chare vale, quem plus oculis dileximus unum,

Et jubet, ut mage te semper amemus, amor.
Tranquillae tibi sint noctes, somnusque quietus,

Perpetuoque sile, perpetuoque vale.
Et si umbris quicquam est sensus, ne sperne rogantem,

Dilige, perpetuo cui quoque charus eris.2

O thou whom probity and sincerity made my friend,
Thou who wast joined to me in an indissoluble union,
Thou whom kind fortune gave to me for a comrade,
Thou my companion, now taken from me by cruel death ;
Art thou wrapped in eternal sleep and in profound darkness,
So that in vain I mournfully address thee in my song ?
Yet what love compels me to do I shall sing, though thou may'st
be deaf to it.

1 'Les poesies brutes et informes dont il a deshonore le Parnasse.
Un homme d'un tres mauvais gout dans la poesie.' — Huet.

2 Orat. Duee, p. 207.

ii PADUA 35

I am not ashamed to be accused of too tender an affection.
Farewell, dear friend, the one whom I have loved more than my

own eyes,

And whom love constrains me to love for ever more and more.
May thy nights be tranquil and thy sleep quiet,
For ever silent, but for ever well.
And if in the land of shadows there is any perception,
Do not reject my prayer, but love one to whom thou wilt always

be dear.

An epitaph in Latin verse and a longer Latin poem have
less merit, yet they show the affection of Dolet, and his
bitter grief for the loss of the friend with whom (as he him-
self tells us) he had lived for three years in the closest intimacy.

Of Dolet's life at Padua we know but little. All we
can say with certainty is that Simon Villanovanus was
his chief friend and teacher, and that among the fellow-
students with whom he formed an acquaintance was Gui de
Breslay, afterwards President of the Grand Council, the
intimate friend of Simon, and who had been known to and
praised by Longolius. None of Breslay's biographers
mention the year of his birth, yet he must have been
some years older than Dolet, since he commenced his
studies at Padua whilst Longolius was still living. In a
letter of the latter to Roger de Barma he speaks in terms
of high praise of Breslay, referring to him as optima
spei adolescentem.1 That Dolet had no personal acquaintance
with Bembo or the other eminent persons whom he must
have seen and probably heard lecture seems certain : he
would hardly have omitted to tell us of any persons of
eminence whom he had known. Either here or at Venice,
however, he made the acquaintance of the clever charlatan
Giulio Camillo, to whom, though like himself a great ad-
mirer of Cicero, he seems to have taken a violent dislike.

1 Longolii Epist., last letter of Book I.

36 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Of Camillo and his theatre, the idea of which was not yet
promulgated, we shall shortly hear again. It seems probable
that Dolet also met at this time Hortensio Lando.

Of student life at Padua, Dolet has left a charming
description in the framework of fiction in which his dialogue
against Erasmus De Imitations Ciceroniana is set. The work
is an imaginary conversation between Sir Thomas More
and Simon Villanovanus. With the substance of the
dialogue and its arguments I shall deal hereafter, but the
framework — though of course wholly fictitious, for More
never visited Italy — no doubt presents a true picture of the
manner in which Villanovanus and his pupils passed many
pleasant spring days at Padua.

< I was myself present at Padua when the dialogue of
Erasmus entitled Ciceronianus was given by Thomas More
to Simon Villanovanus. I freely noticed his countenance
all the while as he turned over its pages and cursorily read
it. I was further present at a very long conversation
which took place between him and More, and which was
most learned and eloquent.' (As Villanovanus is talking
to his pupils of Erasmus and his dislike to Longolius,
More arrives.) * As Villanovanus was making these re-
marks More was suddenly announced ; admitted into the
house, he found there a crowd of young men who constantly
flocked to Simon Villanovanus on account of the great-
ness and celebrity of his learning and eloquence. They
salute each other in a friendly manner, as is the wont of
educated and cultured men. Then Villanovanus thanks
More in a most handsome manner for the gift which he
has received from him, and puts aside his own praises.

' After thus exchanging civilities a longer conversation is
commenced ; they begin to walk about up and down the
house : then More remarked, " I do not enjoy this walking
up and down, wearied as I am by my journey and by the

ii PADUA 37

jolting of my horse. Since it is bright weather and the
joyous appearance of the earth covered with fresh flowers
calls us into the fields, what should prevent us from going
out somewhere near the city, where we may lie on the grass
under the boughs of an oak and converse pleasantly, taking
a pleasure not unworthy of educated men ? " All agreed
to this proposal ; they immediately left the town, found
a place covered with a thick shade, and sat down leaning
upon the trees. Then Villanovanus, who always sought to
avoid sloth and idleness, and was excessively fond of every
kind of mental exercise, said, " However pleasant this place
is, satiety will soon seize upon us, and weariness steal over
us (which always puts an end to pleasure), unless some
subject of discussion is fixed upon to which we may devote
the rest of the day. For the sun has scarcely passed much
beyond the meridian, nor will it go down until eight o'clock.
Let one or other suggest some subject of discussion, which
may prove sufficiently long to occupy the time, and may
be wanting neither in pleasure nor profit. It is not suffi-
cient to feed the eyes with this pleasant prospect, the
mind ought also to be nourished with some fruitful pleasures."
All agreed to this most sensible and opportune suggestion,
and desired him to propose a subject for discussion.'
Villanovanus then addressing More, introduces the subject
of Erasmus, and a long conversation ensues between the
two, at which the students are listeners only. At the end
Villanovanus remarks, ' " Now let us arise and be going,
since we have had a profitable holiday and it is now supper-
time." More readily agreed to this, as he was considerably
fatigued by his journey, and wished to rest in the house.
Such was our afternoon exercise.'

* When we had returned into the city, by Simon's direction
we all accompanied More to his lodging, and then being
dismissed by him we returned to our own homes.'

CHAPTER III

VENICE

I loved her from my boyhood ; she to me

Was as a fairy city of the heart,
Rising like water-columns from the sea,

Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart.

BYRON.

HE death of Simon
Villanovanus broke the
tie that bound Dolet to
Padua, and he contem-
plated a speedy return to
France, when the per-
suasions of Jean de
Langeac, Bishop of
Limoges, who was then
passing through Padua
as Ambassador from
France to Venice, induced
him to forgo his design,
and to accompany the

Ambassador to Venice in the capacity of secretary.1

The few tourists who, venturing out of the beaten track,

have found themselves in the ancient and important city

1 Letter to Bude, Or at. Du<s in Thai. 105.

CHAP, in VENICE 39

of Limoges will not have failed to notice with admiration,
not unmixed it may be with censure, in the unfinished
fragment which has alone been erected of a cathedral
designed on an unusually grand scale and with admirable
taste and skill, the remains of the magnificent tomb of
one of the most eminent as well as most worthy of its
bishops, Jean de Langeac, sometimes, owing to a similarity
of names, confounded, even by those who ought to have
known better, with his more celebrated successor in the see,
the learned, liberal, and jovial cardinal Jean du Bellay-
Langey, the friend and patron of Rabelais. Jean de
Langeac was one of those men who play no unimportant
part in public affairs, yet who leave no mark in the history
of their time by which their memory is handed down to
posterity. Successively Ambassador to Poland, Portugal,
Hungary, Switzerland, Scotland, England, and twice to
Rome, few men of his time had seen more of the world,
or had profited more by these extended and varied travels.
A man of learning and culture himself, he was everywhere
the friend and patron of men of letters ; and the fact that
he was the first to discern the abilities and promise of the
poor and unknown student of Padua, and to afford him
that patronage which he so much needed, must entitle him
to our respect.

Sprung from a family which claimed descent from the
kings of Sicily, he was born towards the end of the fifteenth
century. In 1512 we find him a councillor clerk of the
parliament of Toulouse, and for the next twenty-two years
he passed his life immersed in public affairs, chiefly of a
diplomatic nature. His industry was indefatigable, and the
services which he rendered to his country were not without
their reward, as the rich benefices conferred upon him by the
king testify. At the end of 1532 he received the bishopric
of Avranches, but in less than six months, and before he had

40 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

taken possession of his see, he was made to exchange it for
Limoges, and a few years after this he retired from public
life.

Still mindful of his motto, Marcescit in otio virtus, he
was as busily occupied during the latter years of his life in
the administration of his diocese and his other benefices, and
in planning and superintending his architectural works, as
during his earlier years he had been in the performance of
his public duties. At the same time with his see, he enjoyed
numerous rich abbeys and benefices which he held in com-
mendam, and he delighted to employ his great fortune for
their benefit and in the encouragement of literature and art.
His ruling passion was architecture, and it was to his
liberality that Limoges owed its episcopal palace, and the
elaborate rood-screen of its cathedral, which, if we cannot
admire in it the mixture of Gothic tracery with Renaissance
sculpture, must when perfect have been of extraordinary
magnificence. He made other considerable additions to the
cathedral, which had been in progress since the thirteenth
century, but which since his death has remained in the
incomplete state in which he left it.1

Dolet in 1532 in a letter to the Bishop's brother, Francis
de Langeac, writes, ' What can I write to you respecting
your brother, except the usual information ? for certainly no
one is more addicted to excessive building than he, so that
one may say of him, —

Diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.' 2

1 Jean de Langeac died in 1541. His will has been printed in the
Bull, de la Soc. Arch, et Hist, de Limoges, vol. vii. p. 135. A brief life of
him by the Abbe Marmeisse appeared at Brioude in 1861, entitled Notice
Biographique stir Jean de Langeac, Eveque de Limoges, but it contains very
little of interest.

2 Orat. Duo: in Thol. 97.

No one who had read this letter of Dolet, or his treatise De QJficio
Legati, could possibly have mistaken this great architectural Bishop of

in VENICE 41

Made secretary to an Ambassador at twenty-one, Dolet
would seem to be borne on that tide ' which taken at the
flood leads on to fortune.' Yet — except as it afforded him
the means of studying for a year at Venice, and ensured for

Limoges for his successor Jean du Bellay. Nee de la Rochelle, however,
suggested that by Joannes Langiacus, Cardinal Jean du Bellay-Langey was
intended. He had never heard of Jean de Langeac, and knowing that
Cardinal du Bellay was at one time Bishop of Limoges, he assumed that
he was the early — as he was the later — friend of Dolet. The error is
venial in the worthy bookseller, whose means of knowledge were limited,
and who does not profess to do much more than translate from Maittaire.
[He afterwards, however, discovered his mistake, and corrected it in the
copy of his Life of Dolet with his MS. notes in the late M. Baudrier's
possession] ; but it is difficult to understand how M. Boulmier, and the
writer of the article on Dolet in La France Protestante who had access at
least to the ordinary biographical dictionaries and lists of Bishops of
Limoges, should have fallen into the same error.

Jean de Langeac died Bishop of Limoges in 1541, and was immedi-
ately succeeded by Jean du Bellay-Langey. At the time when Dolet
wrote and printed his treatise De Ojficio Legati, Langeac was still living
and Bishop of Limoges ; and in 1535 Dolet had dedicated his dialogue
De Imitatione Ciceroniana ' Ad Joannem Langiacum Episcopum Lemovicensem
virum eloquentissimum et eloquentium studiosissimum? The following is Dolet's
notice of the Bishop in the Commentaries, vol. ii. col. 1496: 'Among
those who have filled the office of Ambassador in our time in France at
least, Jean de Langeac holds by far the first place, a man equally dis-
tinguished by his ability, his wisdom, and his singular prudence. The
Kings of France have availed themselves of his excellence and fidelity in
every kind of business ; and what regions, what kingdoms are there,
distant or near, into which he has not been sent as Ambassador ? So that
indeed we ought to think him worthy, not only of the highest ecclesiastical
dignities and the richest benefices, but also indisputably of that honour [a
bronze statue] by which the Romans conferred immortality on Sulpicius
Severus on account of his performance of duties of a similar kind. By
his watchful counsels the interests of France have been cared for and pro-
moted in most difficult circumstances. By him the commissions of the
Kings of France have been most faithfully set forth and performed. Let
me further add that no one in our time has shown himself of a more
obliging or liberal disposition towards men of letters, more devoted to all
the learned, or more desirous of rendering services to them.'

42 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

him the friendship and subsequent pecuniary assistance of
Jean de Langeac — his secretaryship seems to have had no
influence on his subsequent fortunes. Of his duties as
secretary he tells us nothing, except that he was employed
to write letters to the supreme Pontiff and to the Bishop's
other correspondents.1 We know, however, that ample
leisure was afforded him for study, and that he availed him-
self of those opportunities which Venice specially offered.

The Republic had then reached the height of her power,
her glory, and her external splendour. The victorious arms
of the Turks had indeed robbed her of a part of her Oriental
possessions, and her Doge could no longer justly retain the
singular yet once accurate title of Lord of three-eighths 'of the
Roman Empire. The war which followed the League of
Cambrai had given a shock to her military power from
which she was never to recover, and the discovery of the
passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope had for ever
deprived her of the position which she had so long held as
the centre of the commerce between the East and the West.
But nothing of this was as yet apparent : no one knew,
probably no one suspected, that the day of her power had
passed, that she had entered on a career of decline which was
to continue for three centuries, and was not to be stemmed
until, after alternations of domestic misgovernment and
foreign tyranny, she was again to raise her head, again to
enter on a possible course of prosperity as a member of a
free and united Italy.

In 1529 Venice was still Queen of the Adriatic. Besides
possessing half of the great plain of Lombardy, she was the
sovereign of Istria, Dalmatia, Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante,
Santa Maura, Cerigo, Cyprus, and Crete, as well as of
several towns in the Peloponnesus and in the northern part
of continental Greece. She still retained several islands in
1 Letter to Bude, Orat. Duo: in ThoL 105.

in VENICE 43

the ^Egean, while the Dukes of Naxos and other insular
Christian princes only retained their dominions by relying on
her protection and obeying her behests.

The city itself was, with perhaps one exception, by far
the richest and the most magnificent, and, without any
exception, the most orderly and best governed in the world.
Until its capture by the Turks in 1463 Constantinople had
held the first place among European cities. Vastly
inferior as the new Rome of the Bosphorus was to the Rome
of Augustus and the Antonines, yet there, and there only,
were to be found living, or perhaps only galvanised, but
still existing realities, the splendours of Roman art, of
Roman civilisation. Temples, palaces, statues, pictures, of
a late and degraded age indeed, but still far superior to any-
thing that was to be seen in western Europe during the early
part of the Middle Ages, existed at Constantinople. But
this was terminated by its capture by the Turks. The city
became a mass of ruins, the graven images were utterly
destroyed, nothing of its ancient splendours remained, save
what could be converted to Mahommedan purposes, to the
worship of Allah or the luxury of his servant the Sultan.

During the century which followed the loss of Con-
stantinople, two cities, both Italian, claim the first place both
for wealth and magnificence, Venice and Florence ; and if
the latter must carry off the palm in matters of art and
literature, if the grace, the beauty, the artistic feeling, the
extraordinary combination of grandeur and simplicity which
characterises the Duomo of Brunelleschi, entitles it to take
precedence of the Church of St. Mark, yet for general
magnificence, for richness of external ornament, for wealth
acquired by commerce and expended in the decoration of
the city, Venice might not unreasonably claim that pre-
eminence which, in regard to internal government, to the
completeness and efficiency of its police regulations, no city

44 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

could pretend to compete with. Perfect security for life
and property, and an entire absence of those insurrections
and civil brawls which frequently occurred as well in
Florence as in nearly every other city in Italy in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, were the especial characteristics of
Venice.

It was here that Etienne Dolet passed the year which
followed his departure from Padua. The great palace of
the Doges, with its marble, its columns, its paintings which
equalled those of Apelles, especially impressed him, and he
has left us in the biographical poem on Jean de Langeac,
appended to his treatise De Officio Legati, a long and pictur-
esque description of it, and of the reception given to the
Ambassador.

Although Padua was the University of the Republic,
yet in Venice itself the means of study were not wanting.
Several literary professorships had been founded and
endowed by the State, and were filled by men of diplomatic
as well as literary eminence. At this time the chair of
Eloquence1 was occupied by Giovanni Battista Egnazio,
the pupil of Politian, who, in the opinion of many, most
nearly resembled his master. The assistant and friend of
Aldus, the editor of the best editions of Caesar, Suetonius,
and Ovid which had as yet appeared, he was highly esteemed
not only by the senators of Venice, who had employed him
in several missions of importance, and who appointed him
to his professorship in 1520, but by all men of letters of the
day. When only eighteen years of age he had opened a
school at Venice, the success and reputation of which had
excited the jealousy of Sabellicus, who then held the
public professorship of Eloquence ; and when long after-
wards Egnazio was appointed to the same office, he delivered
lectures which had an extraordinary popularity. More than

1 i.e. Latin composition.

in VENICE 45

five hundred persons, we are told, daily attended his lectures ;
not young students only, but persons of all ages, senators of
Venice, Papal legates, foreign ambassadors, and strangers
from all parts, were to be seen there. We can understand
the ardour with which Etienne Dolet seized upon the
opportunities which Langeac afforded him of attending the
lectures of this eminent man. The young Ciceronian was
delighted to find that his favourite author was the subject
of one of the courses which Egnazio gave in the year
that Langeac spent at Venice. Dolet tells us1 that the
special subject of the lectures of Egnazio during the year that
he attended them were Lucretius and Cicero De Officiis, and
we cannot doubt that these lectures, especially those on the
De OJficiis, were of much service to him in preparing the
materials for his great work, the Commentaries on the Latin
Tongue, the plan of which he had for some time conceived,
and the materials for which he was already collecting.

The name of only one other man of letters has come
down to us as connected with Dolet at Venice. Sturm, in
the edition which he gave of Dolet's Phrases et Formula
Lingua Latins elegantiores in 1576, says, 'Dolet is
believed to have been assisted by Navagero, with whom he
lived at Venice, and thence to have brought the materials
of his Commentaries into his own country.' This statement
is clearly unfounded. If Dolet ever knew Navagero, it must
have been at Padua, for he (Navagero) died at Blois on the
8th of May 1529, a date at which Dolet was certainly still
at Padua. But during his residence in that city Navagero
could only have been there, if at all, for short visits. There
is, however, no trace in any of Dolet's writings of an
acquaintance with Navagero. The statement had been made
to Sturm (as it elsewhere appears) by some one who desired
to deprive Dolet of the merit of the Commentaries.

1 I Comm. 1156.

46 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, in

But his sojourn at Venice was not exclusively devoted
to business or study. He found time and opportunity — as
what youth of twenty visiting Venice for the first time would
not have done — to fall in love. He was not more fortunate
in love than in friendship. Death, which had so lately
taken from him his friend, now deprived him of his mistress.
He commemorated her death in an epitaph, which is one of
the least happy of his poems. Goujet l describes it as very
profane. It is, however, merely stilted and pretentious,
utterly wanting in reality and feeling. The three poems
written after her death tell us all we know of this love
affair, that is to say, the name of the lady and the fact of
her death, and they allow us to believe that Etienne's love
had not been very profound nor his heart very severely
wounded by the loss of Elena.

Franfoise, xi. 194.

CHAPTER IV

TOULOUSE

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

LUCRETIUS.

ANGEAC'S mission at
Venice lasted for a year,
and Dolet then returned
with him to France, in-
tending to devote himself
more ardently than ever
to the study of Latin
literature and to the pre-
paration and collection of
materials for his great
work — contemplated
since he was sixteen years
of age — upon the Latin
language, with a primary

view of proving the superiority in style of Cicero to Sallust,
Cassar, Terence, and Livy ; a work for which, although
only in his twenty-second year, he had already made exten-
sive collections, and which — for self-depreciation was never
one of his failings — he seems already to have thought
himself competent to write. Inordinately desirous of con-
temporary and of posthumous fame, he was, however,

48 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

entirely without the desire of that vulgar success which leads
to wealth and honours. There is not a trace in any of his
correspondence, or indeed in any of his writings, of the least
desire for wealth ; provided he had the means of subsistence
and 6f pursuing his studies, he was content. The meanness
of his dress, the discomfort and poverty in which he con-
tentedly lived, are the subjects of the satire and ridicule of
his enemies. During his residence at Toulouse he accepted
with manly gratitude the gifts of the good Langeac, and,
when necessary, informed him of his wants.1 But we never
find Dolet writing begging and fawning letters asking for
money, benefices, and places, such as those which disgust
and pain us so much in the men of letters of the day, even
the most eminent, even in the great Erasmus himself.
Dolet indeed frequently seeks his powerful friends' assistance,
but it is to obtain his release from prison, to protect him
from his enemies, to obtain permission to peacefully earn his
own livelihood as a printer, and to print books that may be
of use to his country, that he applies to them.

On his return from Italy no care for the future seems to
have disturbed him ; study and fame were all he desired.
But the urgent advice of his friends — and especially of the
Bishop of Limoges — was that he should devote himself to
the study of the law. It is clear that Langeac charged him-
self with his protege's maintenance during the time he was
to be occupied in the study of jurisprudence. When these
studies were finished the Bishop would have no difficulty
in obtaining his appointment to some legal office, which in
the eyes of the shrewd diplomatist would be much better for
him than the precarious life of a mere scholar, and which,
he would not fail to remind Dolet, would be a stepping-stone
to greater successes. The Bishop had himself, when a
young man, held the office of Councillor Clerk of the
1 See his letters to Langeac, Qrat. Du<£ in Tholosam, 134-137.

iv TOULOUSE 49

Parliament of Toulouse, and it was to the University of that
city that he advised Dolet to betake himself. A new
subject to study always had attractions for him. He tells
us,

Mon naturel est d'apprendre toujours ;

Mais si ce vient que je passe aucuns jours

Sans rien apprendre en quelque lieu ou place,

Incontinent il faut que je deplace.

Accordingly, yielding to his friend's entreaties, he gave
up for the present, not without a sigh, his literary labours,
and early in 1532 entered as a student the University of
Toulouse, the most celebrated school of Law at that time
in France, and one which enjoyed so great a reputation
beyond that country, that numerous students of other
nations, Spaniards, Germans, and English, were to be found
there. The two years and upwards which Dolet passed at
Toulouse were most memorable in his life. It was there
that the foundations of all his future misfortunes were laid,
that he aroused those enmities which never rested or ceased
until his death in the Place Maubert ; there also he con-
tracted many friendships with good men, which he retained
until his or their death. These two years of friendships,
enmities, and misfortunes are among the most interesting
in his history, and we are fortunate in having more detailed
information respecting them than respecting any other two
years of his life. His Orationes du<e in Tholosam, and the
three books of epistles to and from his friends which are
included in the same volume, are our principal sources of
information for this period, though we are able to supple-
ment them from the histories of Toulouse, the lives of
other men of eminence who were to be found there at this
time, and the correspondence of Julius Cassar Scaliger with
Arnoul Le Ferron.

From Padua to Toulouse the moral was even greater

£

50 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

than the physical distance. The former was the home of
freedom of thought, where no limit was placed on the
speculations of its scholars, where the highest and deepest
intellectual problems were discussed with a freedom and
ingenuity which, if leading sometimes to unsound conclu-
sions, yet showed abundance of life and vigour, and where
literary culture was carried to the highest pitch, and received
no less devotion than philosophical speculation. The latter
was exclusively devoted to mediaeval jurisprudence and
mediaeval theology, each of them studied in the narrowest
and most formal manner. The days of Cujas and Coras had
not yet come, and though Jean de Boyssone was attempting
to introduce some ameliorations into the study of law, and,
following the example of Alciat at Bourges and Pavia, was
setting forth jurisprudence as in some sort a scientific system
and not a mere collection of arbitrary rules, yet his influence
was hardly felt, and in the school of law at Toulouse Bartholus
and Accursius still reigned supreme.

For three centuries before this time Toulouse had been
the headquarters of ecclesiastical bigotry, tyranny, and
superstition. The birthplace, and in France the chief seat
of the Inquisition, that institution had so effectually done its
work, that the Parliament, the University, the Capitouls,
and the mob, vied with each other which could show them-
selves its most faithful henchmen, and could give it the most
efficient aid in its brutal operations. And for three centuries
more the city and its population had the same character.
' Nowhere,' proudly remarks the President de Gramond,
writing in the middle of the seventeenth century, ' are the
laws against heresy enforced with more severity, and the
result of this is that Toulouse alone among the cities of
France is free from the stain of heresy, no one being
admitted to citizenship whose Catholic faith is suspected.' l
1 Hist. Galliot, lib. xxx.

iv TOULOUSE 51

But it had not always been so. There had been a time
when Toulouse was in the van of civilisation, of culture,
and of progress. Under the Romans, and still more under
the Visigoths, Toulouse was the most polished city of Gaul.
Arts and letters flourished, and instead of a dull level of
ecclesiastical orthodoxy, theological speculations were rife,
which, however deserving the appellation of heresies, at least
showed intellectual life and vigour. ' The Court of the
Visigothic kings at Toulouse,' says Augustin Thierry,1
' the centre of all the policy of the West, the intermediary
between the Imperial Court and the Germanic kingdoms,
equalled in polish, and perhaps surpassed in dignity, that of
Constantinople.' Martial, Ausonius, and Sidonius Apol-
linaris describe it as the city of Pallas, and St. Jerome calls
it the Rome of the Garonne. Like the Rome of the Tiber,
Toulouse had its capitol and its consuls, and in the title of
capitouls, or barons of the capitol, which the civic magistrates
proudly retained long after that of consul had fallen into
disuse, a memory was preserved of the days of imperial or
regal Toulouse. Under the early Visigothic kings Arian-
ism was the dominant creed, and though, after the conversion
of Recared to the orthodox faith, the latter became the
religion of the State, yet Arianism continued to prevail widely
through the provinces of Narbonne and Aquitaine. Soon
after Arianism became extinct a new sect of heretics appeared,
the Cathari ; and to them succeeded in the beginning of the
twelfth century the Albigenses, whose doctrines were so
simple and Christian, whose lives so peaceful and industrious,
that they soon spread over a portion of Languedoc, and gave
rise to one of the most horrible and brutal persecutions
which the history of the world records. The persecutions
of the Christians by the Pagan emperors of Rome fade into
insignificance before those which resulted from the three

1 Lettres sur rhistoire de France, i. 6.

52 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

crusades preached by the fathers of Christendom against the
Albigenses. As Toulouse was the headquarters of the sect,
it especially experienced the cruelties which the Catholic
Church, through the agency of Simon de Montfort and his
infamous colleague Foulques, Bishop of Toulouse, inflicted
on thousands of peaceful citizens and peasants, for no other
offence than that of refusing to accept doctrines which,
whether true or false, it is certain neither the persecuted nor
the persecutors could possibly understand. The unfortunate
Counts of Toulouse strove in vain to protect their peaceful
and loyal subjects ; they were themselves hounded to death
for refusing to act as the butchers of those whom it was their
first duty to shelter from oppression. But the required
result was obtained. There are but few series of events
upon which the Church of Rome can look with greater or
more unqualified satisfaction, and on the result of which she
has better reason to congratulate herself, than the crusades
against the Albigenses. Thousands of Christian men,
women, and children were murdered in cold blood ; some by
the ferocious soldiers of Montfort ; others, less fortunate,
perished by the flames which were kindled by saints and
bishops ; a still greater number were tortured, wounded, im-
prisoned, and deprived of their lands. The most smiling
and prosperous part of France was changed into a desert.
* Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant' The old joyous life
of the South was gone. But heresy was successfully crushed.
In the country districts, indeed, its embers still smouldered
ready to burst into a flame at any moment, but Toulouse,
from being the most heretical, became the most orthodox
city in France ; and for the six centuries which followed its
surrender to Simon de Montfort in 1214, the Church could
point with just pride to at least one city where her persecu-
tions had been a complete success, where her authority was un-
questioned, where freedom of thought was never able to take

iv TOULOUSE 53

root, and where superstition and bigotry continued equally
to distinguish its rulers and its populace. It was at Toulouse
that St. Dominic founded that celebrated Order, which if it
has not succeeded in effectually crushing heresy, has shrunk
from no cruelty, from no infamy, in its attempts to do so.
It was there that shortly after his death the Inquisition was
established, and there it continued to have its headquarters
in France until its formal and final suppression in 1772.*
It was there that the ' Inquisitor of the whole kingdom of
France, specially appointed by the Holy Apostolic See and
by the Royal authority ' (such was the title conferred upon
the Inquisitor -General by the Parliament), held his court,
and where alone his powers were unquestioned.2 Not only
the governors of Languedoc, but even the kings of France
themselves could not enter Toulouse until they had taken
an oath before the Inquisition to maintain the faith and the
Holy Office. After the Place Maubert in Paris, there was
no spot of ground in France where during the period of the
Reformation so many eminent persons were burned for their
religion as in the Place de Salins at Toulouse. In 1532 it

1 It had ceased to exist as a court of justice more than a century
before this. In 1645 the then Archbishop, Charles de Montchal, jealous
of a rival authority, obtained a Royal decree depriving the Inquisition of
its jurisdiction as a royal court. The title of Inquisitor-General, however,
which conferred much prestige and some actual power, continued to exist
until 1772, when the Marquis d'Aignan d'Orbessan, President a Mortier
in the Parliament of Toulouse, shocked at the idea that the Inquisition
should exist in France even in name, obtained a Royal decree for its sup-
pression.— Hist, de V Inquisition en France, par E. L. B. de Lamothe-
Langon.

2 Many as were the attempts made by the Inquisition to do so, it
never extended its authority beyond Languedoc and the adjacent districts.
It never obtained any recognition by the Parliament of Paris, nor by those
of Dijon or Bordeaux, though, as in the case of Dolet himself, the In-
quisitor-General occasionally held his courts within the limits of their
jurisdiction, — acting, as it would seem, as the Bishop's official or his
assessor.

54 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

witnessed the martyrdom of Jean de Caturce, in 1538 that
of the Grand Inquisitor himself, Louis Rochette, who, when
convinced of the truth of the reformed doctrines which he
had passed so many years in persecuting, received those
precious balms which the Church affords to her erring
children. It was Toulouse that in 1562 anticipated St.
Bartholomew by a similar massacre of the Huguenots, which
for the time completely freed the city from that pestilent
sect. Those that escaped the assassins were put to death
judicially by the Parliament, and an annual fete in memory
of the happy event was instituted in the city, and subsequently
confirmed by a Bull of Pope Pius IV., who granted special
indulgences to those who took part in it.1 We may deplore
the blindness of heretics and infidels in face of the clear
proofs which orthodoxy offers to them, but they have as yet
escaped the reproach of glorying in crimes committed in their
names. The Church of Rome alone, which neither changes
nor repents, still glories in and applauds these atrocities.

It was Toulouse that almost alone of the French cities
received with joy the news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
and followed it up, in pursuance of the Royal orders, by the
murder of three hundred Huguenots, who were led out of
prison one by one and butchered by eight students of the
University, who however did not disdain to receive payment
for their pious work ; 2 while three suspected councillors of
the Parliament were hung in their scarlet robes in the great
court of the palace. It was at Toulouse that, seventeen years
later, the virtuous president Duranti was dragged from the
prison into which the leaguers had thrown him for obeying

1 Voltaire calls this fete ' la procession annuelle oil Ton remercie Dieu
de quatre mille assassinats.' Only eighteen years have passed since an
Archbishop of Toulouse desired to resuscitate it. (Written in 1880.)

2 The authors of the Hiftoire de Toulouse prefixed to the Biographic
Toulousaine say that the receipts for their payments are still in existence.

iv TOULOUSE 55

the orders of the King, and brutally murdered by the mob,
while the Capitouls moved no hand for his protection, but
showed their sympathy with the murderers by confiscating
the wrecks of his library and furniture which had escaped
the pillage of the populace.

It was Toulouse, which as we should expect, became the
headquarters of the League, which dedicated a solemn
religious service to the memory of Jacques Clement, which
bitterly opposed and long refused to acknowledge the
authority of the Edict of Nantes, and which received with
unbounded enthusiasm the news of its revocation. Nor
were religious triumphs and glories wanting to Toulouse in
the seventeenth or even in the latitudinarian and philo-
sophical eighteenth century. In 1619 the audacious, the
ingenious, but not always intelligible Vanini was burned
alive in the Place St. Etienne. Eight years earlier, however,
the Inquisitors of Toulouse attained a distinction in their
pious work which raised them to a level with, if indeed it
did not elevate them above, their Spanish brethren. If the
name of brother Pierre Girardie has not attained the celebrity
of that of Torquemada, and if he cannot rival that great
man in the number or the rank of those whom he delivered
to the secular arm, he has at least one claim to distinction
which the Spanish Inquisitor, so far as I know, does not
possess. It was he who, as Inquisitor - General in 1 6 1 1 ,
tried and condemned to death for sacrilege a boy of nine
years of age. The child was burned alive in pursuance of
the sentence.1 In the latter half of the eighteenth century

1 Histoire de Saint Sernin, par Raymond Dayde, Toulouse, 1661,
p. 204. Incredible as the judicial burning alive of a child of nine
would seem, the fact not only rests on the authority of Dayde, but,
as M. de Lamothe-Langon tells us (Histoire de F Inquisition en France,
Paris, 1829, vol. iii. p. 566), is confirmed by the records of the Inquisition,
copies of which, made by P£re Hyacinthe Sermet, he (M. de L.-L.) had
seen, and by the criminal registers of the Parliament.

56 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

such an event would have been impossible, yet even then
Toulouse, alone of the cities of France, distinguished itself
by the execution of heretics.

In February 1762, the last of the martyrs of the French
Protestant Church, Francois Rochette, the young pastor of
the desert, and the three brothers Grenier, sealed their faith
with their blood in the Place du Petit-Salin; and a few
weeks later a majority of the two Presidents and eleven
Councillors of the Parliament who formed the Chamber of
the Tournelle condemned, without a shadow of evidence,
and solely because the accused was a Protestant, Jean Calas
to be broken on the wheel for the alleged murder of his
son. Lastly, it was at Toulouse that the hideous massacre
of General Ramel by the Verdets took place in the days of
the White Terror, a murder for which the authorities refused
to punish or even prosecute the murderers.1

Nowhere in the world in the first half of the sixteenth
century was such a display of piety to be seen as at Toulouse.
A hundred churches were daily filled by the faithful, each
having its special ceremonies and its special festivals. * In
the capital of Languedoc, as in the capital of the Christian
world,' says an orthodox modern historian of Toulouse,2
' almost every day was marked by one or more pious
ceremonies ; there evangelical voices proclaimed without
ceasing the eternal verities, and the whole life of an
inhabitant of Toulouse was a perpetual confession of the
Catholic faith.' Michael Servetus, who had gone there a
few years earlier than Dolet, and for the same purpose, the
study of the law, must have been amazed at the piety and
zeal of the Tolosans. He had seen nothing like it at

1 All this is happily now matter of history only. Religious bigotry
is no longer a characteristic of Toulouse.

2 Du Mege, Hist, des Institutions de Toulouse, Toulouse, 1844, i.
155-

iv TOULOUSE 57

Saragossa, where he had passed the preceding three years.
The whole city seemed to be a temple. He found himself
surrounded by crucifixes, holy pictures, relics. It was a
veritable lie sonnante. The church bells never ceased.
Masses were constantly being said, and all attended by
crowds. Processions more numerous than he had ever seen
thronged the streets, and each seemed more magnificent than
the last. Nowhere could there have been seen so pious a
magistracy as that of Messieurs the Capitouls.1 Punishment
swiftly followed any offence against religion, however trivial.
At the centre or bolt of the great bridge of St. Michael,
finished in 1508, was suspended a great iron cage for
ducking heretics and blasphemers until they died.2

The populace were in their religious practices such as
their spiritual pastors had made them. Where a little later
the chief religious festival was in celebration of four thousand
assassinations, where in the most sacred part of the cathedral,
that in which the body of Christ is offered for the quick
and dead, the rulers of the Church placed, and where still
may be seen, a carved wooden figure of a pig preaching,
with the inscription underneath, * Calvin -pore -pre chant J
the common people were given up to grovelling and
ridiculous superstitions. If rain was desired, the statues
of the saints were removed from their places and carried in
procession through the city. If a flood was threatened,
prayers were addressed to the river itself, and a cross was
placed beneath its waves.

Yet it might be expected that the University would
stand out as an oasis in the desert of superstition and bigotry

1 Tollin, Toulouser Studentenleben im Anfange des 16. Jahrhunderts.
(Riehl's Hist. Taschenbuch, 1874, 79-98.)

2 Ibid. Tollin quotes the words of the archives of Toulouse in
reference to this cage : ' Mise sur Garonne pour tremper les blasphemateurs
du nom de Dieu.'

5 8 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

which surrounded it, that there at least would be found some
intellectual freedom and some intellectual life.1 But this
expectation would be disappointed. The University of
Toulouse was the last upon which the light of the
Renaissance shone.

Founded in 1229, at the same time, by the same persons,
and for the same purposes as the Inquisition, it long
preserved its original character. The Church desired that
in the same place where had been taught the doctrines
which she so strongly disapproved, and which she had so
bitterly and so successfully persecuted, there should be
henceforth taught no other doctrine than hers, no other
study permitted than that of orthodox theology. It was
therefore one of the conditions imposed upon the unhappy
Raymond VII., that he should establish and maintain an
University for the study of the canon law and theology.2

It was to this Toulouse — this city of barbarism and
bigotry, as he was fond of calling it — that Dolet, full of
ardour for study, full of vigour and intellectual life, loving
the humanists and the new learning, and already, as it would
seem, filled with hatred for the monks and for superstition,
and also, as I fear must in truth be added, sharp and
irritable in temper, and bitter and even venomous in tongue,
came early in the year 1532 for the purpose of studying,

1 I am not sure that experience warrants this expectation. Oxford has
not always been in the van of progress, whether intellectual, religious, or
political. The University of Paris, splendid as are its services, was kept
closely down to the dead level of the Sorbonne ; while the German
Universities, which it has been the fashion for the last half-century to
laud to the skies, have been generally, though with some notable excep-
tions, found to be the submissive instruments of their princely masters,
and only to have pursued those speculations which tend to freedom of
thought and freedom of action, in the rare instances where the sovereign
encouraged or permitted them to do so.

2 Sismondi, Hist, des Franfais, vii. 86.

iv TOULOUSE 59

and, as it would seem, of ultimately practising the law ;
and we find him speedily on terms of great intimacy with
several persons who either had already made or were
afterwards to make a considerable reputation, and who
require some notice here. If the maxim ' Noscitur a
Sociis ' is to be applied to Dolet, the result would be most
favourable to him, for during his two years' residence he
seems to have acquired the friendship of all those men who
by their virtue or their learning conferred lustre on Toulouse.
For barbarous and bigoted as it was, there were not wanting
among the members of the Parliament, the professors of
the University, and the students, those who sympathised
warmly with learning and intellectual progress. Jacques
de Minut, to whom Egnazio dedicated his work De
Romanorum Principibus, and to whom Dolet subsequently
devoted more than one ode, and whose epitaph he wrote,
was First President of the Parliament. Jean Bertrandi,
afterwards Cardinal and First President of the Parliament
of Paris, was Second President, who, if less truly devoted
to literature and learning than Minut, still desired to
promote them and to protect men of letters if he could do
so without injuring his ambitious aims. Jean de Pins,1
Bishop of Rieux, was generally a resident at Toulouse, and
probably one of the episcopal members of the Parliament.
Jean de Caturce and Jean de Boyssone were lecturing on
law and striving to introduce some ameliorations of the
barbarism of the University. Jacques Bording, not yet
devoted to medicine, was either studying or teaching Latin,
or probably doing both. Arnoul Le Ferron, afterwards to
attain fame as a historian, a jurist, and a scholar, Claude
Cottereau, and Simon Finet, were all contemporary students
of Dolet, and with all he soon became on terms of great
intimacy.

1 M. Boulmier erroneously calls him Dupin.

60 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

The Bishop of Rieux, soon to become the chief friend
and protector of Dolet, was confessedly at the head of the
men of letters of Toulouse, and was indeed perhaps the
only one whose fame at this time extended not only over
France, but wherever in Europe literary culture flourished.
Like Dolet's first protector and patron, Langeac, Jean de
Pins had passed a part of his life in various embassies, and
had twice preceded the Bishop of Limoges as French
Ambassador to Venice. He descended from an illus-
trious family, though of no great influence or wealth,
the founder of which, sprung from the Counts of Pinas in
Catalonia, had settled in Languedoc at the end of the
twelfth century, after fighting by the side of Pedro the
Second of Aragon on behalf of Raymond of Toulouse and
Bernard of Comminges, in support of the freedom, political
and moral, of Languedoc. A century later Odo de Pins
received from Bernard VI., Count of Comminges,1 the lands
which were then erected into a seigneury and called by his
name, and which his descendants still possess.

For three centuries the name was closely connected with
the civil and military history of Languedoc, and attained
still greater distinction in the annals of the Sovereign Order
of St. John of Jerusalem. Two Grand-Masters, a Grand-
Vicar, and many officers and knights the family of Pins gave
to the Order, and the Langue of Provence has had no more
honourable members. In 1294 Odo de Pins succeeded
John de Villiers as twenty-third Grand-Master of the Order,
not then become sovereign, but which had its chief seat
among the vines of Limasol in Cyprus, where are still to be
seen decayed mansions with the arms of the knights carved
in stone, and where the rich commandery wine still preserves
their memory. If the powers of Odo were unequal to the
task of ruling the brotherhood, his moderation and charity
1 Not Raymond, as the editors of Moreri say.

iv TOULOUSE 6 1

are celebrated by the historians of the Order. In 1317
Gerard de Pins, who had distinguished himself seven years
before at the capture of Rhodes, was named by Clement V.
Grand-Vicar, and as such reigned at Rhodes during the
dispute between Fouques de Villaret and Maurice de Pagnac,
each claiming to be Grand-Master. The death of Pagnac in
1321 brought his regency to a close after he had distinguished
it by his defence of Rhodes when besieged by Orkhan, son
of the Sultan Osman ; and for the remaining twenty-three
years of his life he proved, by the services rendered to the
Grand-Master and to the Order, that he was no less capable
of obeying as a subject than he had been of reigning as a
sovereign. In 1355, eleven years after his death, his kins-
man Roger de Pins was chosen Grand-Master in succession
to Pierre de Corneillan. Though not wanting in military
zeal or ability, it was as an administrator, and above all
as a benefactor of the sick and needy, that he acquired that
reputation which has handed him down to posterity as one
of the ablest and best of the Grand-Masters. Devoted from
his youth to the Order, its members, and its interests, he
was not blind to its faults ; and instead of following the
insidious advice and almost commands of its enemy Pope
Innocent IV., who wished the Order to quit the island of
Rhodes and establish itself in Achaia, where it would be
less powerful and more submissive, he set himself to reform
the statutes, a work which he successfully accomplished.
But he cared no less for the welfare of his Rhodian subjects
than for that of his Order, and when the plague and sub-
sequent famine ravaged Rhodes he employed the whole of
his revenue in relieving the necessities of the Rhodians, and
even sold his plate and the furniture of his palace to obtain
funds for that purpose.

But the ancestors of Jean de Pins did not disdain
humbler if not less useful duties nearer home, and no more

62 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

honoured name is to be found among the Capitouls of
Toulouse than theirs. Odo de Pins was a Capitoul in 1362,
and the name again occurs several times in that and the
succeeding century, while the elder brother of the Bishop of
Rieux held for some years the honourable office of Viguier
of Toulouse.

Jean de Pins was born in 1470. He lost his father
Gaillard de Pins while yet a child, but the care and affection
of his elder brother, to whose guardianship he was committed,
made this loss less heavy than it otherwise might have been.
Devoted to literature from boyhood, his brother gave him
every opportunity of pursuing his studies, and we find him
successively a student at the Universities of Toulouse,
Poictiers, Paris, and Bologna. At the latter place he
studied under two of the most learned scholars of the day,
Filippo Beroaldo the elder, who then filled the chair of
Literae Humaniores, and Urceus Codrus, then Professor of
Eloquence and Greek, from whom it is possible that Jean de
Pins acquired the knowledge, then so rare on this side the
Alps, of the Greek language. It is to the lessons of Beroaldo
that his biographers have attributed the purity and elegance
of his Latin style, but not as I think with probability, for
great as was the reading of Beroaldo (Pico de la Mirandola
says of him what Eunapius had before said of Longinus, that
he was a living library), his Latin style, as Ginguene has
remarked, is affected and vicious, and resembles rather
Apuleius than Cicero. In 1497 Jean de Pins received holy
orders and paid a visit to Toulouse, and then gave up to his
elder brother his share in the paternal inheritance. The
same year he returned to Italy, and passed the next ten years
in study and literary pursuits. In 1500 Urceus Codrus
died, and in 1502 an edition of his works (orations, letters,
and poems) was printed at Bologna under the editorship of
Filippo Beroaldo the younger, with the assistance of

iv TOULOUSE 63

Bartholomeo Bianchini and Jean de Pins. The book
contains several writings of Jean de Pins, namely, a letter in
praise of Urceus addressed to Jean Maurolet of Tours, an
epigram addressed to Ferric Carondelet, and an epitaph on
Urceus. In 1505 Beroaldo the elder died, and Jean de Pins
lost no time in writing his life, which he printed at Bologna
the same year, together with the life of St. Catherine of
Sienna.1 In 1508, influenced as it seems by the wishes of
his family, he returned to Toulouse. Singularly devoid of
ambition, either for wealth or honours, he was equally careless
of literary glory. He had no other intention or wish than
to devote himself to study and to the society of learned
men. The first forty years of his life were thus passed,
when his appointment to the honourable office of Councillor
Clerk to the Parliament of Toulouse altogether altered the
current of his existence, and for twelve years caused him
to change the contemplative for the practical life. The
ability and zeal which he displayed in the performance of
the duties of his office brought him under the favourable
notice of Du Prat, then First President of the Parliament
of Paris, who had formerly held the office of Advocate-
General in the Parliament of Toulouse. The First President
had occasion to mark his capacity, and when on the accession
of Francis I. to the throne the seals were taken from
Estienne Poncher and entrusted to Du Prat, one of the first
acts of the new Chancellor was to summon Jean de Pins to
Paris, where he was brought under the notice of Francis.
He accompanied the King and the Chancellor — probably
as secretary to the latter — to Italy, and followed the French

1 Jean de Pins' life of Beroaldo was reprinted by Meuschenius in his
Vitee summorum dignitate et eruditione virorum ex rarissimis monumentis,
Coburg, 1735. It is the only one of his works which has been reprinted in
modern times. In addition to the books mentioned in the text, he was
the author of a tract, De Vita Aulica, Toulouse, s.a. All his works are
extremely rare.

64 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

to the victory of Marignan and the triumphal entry into
Milan. The establishment of a senate for the government
of the duchy followed. It was composed partly of French-
men and partly of Italians ; at the head of the former was
placed Jean de Pins, and we are told that he gave great
satisfaction in his new office.

Yet he could scarcely have entered on the discharge of
his official duties when he was appointed with Bonnivet to
arrange the preliminaries of peace between Francis and
Leo X. The negotiations took place at Bologna, to which
place Jean de Pins returned with the liveliest satisfaction, and
where he was present at the interview of the King and Pope
in the month of December 1515. In these negotiations he
showed much ability, and gave great assistance to the King
and Chancellor in bringing the affair to a successful issue, in
concluding the treaty which confirmed to France (so far as a
treaty could confirm anything) the duchies of Milan, Parma,
and Placentia, and in effecting the concordat which deprived
the Gallican Church of the remains of its liberties, and de-
livered it over bound hand and foot into the power of the
King.

In 1510 Jean de Pins was appointed Ambassador to
Venice, where he continued until 1520, giving equal satis-
faction to his own court and to the government of the Re-
public, struggling against and defeating the intrigues of the
courts of Spain and Austria, — a success which he owed
probably as much to the sweetness of his disposition and the
goodness of his heart, which made all love him with whom
he came in contact, as to his diplomatic ability, which how-
ever was considerable. He procured the renewal of the
treaty made at Blois in 1512, and retained for his master the
continued support and friendship of the Republic. But his
diplomatic duties still left him abundant leisure, and the
occupation of this in literary pursuits constituted the happiest

iv TOULOUSE 65

part of his residence at Venice. In 1516 Musurus dedicated
to him the editio princeps of the Epistles of Gregory Nazi-
anzen. In 1518 Marino Sanuto notices him as present at a
lecture of Vittorio Fausto.1 Francis Asulanus dedicated to
him the Aldine Horace of 1519, as well in gratitude for his
kindness to the elder Aldus, as in testimony of his own
literary eminence. He collected a large number of precious
manuscripts, with which the library, then by the King's order
being formed at Fontainbleau by Lascaris and Bude, was
enriched. He superintended through the press of Bindonis
at Venice in 1516 a work which he had previously composed
for the amusement of the children of his friend and patron
Du Prat, entitled Allobrogica Narratio. It is a translation,
or rather paraphrase, of the romance of Le tres vaillant
Paris et la belle Vienne^ and was reprinted in the same year
at Paris by Badius Ascensius, at the end of a life of St. Roch,
also written by Jean de Pins. In 1520 he received the
appointment of Ambassador to the Court of Rome, and was
at the same time nominated by the King to the bishopric of
Pamiers ; but obstacles, the precise nature of which we are
ignorant, prevented him from obtaining possession of this
see, which he shortly afterwards exchanged for that of Rieux \
and about the same time he received the Abbey of Moissac.
At Rome he justified the high expectation which his Venetian
embassy had raised. His letters preserved among the
political manuscripts of the Bibliotheque Nationale show that
when in the capital of Christendom he not only unravelled
and countermined the intrigues of the Papal Court, but was
able to give to his own government much information and
assistance respecting the affairs of England, Scotland, Spain,
and Naples. The Italians of that day were fond of saying
that what the barbarians (meaning the transmontane nations)
gained by arms they lost by diplomacy. But Jean de Pins
1 Legrand, Bibliographic Hellenique, I. cv.
F

66 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

seems in general to have been a match for the wily Italians,
and if in the great matter of so much importance to the
nation, and upon which the French King and the Chancellor
had set their minds — the election to the Papacy of a cardinal
of the French faction in the conclave which followed the
death of Leo X. — he was unsuccessful, it is not probable that
this was owing to any want of skill on the part of the Am-
bassador ; and the election of the Cardinal of Utrecht may
be attributed either to the weighty influence which Don Juan
Manuel, the Imperial Ambassador, was able to bring to bear
on several of the cardinals, or, as the cardinals themselves,
and particularly the Cardinal de Medici l attributed it, to the
direct and immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost, or
possibly even to those personal intrigues which seem almost
invariably to be found in small bodies of men when electing
a head (whether of a college or of Christendom), and which
not infrequently result in the choice of one who is as dis-
tasteful to his supporters as to his opponents.2

A year after the election of Adrian VI. the political life
of Jean de Pins ceased. In August 1523 he was either re-
called or voluntarily retired from his embassy, and shortly
after presented to Francis I. at Fontainbleau the rich treasures
of books and manuscripts which he had collected during his
residence in Italy. He then withdrew to his diocese, and
passed the remaining fourteen years of his life either in Rieux
or in the neighbouring city of Toulouse. He devoted these
fourteen years to the administration of the affairs of his
diocese (one of the poorest in France), to works of mercy
and charity, to study, and to the society of literary men.

1 Giulio de Medici, afterwards Clement VII.
2 Votis Hadrianus omnium
Fit pontifex, sed omnibus
(Quis credat ?) invitis.

Joan. Pierius Valerianus.

iv TOULOUSE 67

During his residence in Italy he had formed an intimate
friendship with the greatest scholars of the day. Bembo,
Longolius, and Sadolet were among his friends. Longolius
was now dead, but with Sadolet he continued to carry on a
constant correspondence, and it is no light meed of praise
that to him the Bishop of Carpentras submitted several of his
productions for criticism and revision before publishing them.

The see of Rieux was small in extent, with a slender
population, and the duties of its bishop were light.1 Accord-
ingly he passed most of his time at Toulouse, where he had
an apartment in the Carmelite convent, and where, as we
learn from a manuscript poem of Boyssone, he had also
built a large house ; he was thus able to enjoy the society of
such men of literary tastes as were to be found there, and
who were at least more numerous than in his episcopal city.

It was not to be expected that such a man should escape
the suspicion of heresy. He received on one occasion a
letter from Erasmus requesting the loan of a Greek
manuscript of Josephus which had come from the library of
Philelphus, and which was almost illegible through age and
other injuries. The letter was intercepted. The interceptors
could not read it, but the hated name of Erasmus was
sufficient evidence of its heretical character. The good
Bishop was immediately accused of heresy, and required by
his accusers to read the letter to the Parliament. The

1 Rieux was one of the six new sees created by John XXII. out of
the old bishopric of Toulouse in or about 1329, when he at the same
time erected Toulouse into an archbishopric, with these six and that of
Pamiers as the suffragan sees. His intention was by increasing the epis-
copate to rivet more firmly the fetters which he had succeeded in throwing
round the weak Philip V., and at the same time to keep up the flames
and still more horrible punishments, such as flaying alive and tearing in
pieces by four horses, which he delighted to inflict on heretics whose
orthodoxy he suspected, or on his personal enemies, e.g. Hugh, Bishop of
Cahors, whom he charged with compassing his death by sorcery.

68 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

' furred law cats ' l prepared to spring upon their prey, and
treated the Bishop of Rieux as guilty since he was known
to Erasmus. Twice was the letter read before the Parliament ;
the second reading being rendered necessary (so at least the
humanists maliciously reported) by the barbarians' ignorance
of Latin. At length it was clear that Josephus alone was
referred to. There was not a single word which smacked
of heresy. It was all written in the cautious and prudent
manner in which Erasmus knew so well how to write. It
was a bitter disappointment to the bigots. To have struck
the Bishop of Rieux would have been a triumph far greater
than the burning of Jean de Caturce or the recantation of
Jean de Boyssone ; but even those who were most anxious
to prove him guilty were obliged, however unwillingly, to
admit his innocence, and Jean de Pins was able to laugh
at the vain attempts of his enemies.2 He died in 1537, one
of his last acts having been, as it seems, to interfere for the
second time, and again successfully, on behalf of Dolet.3
Loved even by his bigoted fellow-citizens both for his great

1 ' Vulturii togati,' Dolet calls them.

2 Orat. Duee in Tholosam, p. 60.

3 Erasmus (Ciceronianus) considers that Jean de Pins approaches
Cicero in purity of diction, and that his style might have attained
perfection had not his important public duties turned his attention from
study. Duverdier (Supplementum, Epitom. Bibl. Gesner.) has made two
distinct persons of Jean de Pins, distinguishing Joannes Pinus, Bishop of
Rieux, from Jo. Pinus, Senator Tolosanus, and attributing to the former
the Life of St. Catherine and the Libellus de Vita Aulica, and to the
latter the Life of St. Roch and the Allobrogica Narratio ; while De Bure
(Bibl. Instr. Hist, tome i. p. 442) still more erroneously attributes the
two latter works to Bartholomseus Pinus. See, for the life of Jean de
Pins, Biographie Toulousaine (Paris, 1825), vol. ii. p. 183, and Memoires
pour servir a Pelage historique de Jean de Pins, avec un recueil de plusieurs
de ses lettres, Avignon (Toulouse), 1748. The author of this meagre but
excessively scarce book is Pere Etienne Leonard Charron. It is almost
entirely devoted to Jean de Pins' public life, and the letters it contains
consist mostly of his official despatches when Ambassador. The public

iv TOULOUSE 69

kindness of heart and his many virtues, he was respected as
one who, sprung from among themselves, had attained high
distinction in the State, and he was thus able to throw the shield
of his protection over men suspected of heresy, and in some
degree to moderate the rancorous bigotry of the Tolosans.

When Dolet arrived at Toulouse (in 1532) the Bishop
of Rieux was sixty-two years of age. Age had not impaired
the freshness of his heart or the enthusiasm of his disposition ;
and besides being the friend of all that was good among the
authorities of the province, the city, and the university, he
was adored by all the young students, who sympathised with
the new learning, and aspired to be humanists rather than
canonists, and with whom the good Bishop rejoiced to
associate on those terms of cordiality and friendship which
render the society of the old, when men of learning and
eminence, so delightful to the young, and which at the
same time tend so strongly to preserve in the former the
freshness of youth. Nothing gives us so high an opinion
of the kindly qualities of the man as his intimacy with
Boyssone, Voulte, Bording, and Dolet, and their genuine
affection for him. It was to Jacques Bording that Dolet
was indebted for his introduction to the Bishop of Rieux.
His reputation as a scholar devoted to Cicero, and possessed
of oratorical power, had however gone before him ; and
the Bishop was only too happy to welcome all such, and
to admit them to his intimacy ; and this happiness was only
increased if, like Dolet, they were poor and unknown, to
whom the purse and the helping hand of Jean de Pins
could be useful.

library of Toulouse is fortunate in possessing an interleaved copy, with
many notes and corrections in the handwriting of the late representative
of the family, the Marquis de Pins et de Montbrun, who seems to have
prepared it for a new edition. Many of the notes are from the
archives of Montbrun, but they contain very little of interest. See also
Analeetabiblion, i. 243.

yo ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Jacques Hording was three years younger than Dolet,
having been born at Antwerp in 1511. Before coming to
Toulouse he studied at Louvain, where he acquired a
knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, which he after-
wards taught successively at Paris and at Carpentras. He
probably came to Toulouse attracted by its reputation as a
school of law. But the subject itself, or the mode in which
it was studied, seems to have disgusted him, and he soon
afterwards turned his attention to medicine, in which he
was to acquire a great reputation. From Toulouse he went
to Paris, and there running short of money, by the advice
and assistance of Sturm, whom he had known at Louvain,
he obtained a lectureship in the College of Lisieux, where
he remained two years. Then he went to Montpellier to
study medicine, and afterwards was appointed by Sadolet,
Principal of the College of Carpentras. During his stay
there he married Francesca, daughter of Ternio Nigroni
of Genoa. He soon acquired the esteem of the Cardinal,
and on going to Bologna in 1540, to complete his medical
studies, he was furnished with letters of recommendation
from Sadolet to Romulo Amaseo and other learned men.
He formally declared himself a Protestant in 1544. Later
in life he attained a considerable reputation as a professor
of medicine at Antwerp, Rostock, and Copenhagen, in which
latter city he died in 1560, holding the office of physician
to King Christian III.1 At Toulouse the two young men
soon formed a friendship, and Dolet had been eight or ten
months there and was already talked of as a rising scholar,
when he requested his friend to mention him to Jean de

1 See for Bording, Spithovius, Oratio de Vita et Morte J. Bordingi,
Witteburg, 1562; Melch. Adam, Vit<e Medicorum, Heidelberg, 1620;
Encyclopedic des sciences medicates (Biographie medicate), Paris, 1840.
Bording's stay at Toulouse is not mentioned by his biographers, and is
only known to us from his correspondence with Dolet.

iv TOULOUSE 71

Pins ; and as Bording had apparently informed him that the
Bishop would be sure to take it in good part, he at the
same time wrote to him a letter in that inflated style, full
of expressions, complicated constructions, and half sentences
culled from Cicero, in which the intention seems to be to
say as little (except compliments and apologies) in as many
words and in as pompous a style as possible, which the
Ciceronians of that day especially affected. Still it must be
admitted to be a not unsuccessful imitation of the class of
Cicero's letters in which style and diction seem to be more
thought of than substance. He tells the Bishop the great
admiration he has for him, how long he has wished to
make him acquainted with his sentiments, how earnestly he
longs to acquire his friendship. ' I only ask that you will
not be offended at me for expressing admiration of that
firmly -rooted and widespread reputation which when first
budding had Longolius as its witness and panegyrist. There
is nothing which I so earnestly wish as that you would be
to me what Bembo was to Longolius, the helper of my
studies, the defender and furtherer of that reputation which
I hope to acquire, but of which I am sensible I am not as
yet possessed.'

The Bishop lost no time in replying to this letter, and
at the same time sent a friendly message through Bording,
who in a letter to Dolet thus relates the success of his
mission : —

4 That which you lately asked of me, namely, that I
should salute Jean de Pins in your name and should pro-
cure his friendship for you, I took care to perform, but
in fact you yourself accomplished this more efficaciously
by your letter, which displayed so much talent, learning, and
elegance, that it obscured all my praises of you and rendered
them useless. However I did what I could, and shall
very gladly do as much again. You have acquired favour

72 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

with Jean de Pins, and have coupled with it a great reputa-
tion for learning. He both thinks and speaks very highly
of you, and is greatly pleased that your goodwill has been
secured for me, and you would hardly believe how greatly
he desires to see you. He says, " Oh, that I may hear his
sonorous declamation ! " So that whenever you come to
visit him you will be made welcome, and that great favour
and high estimation for learning which in your absence you
have acquired, when you are present you will not only
confirm, but if it be possible you will increase. Farewell.'

Dolet's letter was dated the ist of August (1532). The
Bishop replied the day following : —

'Although your letter was very gratifying as showing
your great regard for me, yet it was still more agreeable
to me because it seemed to be written by a man of great
learning, and because it recalled to my recollection two of
the most learned men of our age, Bembo and Longolius,
whose most pleasant friendship I myself enjoyed, and whom
I am always greatly delighted in having recalled to my
memory. There was no need for my affairs and occupations
to make you fear lest the interruption of your letter should
be troublesome or inopportune. Such is the regard and
affection I have for my friends, that for their sakes I willingly
postpone my serious occupations. Further, as to what you
say that you have been hindered by bashfulness from visiting
me, and so rather wrote a letter because a letter cannot
blush,1 you ought not to doubt, you who share the same
learned pursuits as several of my friends, men of learning,
that I should have the same esteem for you that I have for
them. I had indeed before heard something of Dolet which
tended to his praise, but it diminished rather than added to
the reality. From that time, however, I had a great desire
both to see you and to read something of your composition.
1 There is not a word of this in Dolet's letter as printed.

iv TOULOUSE 73

So that when I received your letter, from which (as one
recognises a lion from his claws) I recognised the acute-
ness of your understanding, the dignity of your style, the
force of your language, and your profound learning, I became
more and more eager to see you, for the reality far exceeded
my expectation. All which brings me to this, that if you
speedily come to see me you will be most welcome.
Farewell.' l

We can imagine Dolet's pleasure in receiving this letter
from such a man as Jean de Pins. He instantly wrote a
reply full of delight and gratitude, and proposing forthwith
to visit the Bishop. From this time a cordial friendship was
formed between them, which, unlike most of those of our
unfortunate hero, was only terminated by the death of Jean
de Pins five years later ; five years during which the good
offices of the Bishop never ceased, and were, it is pleasant
to know, received with constant gratitude by Dolet.

1 Q rat tones Dua in Tholosam, pp. 85, 148, 151.

CHAPTER V

JEAN DE CATURCE AND JEAN DE BOYSSONE

' Ceux qui se font persecutor pour ces vaines disputes de 1'ecole me
semblent peu sages ; ceux qui persecutent me paraissent des monstres.' —
VOLTAIRE.

'Not being overburdened with orthodoxy, that is to say, not being
seasoned with more of the salt of the spirit than was necessary to preserve
him from excommunication, confiscation, and philoparoptesism, i.e.
roasting by a slow fire for the love of God.' — PEACOCK.

HE University of Tou-
louse had been founded,
as has been said, as a
means of suppressing
heresy. The heads of
the University rivalled
the Councillors of the
Parliament and the
Capitouls of the city
in ostentatious orthodoxy,
and the slightest whisper
of heresy was immediately
silenced. The canon law
reigned supreme. Side
by side with it the civil law was also studied in the text-
books of Bartholus and Accursius, and to this was added a
theology and a philosophy of the strictest mediaeval type.

CH.V J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 75

The barbarism of Toulouse was a favourite theme of the
friends of letters ; while the orthodoxy which prevailed in
what had once been the capital and focus of the Albigensian
heresy, but where alone in France the Inquisition had been
afterwards established, was not only a source of satisfaction
to the opponents of the new learning, but a standing proof
of the benefits which the Holy Office had rendered to the
cause of religion, — benefits which, as they pointed out, would
be extended to the whole of France if only the powers of the
Inquisition might have the like extension. Yet though
the study of canons and decretals still prevailed at Toulouse
to the exclusion of the new learning, — though there, more
than in any University in Europe, the spirit of mediaevalism
was still in the ascendant, — suspicions of heresy were not
wanting among both professors and students. Even in the
University of Toulouse there were tares among the wheat.
Men of learning had come from Italy, and had endeavoured
to introduce some literary culture and some literary studies,
and to show that these were not necessarily hostile either to
law or theology. From the north, again, had come tidings
of the heresy of Luther, and the doctrines of the Reformers
had been welcomed in many quarters where the old leaven
of the Albigensian heresy had never been completely ex-
tinguished. The most eminent professors were suspected of
heresy, and of the friends and contemporaries of Dolet there,
some in after-life actually joined the Reformed Church, and
of the rest nearly all were suspected of a leaning towards the
new doctrines. Shortly before Dolet arrived at Toulouse,
Pierre Bunel, afterwards one of the first Latin scholars of
the time, and then a young man of singular promise, had
been banished from the city and University on the charge of
heresy. A learned Italian named Otho1 had shared the

1 Otho (probably the same person with Otho Bosio) is only known to
us from the reference to him in Dolet's second oration, and in his Com-

76 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

same fate, whilst, as we have just seen, the Bishop of Rieux
himself, the constant support of the cause of letters, did not
escape suspicion. Charges of heresy, indeed, began to be
rife. Any disregard of an established custom, any tincture
of literature, any affection for the new learning, was sufficient
to found an accusation upon, whilst the condemnation of the
alleged heretic was certain if it could be shown that he had
not taken off his hat to a sacred image, that he had not bent
the knee when the bell summoned the faithful to repeat the
Ave Maria, or that he had eaten a morsel of flesh on a day
of abstinence.1

But notwithstanding these efforts to check it, the
Lutheran heresy, as it was called, certainly began to spread
not only among the citizens and the poor descendants of
the Albigeois, but even among the students and the professors
of the University. Dolet's arrival was very shortly after
that of three Augustinian friars, disciples of Luther, who
in 1531 boldly preached the reformed doctrines at Toulouse.
A vigorous and searching inquiry was made by the Inquisi-
tion and the Parliament, and the result was that in the first
three months of 1532 a considerable number of suspected
Lutherans were arrested.

Jean de Caturce, a native of Limoux and a licentiate of
laws of the University of Toulouse,2 where, as it seems, he
either then or had formerly lectured on jurisprudence with
great success, and where he had achieved a considerable

mentaries, vol. i. col. 1157, he implies that his banishment was at the
same time as that of Bunel. The date of this latter event we do not
know, but it was certainly before the end of 1530 ; for in November in
that year we find him at Venice, and it would seem from his letters that
he had then been for some time in Italy.

1 Beza, Hist. Eccl. (Lille, 1841), vol. i. p. 7.

2 Hist, des Martyrs (Grand Martyrologe), Geneva, 1597, fol. 99 b.
The author speaks of him as 'licencie en Loix faisant profession du droit
en 1'Universite de Toulouse.'

v J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 77

reputation, had for some time been a student of the Holy
Scriptures. He had found there truths which were wholly
neglected by or wholly opposed to the existing state of
things, and having obtained a peace and comfort to which
he had before been a stranger, he was desirous of preaching
the Gospel to others that they might be the sharers of his
joy. On All Saints' Day 1531, he had addressed a few of
his fellow - townsmen at Limoux. His words touched the
hearts of his hearers, but the fact of the meeting and of
the address came to the ears of those in authority, and he
had hastily to leave Limoux, promising his disciples to return
at Christmas and again to deliver to them the Word of
life. No doubt the cause of his hasty departure from
Limoux would be made known to the officials of the
Inquisition at Toulouse, and he would at once become a
marked and suspected man, but he seems not to have been
immediately molested, but to have been suffered to lecture
for some months. On Twelfth Night, 1532 (le jour des
rois\ however, he was present at supper with some friends
at Toulouse, when it devolved upon him to give the
customary symbol of the feast. Instead of the usual formula
' The king drinks,' he gave * May Jesus Christ reign in our
hearts.' He further suggested that after supper each,
instead of the usual profane toasts, should repeat a passage
of Scripture ; and this was done. His arrest followed very
shortly, and the two principal charges against him were the
address at Limoux and his remarks after supper on Twelfth
Night. To be arrested for heresy at Toulouse was to be
condemned, and condemnation meant one of two things, a
public recantation or the stake. Jean de Caturce was a
brave man, but he was neither a fanatic nor weary of his
life. He expressed his willingness to be convinced (if that
could be possible) by books and learned men, and his
readiness to discuss the points on which he was alleged to

78 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

have erred. Yet the result of the discussion only confirmed
him in his heresy. His friends — or his enemies — made
one further attempt to save him from the flames. A full
and complete pardon was offered to him without any formal
abjuration or degradation, if only in the school of law
where he was accustomed to lecture he would publicly
declare that on three points he had erred.1

No wonder that he hesitated for a moment, and thought
that on such easy terms it would be best to escape, not
death only, but those frightful bodily tortures which the
Church thought fit to inflict on men, however virtuous, who
could not frame their lips to her shibboleth. But, as the
narrator of the tragedy tells us, the Lord strengthened him
in such wise that he could not be induced to accept any
form of retractation. There could only be one result. He
was ordered to be publicly degraded and then delivered
over to the secular arm, that is to say, to be burnt at the
stake. His sentence was carried into effect in the, month
of June I532.2 He was taken to the Place de St. Etienne,
and was there degraded from the tonsure and from his
University degree. This ceremony lasted three hours, and
then followed a sermon by the Inquisitor. He took his
text from the fourth chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy,
' The Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits
and doctrines of devils.' * Continue the words of the
Apostle,' cried Caturce ; and as the Jacobin remained silent,
he himself addressing the people said, ' St. Paul's next words
are, 'speaking lies in hypocrisy, forbidding to marry, and

1 I do not find it anywhere mentioned what these three points were.

2 According to La Faille and LeDuchat, the 23rd of June. D'Aldeguier,
Hist, de Toulouse, gives the date as June 1533. Twenty-one condemned
heretics accompanied Caturce to the place of execution, and there made
public abjuration of their errors. — Revue de Toulouse, June 1862, p. 463.

v J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 79

commanding to abstain from meat." After the sermon
Caturce was led to the Palace of Justice, and then, after
being formally handed over to the secular arm, he received
sentence of death. Then he was taken to the Place de
Salins and burnt alive. His mind never lost its firmness or
constancy. He died praising and glorifying God ; and
instead of the horrors of his death deterring others, the
piety and innocence of his life and the firmness and constancy
of his death produced much fruit, especially among the
students who had witnessed his martyrdom.1 That Dolet
was present at this tragedy he lets us know by the imprudent
reference he makes to it in his second oration. That his
sympathies were all with the martyr and his hatred bitter
against the persecutors is what we should imagine, and what
he clearly lets us see. Though himself untouched by the
doctrine of the Reformers, and possessed of a mind of that
nature to which dogmatic distinctions relating to the unseen
and unknown are absolutely indifferent and incomprehensible,
he regretted the obstinacy in what was to him mere matter
of words and names without any substantial reality, which
deprived the University of one of its brightest ornaments,
and he lamented that Jean de Caturce had not followed the
more prudent example of Jean de Boyssone. Though the
name of Caturce, like that of Boyssone, is almost forgotten,
yet the evangelical martyr no less than the yielding professor
has found a niche in the pages of Rabelais, who has not

1 Hist, des Martyrs, 99 b ; Beza, Hist. Eccl. vol. i. pp. 7 and 8.
I have omitted the details of the language of Caturce at his execution
given by the martyrologist, as it seems hardly probable that such freedom
of speech would have been allowed to him. La Faille does not believe
that he used this language, but, though a good Catholic, allows that
he was a man of learning and virtue, and that he suffered death with
constancy and firmness. A contemporary, Bursault, in his journal,
formerly preserved among the archives of Toulouse, expressly notices
this. La Faille, Hist, de Toulouse.

8o ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

hesitated to express his abhorrence at the persecuting flames
in which Jean de Caturce was consumed, and which were
lighted as he was composing the first book of his Pantagruel.
' From thence Pantagruel came to Toulouse, where he
learned to dance very well and to play with the two-handed
sword, as the fashion of the scholars of the said University
is. But he stayed not long there when he saw that they
stuck not to burn their regents alive like red herrings, saying,
Now God forbid that I should die this death, for I am by
nature dry enough already without being heated any further.' l

It is probable that the evidence taken on the trial of Jean
de Caturce let the Inquisition and the Parliament know that
heresy was more rife at Toulouse than had been previously
supposed, and it was accordingly determined that a blow
should be struck of such a nature and with such force as
would completely and for ever crush the nascent Lutheranism.
On the last day of March (1532) the Parliament ordered the
arrest of every person in Toulouse suspected of heresy. The
long list included men of all classes and stations — advocates,
procureurs, ecclesiastics of all sorts, monks, friars, and cures.
Among them was Mathieu Pac, ' a man,' says Dolet in his
second oration, ' of the greatest ability and integrity, to whose
eminent qualities I cannot here do justice. He was most
unjustly and oppressively accused of Lutheranism.' Of those
whose arrest was ordered, thirty-two (including Pac) saved
themselves by flight, and, not appearing when summoned,
were declared contumacious. But amongst those who were
arrested was the most learned man and the ablest and most
popular professor of the University, soon to become the most
intimate friend of Etienne Dolet, Jean de Boyssone.

The name of Jean de Boyssone,2 Doctor Regent and Pro-

1 Book ii. c. 5.

2 I have adopted the spelling Boyssone on the authority of the MSS.
of his letters and poems at Toulouse. In the Latin letters and poems,

v J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 81

fessor of Law in the University of Toulouse, and afterwards
Councillor of the Parliament of Chambery, the friend of
Rabelais, of Dolet, of Bunel, and one of the foremost names
in the revival of literature in the south of France, has slipped
out of the pages of history. Of the contemporary writers
who mention him, and who are loud in his praises, the greater
part, such as Voulte, Dolet, and Sussanneau, have ceased to
be read ; yet there remains one from whom thousands of
readers have at least learned his name. It was to Toulouse
to study under the very learned and virtuous Doctor Boyssone
that Epistemon, as he told Pantagruel, had sent his son.
' Tell me,' replied Pantagruel, ' can I do anything to promote
the dignity of Seigneur Boyssone, whom I love and respect
for one of the ablest and most sufficient in his way that any-
where are extant ? ' l Yet the name of Jean de Boyssone will
be sought unsuccessfully in the great biographical collections
for which France is famous. He is mentioned neither by
Niceron nor by Goujet, neither by Moreri nor by Bayle.
Neither La Croix du Maine nor Du Verdier have thought
him worthy of notice, and the Biographies Universelle and
Generate equally ignore him. He was a man of rare ability
and love of letters, a poet, a jurist, and a scholar, but a some-
what timid sensitiveness of disposition certainly detracted

however, he is not always so called, but sometimes Boyssoneus, Boysonnus,
or Joannes a Boyssonne. De Thou calls him Boesonnus. M. Guibal
(Revue de Toulouse, Juillet, 1864, p. II) considers that Boysson answers
more exactly than any other spelling to the several Latin varieties. In
an epigram addressed to Sceve he thus plays upon his own name : —

Dumus enim a vulgo, patrio sermone vocatur

Boyssonnus spinis arbor acuta nimis.

Est igitur gentile, vides mihi nomen acutum.

On this M. Guibal remarks, 'Le buisson dans notre patois toulousain est
appele Bouisson. Traduisons, nous avons Bouysson, Buysson, Boysson.'
In the list of Capitouls given by Du Mege (Hist, des Instit. de Toulouse]
the name is variously spelled Boychon, Bouisson, Bouysson, and Boysson.
1 Book iii. c. xxix.

82 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

from his other eminent qualities, and seems to have deterred
him from printing anything during his life, and at the same
time prevented him from acquiring that influence which his
abilities would have led us to expect. His Commentaries on
a chapter of Ulpian have probably perished, but the public
library of Toulouse contains three precious manuscript
volumes of his composition, of the highest interest and im-
portance not only for his own life, but for the literary history
of the south of France ; and it is certainly strange how little
use has hitherto been made of them, and by how few writers
they have been consulted. A volume of Latin letters written
to and from Boyssone, commencing about 1532, and extend-
ing over more than the twenty years following, contains a
portion of his correspondence with Dolet, Alciat, Rabelais,
Guillaume Bigot, Guillaume Sceve, Arnoul du Ferrier, and
many others more or less distinguished in literature. A
volume of Latin poems in five books, hendecasyllables,
elegiacs, epistles, iambics, and odes, many of them full of
biographical details, and a volume of French poems contain-
ing two hundred and fifty-four dixains^ are of little less value
than the letters for the literary history of the period, whatever
may be our opinion of the merits of the poetry.1

1 The volume of letters is a small folio containing two hundred and
eighty-two pages (erroneously numbered two hundred and ninety-two), or
cxxxix folios (the pagination goes by mistake from 169 to 180). The
first half is written in an excellent round hand of about the middle of the
sixteenth century. The remaining half is in a different hand, much less
legible, though varying in this respect towards the end. A considerable
number of the letters in the latter half seem to have been copied hurriedly,
and are consequently difficult to decipher. The book is entitled, Joannis
de Boyssone antecessoris Tolas ani et aliorum epistokf mutute.

The Latin poems are contained in a small quarto volume of paper,
written in an excellent, legible round-hand, the same as the first half of
the volume of epistles. They are divided into five books ; the first con-
taining the hendecasyllables, the second the elegiacs, the third the epistles,
the fourth the iambics, and the fifth the odes. Into the same volume a

v J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 83

Sprung from a family distinguished in the annals of
Toulouse, where from 1460 downwards we find several of

later hand has copied Dolet's odes to Boyssone, to Guillaume Sceve, and
that against Dampmartin, also four odes of Voulte, and a poem which
seems to be by Augier Ferrier.

The French poems are very elaborately written on parchment in
large Gothic letters. They are divided into three centuries or books,
each apparently intended to contain a hundred dixains, each dixain
occupying one page. The first is headed ' La premiere centurie des dixains
de Maistre Jehan de Boyssone, Docteur Regent a Tholose? Each dixain was
intended to have an ornamental initial letter and a rubricated title. The
rubricator, however, had only reached the seventeenth dixain of the first
century. The rest of the first century have no titles or initial letters,
while of the second century the titles are only given up to the sixty-seventh
dixain, and in the third book only up to the seventh dixain ; moreover,
the third book only contains fifty-four dixains, though the forty-six ruled
leaves which follow show that it was intended to be completed up to one
hundred.

I cannot help thinking that these volumes were prepared under the
superintendence of Boyssone himself for the purpose of being given to
the press. To the Latin poems are occasionally added verbal corrections,
marginal notes, and suggested alterations of words, in another but con-
temporary hand, which may not improbably be that of Jean de Boyssone
himself. Certainly the notes imply that they are written by the author
of the poems. Thus in the margin of the ode against Drusac, on page
247, is written, ' Ctetera epigrammata in contumelia Drusaei delenda sunt,
hoc retinendum?

Except for the purpose of quoting the references to Rabelais and
Marot, two writers alone, so far as I know, have made use of these manu-
scripts ; M. du M£ge, in a short Life of Boyssone contained in the Bio-
graphie Toulousaine and in his Histoire des Institutions de Toulouse, and M.
G. Guibal in a Latin thesis read before the Faculty of Literature at Paris,
entitled De Joannis Boyssonnei vita seu de litterarum in Gallia Meridiana
restitutione (Toulouse, 1863), and in two articles which he subsequently
wrote for the Revue de Toulouse, entitled ' Jean de Boysson, ou la Renais-
sance a Toulouse ' (Revue de Toulouse, tome 20, July and August 1864).

These two articles are an amplification of the thesis, and contain a
biography of Jean de Boyssone, and notices of many of his contemporaries
and friends, principally based upon these manuscript collections, the
interest of which, however, they by no means exhaust.

M. Boulmier appears to have been ignorant of these manuscripts,

84 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the name in the list of Capitouls, he was probably born about
the beginning of the sixteenth century.1 An uncle filled one
of the chairs of Jurisprudence in the University, and from an
early age his family seem to have devoted him to the study
of the law, in the hope, which was afterwards accomplished,
of seeing him succeed to the chair of his relation, and which
Boyssone himself calls Avita Cathedra. Of his life before
the charge of heresy was made against him in I532,2 all that
we know is that he had pursued his studies with great credit,
that he had already achieved a high reputation in the
University as a jurist, and was either a licentiate or Doctor
of Laws who lectured with success and ability, endeavouring,
as Alciat was doing elsewhere, to introduce a more scientific
spirit into the study of jurisprudence, to free it from the
barbarous trammels of scholasticism, and to return to the
study of the Pandects themselves, instead of being confined
to the barbarous and arbitrary commentators and epitomists
of the Middle Ages.

which are, nevertheless, of the greatest importance for the life of Dolet.
The volume of letters contain six from Dolet to Boyssone, and four from
Boyssone to Dolet, in addition to the correspondence which Dolet had
printed in the volume of the Orations.

As Councillor of the Parliament of Chambery Boyssone is frequently
mentioned by de Thou, while his persecution of which I speak in the
text is noticed by La Faille and by the other historians of Toulouse and
Languedoc.

1 M. Guibal judges from his correspondence that he was a little older
than Arnoul du Ferrier, who was born in 1508.

2 Herr Tollin, in the article before quoted on student life at Toulouse
in the sixteenth century (Riehl's Taschenbuch, 1874), confuses him with
Jean Boysonne, Seigneur de Beauteville, who was three times elected
Capitoul, namely in 1515, 1519, and 1527, and whom Tollin refers to
apparently on the authority of the letters of Servetus (?) as a leading
magistrate at the time when Servetus was a student there. The Seigneur
de Beauteville was no doubt a near relation of the professor, as also
would be Hugues Bouysson, Seigneur de Mirabel, five times Capitoul
(the last time in 1517).

v J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 85

Primus in Europa civilia jura ktine
Boyssonnus docuit potuitque inducere morem
Miscendi sacras leges sophiamque perennem.1

Alciat wished he could have had him as a colleague at Pavia
to aid in repelling the attacks of his barbarous and ignorant
opponents. * Had I only you with me,' he writes, ' I should
easily have overcome all my adversaries.'

Jean de Boyssone had already had as a pupil Antoine
de Castelnau, afterwards Bishop of Tarbes. He had either
been the fellow-student or, as seems probable, the tutor of
Michael de 1'Hopital, at this time a professor of law at
Padua, afterwards to attain deserved eminence as Chancellor
of France. His wealth and the distinguished position of his
family, at this time lords of Mirabel, Beauteville, and
Montmaur,2 would naturally add to his influence and to the
consideration in which he was held by his fellow-citizens,
while his benevolence to the poor, his readiness to aid with
his purse needy and deserving scholars, would equally con-
tribute to his popularity. He had been the friend and
patron of Bunel's youth, and when that distinguished scholar
fell under the suspicion of heresy, it was Jean de Boyssone
who furnished him with the means for making the journey
to Italy and for his maintenance there.3 At the moment
when he himself was attacked on the same charge he was the
one leading member of the University to whom the friends
of learning looked to sustain its cause.

It was therefore specially important that he should be
struck down. That he sympathised with the Reformers so
far as they were promoters of letters is clear ; that he was a
constant reader of the New Testament, and especially of the
Epistles of St. Paul, and an ardent admirer and student of

1 Noguier, Histoire Toulousaine.

2 Du Mege, Hist, des Institutions de Toulouse, vol. ii. pp. 210, 217, 244.

3 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. no.

86 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

St. Augustine, we see from his letters ; and these facts, as
M. Guibal justly remarks, 'seem to imply in his religious
faith a tendency to approach the Lutheran or Calvinistic
dogma of justification by faith.' But he was essentially a
jurist and a man of letters, and he is careful throughout his
letters and poems to express no opinion upon any of the
religious questions which were then agitated. He was by
nature timid and prudent, and indisposed to express even to
his most intimate friends any opinions on dangerous or
controversial subjects. But at this time at Toulouse to be a
friend of letters was to be a heretic. He tells us himself
that it was only his love of letters and his admiration for
and intimacy with literary men that gave rise to the charge
of heresy,1 and Dolet confirms this in his second oration.2
' What,' he cries, ' was the cause of the calamity which befel
Jean de Boyssone, except his learning and the greatness of
his fortune? I say positively, not as a mere casual rumour,
but what I have frequently heard from persons of the
greatest probity, and what from my personal intimacy with
him I know to be true, that the cause of his persecution was
nothing but his reputation for learning and his great wealth.
Innocent of the slightest offence against religion, the in-
formers plotted against him in order to prey upon his for-
tune ; and were aided by some who hated him for that high
reputation which he enjoyed and which they were themselves
too stupid or too indolent to acquire, and by others to
whose interests he had devoted himself, but who had assumed
the guise of friendship only to betray their benefactor.'

Shortly after the arrest of Jean de Caturce, and probably
on the last day of March 1532, Boyssone was seized and
thrown into prison. The heretical doctrines he was charged
with holding were ten in number. They included nearly all
the heresies of Luther. The first was that nothing ought to

1 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. 26. 2 Orat. Du<e in Thol. p. 58.

v J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 87

be required to be held as a matter of faith but what was con-
tained in Holy Scripture. The tenth was that we are not
justified by good works but solely by faith in Jesus Christ.
He was tried and convicted by the Official and the Grand
Vicar of the Archbishop of Toulouse, and condemned to
make a formal abjuration of these ten errors or to share the
fate of Caturce.

Jean de Boyssone was not of the stuff of which martyrs
are made. He was in fact a humanist, a man of letters, and
not a theologian ; and while there can be no doubt that his
sympathies were with the Reformers, whose success, so far as
it was not incompatible with the progress of literature, he
would have gladly seen, he was not disposed to follow
Caturce to the stake. He was willing to abjure the errors
he was alleged to hold. A heavy fine was inflicted upon
him, and his house and property were confiscated. But the
Inquisition was not satisfied even with this heavy punish-
ment. The Church could not afford to spare a man of his
reputation, of his learning, the great hope of literature in
the University, any humiliation which it was in her power
to inflict. His reputation as a jurist was much greater than
that of Jean de Caturce, and while the latter was offered
pardon on the easy terms of merely recanting in a lecture in
the School of Law, nothing less than the public penitence
and abjuration of Jean de Boyssone would satisfy his perse-
cutors. Nor indeed did this satisfy them ; a great number
of the most bigoted Catholics complained of the excessive
indulgence shown to him.1 It was determined to surround
his abjuration with all the pomp and ceremony possible. A
scaffold was erected before the church of Saint Etienne. All
the ecclesiastical and civil functionaries were present. The
consuls attended in their official robes. Kneeling on the
scaffold, the most distinguished professor of the University
1 D'Aldeguier, Hist, de Toulouse, 356.

88 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

read in a loud voice and then signed the abjuration of the
ten errors of which he had been convicted, then a long and
tedious sermon pointing out his crimes was addressed to him
and to the assembled multitude by the Inquisitor, after which
he was taken to the cathedral and formally absolved by the
Grand Vicar.1

Though the bigots complained of the excessive indul-
gence shown to Boyssone, the voice of the crowd was in his
favour. La Faille, who gives a long account of the affair,
tells us that many of the witnesses of his humiliation could
not contain their emotion. Many tears were shed when the
professor, by repute the most learned in the University, but
whose goodness of heart and liberality to the poor and to all
who were in trouble was well known to his fellow-citizens,
was publicly made to undergo so bitter a humiliation.

Whether banishment was a part of Boyssone's sentence,
or whether he thought it expedient to retire for some time
from Toulouse, we do not know. Certain it is that im-
mediately after his abjuration he left the city and was absent
for about a year, spending the time in visiting Italy, which
at that time, more liberal than France, opened to him as
well as to others a generous asylum. He travelled first to
Padua, still, as in the time when Dolet was a student, the
place in all Europe where the greatest intellectual freedom
was found, and where the most eminent humanists were
gathered together. There he found several of his fellow-
citizens either as students or teachers. Arnoul du Ferrier,
with whom he continued for the whole of his life on terms
of the greatest intimacy, and who was afterwards to become
one of the most celebrated French jurists of his time, was
pursuing at Padua the studies which he had commenced at
Toulouse, and which were afterwards to bear such ample
fruit. There too was Paul Daffis, also a Tolosan, then and

1 La Faille, Hist, de Toulouse; Biographie Toulousaine, art. 'Boyssone.'

v J. DE CATURCE AND J. DE BOYSSONE 89

afterwards prepared to carry on the Ciceronian tradition
which Longolius and Simon Villanovanus had implanted at
Padua. There also he made the acquaintance of Lazarus
Buonamicus, the friend of Pole, but who, unlike the future
cardinal, had not deserted the cause of literature for that of
theology. At Venice he formed a friendship with Battista
Egnazio, the former teacher of Dolet, and with another old
acquaintance of the latter, Giulio Camillo, towards whom,
for what cause we know not, whether because he really saw
through the visionary charlatan, or from some private
grudge, Dolet entertained the most violent dislike. More
fortunate than Dolet, Boyssone's travels were not confined
to the north of Italy. He was able to visit the capital of
Christendom ; but instead of feeling enthusiasm for the
remains and recollections of antiquity, or for the artistic and
literary culture which surrounded him, he, like Luther, was
only shocked at the vice, impiety, and luxury displayed by
the Pope, the cardinals, and the bishops, and which from
them permeated all classes.

He would seem to have returned to Toulouse in the
spring of the year 1533.

At what time Dolet's acquaintance with Jean de Boyssone
commenced we do not know, but there is little doubt that it
would be very soon after the former came to the University ;
and although he does not precisely tell us the fact, there can
further be little doubt that he was a witness of the humiliat-
ing ceremony in which Boyssone had to play the principal
part. Immediately upon the latter's return from Italy we
find Dolet on terms of the greatest intimacy with him. For
some years a close correspondence took place between them,
and the violence of Dolet found a counsellor of invariable
moderation and good sense in Boyssone, and not only a
counsellor, but a friend who desired to serve him, and did
serve him in most important emergencies.

CHAPTER VI

THE FLORAL GAMES

Je prends pour les grands dieux ces doctes senateurs
Et cest autre troupeau, qui des poetes vainqueurs
L'estude et le savoir si sainctement guerdonne
Pour ce sacre parquet avec ses quatre fleurs,
Le jardin fleurissant aux bords de la Garonne.

FRANCOIS DE CLARI.

OOKING back after the
lapse of centuries on
the two or three leading
events of any period,
they stand out before
us with a prominence
out of all proportion to
their real importance,
and it is not without an
effort that we can realise
the fact that they con-
stituted in truth but an
insignificant part of the
history of the period.
In the midst of wars, persecutions, religious and political
agitations and revolutions, the healthy business of life goes
on as usual. An enormous majority of the people are wholly

CHAP, vi THE FLORAL GAMES 91

unaffected by them, and even of the minority who are so
affected, it is but very few whose happiness they either make
or mar. Toulouse has been fortunate in her historians. La
Faille spared no pains in collecting and digesting with
impartiality and good sense all that he found worthy of
note relating to his native city, while in the great History
of Languedoc of the learned Benedictine Dom Joseph Vais-
sette, we have a work not only of local but of general
interest, judicious, able, and impartial, excellent both in
style and matter, and which justly placed its author in
the foremost ranks of French historians. Nor have
worthy successors been wanting to the syndic of Tou-
louse and the brother of St. Maur, and in the nineteenth
century Toulouse has produced men of learning and
ability, who have supplemented, continued, and corrected
the labours of their predecessors of the seventeenth and
eighteenth.

The persecution of heretics, the retractation and punish-
ment of Boyssone, and the martyrdom of Caturce, almost
necessarily appear in the pages of the historians to constitute
the entire history of Toulouse during the first half of the
year 1532, yet between the arrest of the one and the death
of the other occurred the floral games — the great annual
festival of the city ; and we have no reason to suppose that
the sombre events by which this year they were immediately
preceded and followed in any way diminished either the
enthusiasm of the Tolosans, the number of the competitors,
or the complacency of' the chancellor, judges, and doctors of
the college of the gaie science? Unfortunately the records
of the college for the fifteen years extending from 1519 to
1535 are missing, and the only fact we can ascertain as to
the games in 1532 or 1533 is that in one of them Etienne
Dolet was a candidate for the violet, the eglantine, or the
marigold.

92 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

It was in I3231 that seven troubadours, citizens of
Toulouse, constituted themselves into the ' tres gaie com-
pagnie des troubadours,' or the college ' du gai scavoir,' or
' de la gaie science.' Accustomed to meet in the Faubourg
des Augustins, in the month of November 1323 they
addressed a letter in verse to all troubadours, inviting them
to assemble on the ist of May 1324, to read or recite their
poems, offering at the same time a golden violet to him who
should best sing the praises of God, the Virgin, or the Saints.
A numerous company responded to this invitation. The
first day was devoted to the recitation of their compositions
by the contending poets, the second was occupied by the
examination of the verses by the seven troubadours who had
instituted the festival, assisted by two of the Capitouls, and
on the third the prize of the golden violet was publicly
awarded to Arnaud Vidal of Castelnaudari for the poem
which he had recited in honour of the Blessed Virgin. The
year following a more formal character was given to the
games by the appointment of a chancellor, and soon after-
wards two other prizes were added, namely, a silver marigold
for the best ballata, and a silver eglantine for the best sirvente
or pastourelle. Henceforth the floral games were among the
principal festivals, if not the chief of all, of Toulouse and
the whole of Languedoc, and their fame extended, not only
through the south of France, but into Aragon and Catalonia,

1 The foundation and early history of the Academy of the gay science
and the floral games is enveloped in much doubt and confusion. The
account given in the text seems to me the most probable. Some writers
have endeavoured to make the games mount to a period of fabulous
antiquity, and to have come down direct from the times of Roman
Aquitaine, whilst others treat Clemence Isaure as their founder in the
latter half of the fifteenth century. The Academy or College of the
'gai scavoir' must not be confounded, as some writers have done, with
the floral games. It is not improbable that the former may have existed
for some time before the institution of the latter.

vi THE FLORAL GAMES 93

where imitations of them were soon after established. In
1356 Guillaume Moliniar, for many years chancellor, with
the sanction of the seven mainteneurs, gave to the world the
laws and flowers of the gay science,1 a work which had
occupied him for eight years, and which, besides being an
elaborate system of laws and rules for the games, for the
award of prizes, and for the degrees of bachelor and doctor,
is also a general treatise on poetry and rhetoric, and one of
the most important monuments of the langue d'oc and its
poetry. A century and a half passed, the games and the
Academy had fallen from their original importance, when
they were revived, as their historians relate, by her whose
name has ever since been associated with them, sometimes as
their founder, sometimes as their restorer, Dame Clemence
Isaure. Not only were the games restored to their pristine
dignity, but a greatly increased importance was conferred
upon them by the wealth which she gave to the College, and
the additional and valuable prizes which she founded. For
three centuries and a half the praises of Clemence Isaure
have been celebrated at the floral games of Toulouse. An
oration in her honour has certainly, ever since 1525, formed
part of the ceremonial ; and most of those who have con-
tended for the violet, the marigold, and the eglantine, have
devoted at least one of their compositions in Latin, French,
or Romance to the patroness and benefactress of the festival.
Jean de Boyssone wrote her epitaph, one of Etienne Dolet's
happiest compositions was in her honour, and among the
three hundred and forty persons who have delivered orations
in her praise are seventy-seven names of men who have
achieved more or less eminence. Yet the Sappho of
Toulouse, herself a distinguished poet, who is said to have
endowed the College of the gay science with lands and wealth,
which it still enjoys, and to have established rules which are

1 Las leys a" amors and Flors del gay saber.

94 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

still in force, to whom the grateful city erected a statue
which still receives the respectful homage of all strangers,
has in this later and critical age had her very existence called
in doubt.

I shall not attempt to discuss this vexed question, yet
the researches of the most recent and most learned writers
certainly confirm the doubts, and prove at least that the
verses to Dame Clemence which were formerly adduced as
clear proofs of her existence were really addressed to the
Blessed Virgin.1

Unfortunately for our history, as I have before said, a
lacuna exists in the register of the floral games from 1519
to 1535, a period which includes the whole of Dolet's
residence at Toulouse, in which he, and no doubt many
of his friends, celebrated the praises of the belle Clemence.
Yet of the scanty notices we find during this period several
are connected with the names of Boyssone and Dolet.
In 1528 Antoine de Vinhalibus pronounced the eloge called
the 'sermon de Dame Clemence.' In 1529, and again in
1535, Marie Gascons delivered the Latin oration with which
the games opened. Two dixains of Boyssone, addressed to
Poldo de Albenas, show us that about this time, and probably
in 1528, the venerated founder of the Reformed Church at
Nimes obtained, though absent, the prize of the violet, and
acquired the friendship of Boyssone, whose expressions

1 So early as 1626, Catel, in the Memoires sur Thistoire de Languedoc,
which he left unfinished at his death in that year, had suggested doubts as
to the existence of Dame Clemence Isaure. Those who may desire to
see what has been said on the subject may refer to J. B. Noulet, De
Dame Clemence Isaure substitute a Notre Dame la Vierge Marie comme
patronesse des Jeux Litteraires de Toulouse (Toulouse, 1852) ; also his
Pr'etendue Ple'iade Toulousaine (Toulouse, 1853); Biog. Toulousaine, art.
'Clemence Isaure.' See also The Atkenteum for April 2 and 23, 1898.
The touching ballad of Florian is the mere invention of the author, based
neither upon history nor tradition.

vi THE FLORAL GAMES 95

would lead to the supposition that the Professor of Law
was himself one of the judges.1 That Boyssone himself
contended at the floral games is certain from the French and
Latin verses in honour of Dame Clemence which we find
among his poems, and it seems probable from the language
he uses elsewhere that he had gained a prize.2 The dixains
with which his French poems commence, addressed ' A
notre seigneur Jesus Christ la Glorieuse vierge Marie et aux
saints du Paradis,' would seem to be some of those he
then composed. It was usual, if not absolutely necessary,
that each competitor should furnish at least one poem of
a religious character, and in general the religious was the
prevailing element. It is, however, the games of 1532 or
1533 that especially interest us. In one of these years
Etienne Dolet was a competitor, and submitted ten Latin
poems to the judges.3 The first is addressed to the
Muses ; 4 the second to Phoebus, imploring his help in
the contest ; the third celebrates the praises of the judges,
the fourth those of Clemence Isaure,5 and the fifth those
of the ladies of Toulouse.6 Then come the praises of

1 Du Mege, Hist, des Institutions de Toulouse, vol. iv. p. 335.

2 M. Boulmier, who, however, cites no authority, says that it was in
1530 that Boyssone celebrated the institution of the belle Isaure. Vie de
Dolet, 62.

8 These ten poems all appear in the volume containing the Orations,
Epistles, and Odes printed in 1534, and again in the volume of poems
printed in 1538, in which they are inserted in consecutive order in the
Third Book. In the volume of the Orations seven only are given con-
secutively, though in a different order, and of these, five only with the
heading that they were recited at the contest. Three (that addressed to
the Muses and those which celebrated the praises of Paris and of Dame
Clemence) are in different parts of the book, and have no indication that
they had any connection with the games.

4 'Ad musas ; quo carmine usus est Tholosas in publico literario
certamine quum illic versu contenderet.'

5 'De muliere quadam quas ludos literarios Tholosae constituit.'

6 'Ad puellas Tholosae quod in eodem certamine recitatum est.'

96 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Paris ; an invocation of the Muse, recited on the second
day ; two odes in honour of the Virgin ; and, finally, one
addressed to the Muses, ' which was the last poem recited
by Dolet in the contest.'

Very little modern Latin verse will bear translation.
Much of the best of it, even when characterised by elegance
of diction, is wanting in originality of ideas, and sometimes
in ideas altogether. Some of those of Dolet are neither
incorrect nor inelegant, but they are filled principally with
the usual classical commonplaces which go to make up for
dearth of ideas — though indeed in addresses to the Muses,
Phoebus, and to the judges, it would be difficult to say
anything original, or anything in itself worth remembering
or even saying. Dolet's verses are not more empty or
worthless than most of those which, whether at Toulouse or
elsewhere, have been deemed worthy of prizes ; and if there
were others as good or better than these, Latin verse-writing
was certainly cultivated at Toulouse with much more success
than we should otherwise be disposed to think. Whether
they gained the prize we have no certain information, but I
agree with Maittaire and Boulmier that the strong probability
is that they did not. Modesty or self-depreciation was not
a characteristic of our hero, and there can be little doubt
that, had he been successful, he would not have failed to
inform us of his triumph, and would not have described his
poems merely as having been recited at the contest.1 Yet
from what we know of Toulouse at this time and of those
who were likely to be competitors, it is hardly probable that
any Latin verses superior or even nearly equal to those of
Dolet would be recited ; and if by the favour or ignorance
of the judges inferior verses carried off the prize, if Drusac,

1 * Vainqueur, il n'eut pas manque de nous apprendre son triomphe
car je dois convenir que la modestie etait son moindre defaut.' — Boul-
mier, 68.

vi THE FLORAL GAMES 97

the Lieutenant of the Seneschalty, or the old pedant Maurus
was the successful competitor, this would add to the bitterness
of Dolet against Toulouse, and would sharpen the darts of
indignation which in his Orations he was shortly to hurl
against the barbarians of the city. Two epigrams of Voulte l
let us see that in his opinion the prizes at the floral games
were not always accorded to the most deserving candidates,
and that on the occasion to which he particularly referred
the real victor was not the one who was allowed the prize ;
and Maittaire2 suggests with much probability that these
epigrams refer to the ill-success of Dolet.

It is certain that at this time the long quarrels between
the municipal body of Toulouse and the members of the
College of the ' gaie science ' had commenced, and that
prior to 1532 the Capitouls had obtained the privilege of
being joined with the mainteneurs of the College as judges
of the poems and awarders of the prizes. It is not im-
probable that it was on the occasion of the ill-success of
Dolet and the unfairness of the judges that Boyssone com-
posed his biting epigram against ' Les capitouls marchands
qui jugent des fleurs a Tolose?

1 Vulteii Epigrammatum libri ;'«., Lugd. 1537, p. 164 : —

De Ludis Tbolosanis.
Lege sub hac moriens ludos dementia fecit,

Ut tandem partas victor haberet opes.
At Clementia, nunc facta inclementia, quaere ?

De victore suo, qui superatur ovat.

Ad Clementiam, qu>e Tholosif ludot literarios instituit.
O Clementia te quaenam dementia coepit,
Heredem ingratam constituisse domum?
Recta fuit forsan, sed non tua facta voluntas
Munera ni demens haec tua nullus habet
Ut quondam victa est caeco sub judice Pallas,
Sic minor est ludis docta Minerva tuis.

2 Ann. iii. 73.

H

CHAPTER VII

THE ORATOR

'Nuper ventosa et isthaec enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia com-
migravit, animosque juvenum ad magna surgentes, veluti pestilenti quodam
sidere afflavit.' — PETRONIUS.

HE students of the Uni-
versity of Toulouse at
this time appear to have
been no less turbulent and
to have given no less
trouble to the authorities
than those of other Uni-
versities both before and
since. If we are to be-
lieve Rabelais, the use of
the two-handed sword was
one of the principal things
the scholars of Toulouse
learned. There, as else-
where, the students of the different nations formed societies,
which though laudable enough in their objects, naturally
produced disturbances between the different ' nations ' ; and
we cannot wonder that these associations were not viewed
with favour by the Parliament or the Capitouls. The French
students — i.e. those from France of the Loire as distinguished
from the Aquitains or Gascons — were the first to form them-

CHAP, vii THE ORATOR 99

selves into a society, and were soon followed by the Aquitains
or Gascons, and later by the Spaniards and the Germans.
Once formed, each chose a patron saint and a day on which
to celebrate his fete. In other respects they seem to have
imitated what they conceived to be the usages of classical
antiquity. At the head of each society was an imperator,
who convoked and presided over the assembly, and to whom
the protection of the members from all injuries was specially
intrusted. The Society assembled in ' comitiis centuriatis,'
and the pecuniary contributions or subscriptions were
collected and managed by quaestors elected by the suffrages
of the members. For the day of the fete the most eloquent
of the body was chosen orator, whose especial duty it was
to deliver a funeral oration over the recently deceased
members, but who also, as it would seem, addressed his
audience on the events of the preceding year, so far as they
affected the Society or the University.1 We can readily
understand how the mutual jealousy of the different nations
would be fomented by these orations, and how they would
lead to actual quarrels and fights. There seems to have
been a standing feud between the French and the Aquitains,
the two nations who naturally constituted the majority of the
students, and the disorders arising from this feud had induced
the Parliament of Toulouse to issue an edict censuring and
probably placing restrictions on these associations.2

It was apparently in the course of 1533, that this edict

1 The custom for the students of each nation to choose an orator for
the year was not confined to Toulouse, but was common to most
Universities. Thus in 1516 Ulric von Hutten was chosen orator by the
students of the German nation at Bologna. He seems to have thought
he had spoken with moderation, but the podesta was of a different
opinion, and required him forthwith to leave Bologna. Strauss, Life of
Hutten.

2 ' Facta a senatu in omnes generatim sodalitates praejudicia.' Simon
Finet, In Utramque Doleti Orationem Argumentum, prefixed to the

ioo ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

was issued, and, as was to be expected, it caused great
indignation among the students, and especially among the
French. If, as some writers tell us, it absolutely forbade the
existence of the Societies, it was distinctly disobeyed by the
French, who, not content with protesting against it, con-
tinued to observe, as before, all their rules and customs,
and selected as their orator a student who, by his abilities
and his scholarship, was well fitted to do credit to his nation
as its representative, but whose irascible temper, violence,
and utter want of discretion were never more conspicuous
thanron this occasion.

Etienne Dolet was the unanimous choice of the French
students, and on the 9th of October I533,1 he pronounced
the harangue which, as M. Boulmier justly remarks, laid
the first faggot of the terrible pile on which thirteen years
later he was to be consumed. The oration, at least in the
form in which, after being revised and corrected, it was
published by Dolet two years later, presents little that is
worthy of our attention. It is full of vigour and vivacity,
written in sonorous and well-rounded Ciceronian sentences,

Orationes. But I do not gather from them as is stated by Nee de la
Rochelle (who is here as elsewhere followed by Boulmier), that the
Parliament had actually at this time forbidden the existence of the
associations. Certainly the French association continued to exist, and
that publicly ; and the fact of Dolet being chosen its orator without any
disapproval of the authorities implies that the Societies had only been
censured and their license restrained, and not that they had been
absolutely forbidden. But after the delivery of Dolet's second Oration
the associations were dissolved by a decree of the Parliament. The
historians of Toulouse appear to have been unable to find this edict,
since, though they refer to it, it is clear that none of them had ever seen
it, or was able to state very precisely its import.

1 M. Boulmier, following as usual Nee de la Rochelle, states it as the
gth of October 1532 ; but see post, p. 106, note I. Dolet tells us
that it was delivered 'ante diem septimum Idus Octobris.' Orat. Du<e,
p. 28.

vii THE ORATOR 101

showing the utmost contempt for and by no means wanting
in abuse of the Parliament and magistrates of Toulouse,
stuffed with fine - sounding phrases on the advantages of
friendship and of social union, and on the tyranny and the
barbarity of the magistrates who had forbidden the
enlightened and intelligent French students to unite together,
and so separate from the barbarians among whom they were
thrown. But I find no passage worthy of quotation. As
the rhetorical exercise of a young Ciceronian, an ardent
student, a good Latin scholar, full of the sentiments and
expressions of his master, caring nothing for consequences,
reckless who is offended, utterly wanting in judgment,
desirous only to display his indignation, and with it his
scholarship, it is excellent, but it deals too much in
generalities, and is indeed in all respects too much of a
rhetorical exercise to detain us.

The oration appears to have been delivered not merely
to the French students, or even to students only, but to a
numerous assembly, including many other persons. It
excited much irritation among the Tolosans and the Gascons,
and was replied to by the orator of the Gascon nation,
who, whatever his merits as a scholar, would seem to have
displayed in his speech those qualities for which his country-
men have always been celebrated, and to have laid himself
open to an easy and victorious reply on the part of Dolet.
No part of the oration of Pinache l — such was the Gascon
orator's name — has come down, and all that we know of
its substance, except from the references to it in Dolet's
second oration, in his letters to Arnoul Le Ferron, and in
the correspondence between the latter and Julius Cassar

1 Pinachius. I do not know that his name, except in the Latin form,
occurs in any contemporary book or document, but Dolet's biographers
and critics have agreed in styling him Pinache. La Faille, however, gives
Prignac as the name of the Gascon orator.

102 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Scaliger, is derived from the contemptuous statement of
Simon Finet, ' When the orator (Dolet) had performed his
duty, a certain Gascon arose, a grammarian, a popular man,
and one held in favour by the students, who that he might
use the more impudence, might more petulantly abuse the
French, and heap more insults on Dolet, pretended that he
had to defend as well the dignity of the Parliament of
Toulouse which had been impaired by Dolet, as the cause of
the injured Gascons.' l

Besides the attacks of Dolet in his second oration, of
which I shall speak presently, Pierre Pinache is the subject
of two abusive epigrams of Dolet, and is referred to with
much bitterness in his letters to Arnoul Le Ferron. Yet
Julius Caesar Scaliger speaks of him with great praise, as
modest, learned, and eloquent,2 though it is true this was
after Scaliger had taken mortal offence at Dolet's dialogue
De Imitatione Ciceroniana. He was at all events a man of
sufficient wit and scholarship to make a vigorous reply to
the French orator, filled with abuse of the latter, charging
him with being not only a worshipper of Cicero, but still
worse, a Lutheran and a heretic, and calling upon the strong
arm of the law to punish him for his censure on the
Parliament and the magistrates. It might well be that
Dolet should feel bound to answer the charges of his
adversary. Yet such a reply as would be suited to the
gravity of the situation required preparation. When the
second oration was delivered we cannot with certainty decide,
except that it was between the 26th of November 1533 and

1 Preface to the Orat. Du<f in TMoiam.

2 Letter to Arnoul Le Ferron, Schelhorn, Amcenitates Litterari<e, viii.
584. I am unable to find any further mention of Pinache. The authors
of the Biographic Toulousaine have omitted him from their work, as they
have done many persons of more note whose names are connected with
the city.

vii THE ORATOR 103

the 26th of January 1534. (It was not delivered at the
date of Dolet's letter to Jacques Bording of the 26th of
November, and was delivered before the letter of Arnoul
Le Perron of 26th January was written.) It was spoken
before a much more numerous assembly than the first, in-
cluding Pinache, Arnoul Le Ferron, and probably Jean de
Boyssone. It is far more violent, far more indiscreet, and
shows far more power and ability than the first. It
is also much longer, occupying fifty pages of the printed
edition.

Commencing with abuse and ridicule of his adversary,
whom he calls ' ineptissimus homo] ' imbecillus obtrectatorj
' imperitus rudisque declamatorj and descending — as was the
manner of disputants of that day — even to such personalities
as Pinache's tremulous and thin voice, sunburnt eyes, and
rustic countenance, he proceeds with more reason to com-
plain, that instead of answering his first oration, Pinache had
excited the Parliament against him, and instead of attacking
his reputation as an orator, had brought his personal safety
into jeopardy. ' Would you deny me,' he cries, ' the right
of attacking him who wished not only that my reputation
should suffer, but that my personal security should be
destroyed, who strove not so much to reply to my oration as
to excite and inflame the Parliament against me ? ' He then,
after eulogising the Gallic name and race which had been
vilified by Pinache, and defending himself from the charge
of having attacked Toulouse, — a charge which he suggests
his opponent must have been either bribed or drunk to have
made, — he continues, ' You have asked concerning me, Who
is this that strives to bring into contempt the decrees of
the Parliament ? Who will admit that he is the author of
such an attempt ? With such language you have attacked
me. Then having excited yourself still more furiously, you
treat me as a traitor to my country, or as guilty of a

io4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

conspiracy against it, and declare that I ought to be beheaded
or thrown headlong from a rock, or tied up in a sack and
thrown into the river, or at least, and as the mildest punish-
ment, exiled from Toulouse.'

After defending himself from the charge of being too
exclusively devoted to Cicero, he proceeds again to extol the
Gallic name and race, and then to answer some of Pinache's
personal reproaches on the subject of his poverty and the
lowness of his origin ; and he then makes the statement as
to his family which I have already quoted.1

' Again,' he continues, * raging with the desire of vilifying
me still more impudently, Pinache flies at me with an
extraordinary fury, and attacks me with most violent
language. He exclaims that I have learned the art of
speaking Latin among the Italians, at the expense of all
freedom of expression, and that I can only speak in the
manner I have been taught to do. Then he charges me
with fickleness, with being a deserter and a fugitive, born
in France, educated in Italy, at present sojourning in my
native land, but contemplating a speedy return to Italy.
He argues that I have become morose and irritable owing
to my intimacy from my youth with Simon Villanovanus.
For how, he asks, can one who was educated by that man,
who was of all others the most bitter and severe, help
scowling at, condemning, and finding fault with everything ?
So great, O Pinache, is your desire of evil-speaking, that
you cannot content yourself with attacking in a most in-
famous manner me, who am living, but are not ashamed
to calumniate the dead. But Christopher Longolius himself,
by the testimony of his letters, has relieved me from the
burden of praising or defending my friend. He there
speaks in the highest terms as well of the pleasant dis-
position as of the greatness of the learning of Villano-

1 Ante, p. 10.

vii THE ORATOR 105

vanus.1 I admit that I passed a considerable time in a
very close intimacy with him, but so far from being
ashamed of having done so, I consider it to be greatly to
my credit. Whatever success I have attained either in
Latin composition or oratory — though I know how slight
that is — I freely acknowledge that I must attribute it
to him. I also admit that I have derived from him a
certain seriousness and gravity, but I altogether deny
that I have become morose owing to my association with
him.'

Then, after saying that, according to Pinache's mode of
arguing, Demosthenes, Cicero, Horace, and Juvenal would
be considered as scurrilous and morose, and, whilst pro-
fessing to answer his adversary, again repeating his attack
on the barbarism of Toulouse, he proceeds to a long
panegyric on France, the French,2 and Francis I., leading
up to a violent attack on the Gascons, which is followed by
a defence of Orleans from some attacks of Pinache. The
orator then proceeds to defend himself from the charge
of having in his former oration attacked Toulouse, and
whilst professing great affection for the city, and regret
that it should be open to censure on account of its bar-
barism, he repeats his former attacks, and far exceeds them
in violence. ' What the reputation of Toulouse is for
culture,3 for politeness of manners, for civilisation, the
recent sudden departure from the city of the King of
France has shown. He came, he saw, he departed. The
vulgarity, the rudeness, the barbarism, the fooleries of
Toulouse drove from hence the glory of France. It can-

1 See the letters of Longolius passim, and particularly the twenty-
sixth of the third book. In the fourteenth of the same book testimony
is borne by Longolius to the ' suavissima consuetudo ' of Villanovanus.

2 All through the oration he distinguishes between the French (Galli)
and the Gascons (Vascones or Aquitani). 8 P. 52.

106 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

not be pretended with any show of truth that the King
was suddenly called away by any emergency or pressure
of business.' 1

After more of the same sort we reach 2 the most inter-
esting, indeed the only really interesting passages of the
oration, those which aroused against Dolet all the bigots
of Toulouse, and gave his enemies a handle they were not
slow to take hold of — those in which he inveighs with true
eloquence and force against the ridiculous and childish
superstitions which at Toulouse usurped the name of
religion, against the bigotry which had committed Jean
de Caturce to the flames, which had humiliated and fined
Jean de Boyssone, had persecuted Pac and Bunel, and
which had aimed a blow, happily unsuccessful, at the Bishop
of Rieux himself.

' None of you are ignorant that the new doctrines con-
cerning the Christian religion which Luther some time
since put forward have caused great heartburnings, and
that they are approved only by certain turbulent and
impiously curious persons ; but you also know, when any
one shows signs of genius and of an intellectual superiority
over his fellows, he is forthwith suspected by men of a
bigoted and depraved mind of the Lutheran heresy, and is
made to experience all that hatred which this accusation
gives rise to. But whenever the Tolosan furies have
obtained this handle with which to pour forth their bound-
less hatred against the learned and the studious, how many
men of illustrious reputation for learning or talent have they
not striven to destroy ! Who has ever known them give

1 Francis I. entered Toulouse on the 1st of August 1533, and stayed
only seven days. This passage, which seems to have escaped all the
biographers of Dolet, clearly shows that this oration was spoken after
ist August 1533, and not — as M. Boulmier and the rest have assumed
and stated — at the end of 1532 or the beginning of 1533.

2 Pp. 54-61.

vii THE ORATOR 107

their vote for the acquittal of any learned man ? I already
seem to hear these calumniators gnashing their teeth at this
utterance of mine and wickedly planning my condemnation.
I seem to hear them charging even me with being a Lutheran.
He who so lately reviled me (Pinache) has, I have no
doubt, already determined to be an approver and promoter
of this calumny ; but in order that he may not even for a
moment enjoy that pleasure or hope to see me convicted on
so odious a charge, and in order that no suspicion of heresy
may cleave to me or be thrown in my teeth, I most earnestly
and vehemently declare, and beg you all to believe, that I
am not in any way a follower of that impious and obstinate
sect, that nothing is more distasteful to me than their desire
of new doctrines and systems, that there is nothing I more
strongly condemn. I am one who honours and reveres only
that faith, only those religious rites, which have the sanction
of antiquity, which have been handed down to us by a
succession of pious and holy men, which have been hallowed
by the adhesion of our ancestors. I by no means approve
a new and unmeaning religious system. Only those doctrines
and practices please me which are truly good and Christian,
and these I love with all my heart.

* But what is the reason (it must be a bad one) that
cruelty is the delight of Toulouse? That this city is so
imbued with savage tastes as to take no pleasure in any-
thing except what is most removed from, nay, most opposed
to all semblance of humanity, and which cannot even be
reconciled with justice? You have lately seen one, whose
name I forbear to mention, burned to death in this city.
His body has been destroyed, but his memory is still being
consumed by the raging flames of hatred. He may have
spoken at times rashly and presumptuously, at other times
intemperately ; he may even have acted at one time in such
a manner as to deserve the punishment due to heresy.

\
108 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Yet when inclined to repent, ought the way of salvation for
both body and soul to have been closed against him ? Do
we not all know that any man may err or for a time fall away
from the truth, but that only the utterly bad persevere in
their errors ? When once the clouds that overshadowed his
mind had been dissipated, was there no possibility that it
might again shine forth with a clear light? Why, when
he was striving to emerge from the depths and whirlpools
in which he had been overwhelmed, and to reach some good
and safe haven, did not all with one consent help to throw
out a cable so as to afford him the possibility of reaching a
safe anchorage ? His last words were to appeal from the
sentence of the Archbishop and from the decree of the
Parliament, and who would deny that such an appeal. ought
to have been received ? Yet his willingness to return from
his wanderings into the right path availed him nothing ;
nor was any change of opinion — which is usually allowed
as a means of retreat for a penitent — able to preserve his
life from the brutality of his enemies. Toulouse, as usual
careless of humanity and culture (of which it never was a
partaker), satiated its love of cruelty by wounding and
destroying him. It filled its mind and feasted its eyes with
his tortures and his death. Preposterously and absurdly
puffed up by the pretence that it has acted in accordance
with duty, and has vigorously maintained the dignity of
our religion, it has really acted with the greatest injustice.
It has persecuted so severely and cruelly those who have
fallen under suspicion for some trifling error, or who have
been altogether falsely charged with the crime of heresy,
that they have been impelled by their tortures utterly to
deny Christ, instead of being led gently to repentance. In
short, every one who rightly considers these things will come
to the conclusion that at Toulouse more than anywhere law
and right keep silence, while violence, hatred, and the denial

vii THE ORATOR 109

of justice prevails. And as the city so ridiculously arrogates
to itself a very high reputation for sound and faithful belief,
and claims and wishes to be considered as the light and
ornament of the Christian religion, let us for a moment
consider whether there are any just grounds on which this
claim can be supported. ... I appeal to your own
personal testimony, and I am certain that you will readily
agree with me that Toulouse has not yet acquired even the
rudiments of Christianity, but is given over to superstitions
worthy only of the Turks ; for what else is that ceremony
which takes place every year on the feast of St. George,
when horses are introduced into the church of St. Etienne,
and made to go round it nine times, at the same that solemn
offerings are made with a view of insuring the horses' health ?
What else is that ceremony of throwing a cross on a certain
day into the Garonne, as if for propitiating Eridanus or
Danubius, Nilus or even old father Oceanus himself, and
inducing the waters of the river to flow in a calm and
smooth course without overflowing its banks and so causing
an inundation ? What is it but superstition, in the drought
of summer and when rain is wanted, to cause the rotten
trunks of certain statues to be carried about the streets by
boys ? Yet this city, so ill instructed in the faith of Christ,
pretends to impose its notions of Christianity upon all men,
to regulate all religious matters according to its will, and
to insult with the name of heretic every one who follows
the commands of Christ with more freedom and according
to their spirit, as though he had fallen away from the
integrity and soundness of the faith.'

He then proceeds — in a passage which I have already
in part quoted — to refer to Jean de Boyssone, Matthieu
Pac, Pierre Bunel, and Otho the Italian scholar, and to tell
the story of Jean de Pins and the manuscript of Josephus.
The remaining fourteen pages of the oration are in the

no ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

same strain, chiefly passionate invectives against the bar-
barism, the cruelty, the folly of Toulouse, abuse and
ridicule of Pinache and the speaker's other enemies — among
whom Maurus is not obscurely hinted at. He reproaches
them with their attempts to have him cast into prison, with
exciting the Parliament against him, and with carrying a
pig inscribed with his name through the city with a view
of turning him into ridicule.

We cannot feel surprised that the delivery of this speech
should have caused great indignation at Toulouse, not only
in the minds of Pinache and the other enemies of Dolet,
but also among the Capitouls and the members of the
Parliament. That a young student of law should use such
censures, and even abuse, was certain to excite great dis-
pleasure, and we can hardly imagine anything more
indiscreet and foolish than the reference to the martyrdom
of Jean de Caturce and the persecution of Jean de Boyssone.
Had Dolet been the most orthodox of Catholics the
reference to Caturce could not but have given occasion to
charges of heresy, while his reference to the superstitions
of the Tolosans and the ridicule he had cast upon their
ceremonies caused him not unreasonably to be suspected,
if not of sympathy with the opinions of the heretics, at
least of dislike to those of the orthodox. But the delivery
of the speech seems to have been followed by disturbances
and riots among the students, which may not improbably
have been occasioned by the oration, and the enemies of
Dolet found little difficulty in bringing against him the
charge of heresy, of contempt of the authorities, and of
language calculated to produce a breach of the peace. Yet
his biographers have assumed that his first imprisonment
followed more closely upon the delivery of his second
oration than was actually the fact. I have before stated
that though I have been unable to ascertain precisely the

vii THE ORATOR in

date of the delivery of the second oration, it certainly must
have been some time before the 2jth of January 1534, since
shortly before that day Arnoul Le Ferron wrote to him
complaining of the violence of the second oration, and it
was not until the 25th of March in the same year that he
was thrown into prison.

During this interval there can be no doubt that his
enemies were using all their exertion to have him imprisoned
and punished, and to excite against him the displeasure of
the members of the Parliament as well as the hatred of the
fanatical citizens. Four persons appear to have made them-
selves conspicuous by their attacks. Pierre Pinache may be
pardoned for feeling sore under the lash of his adversary's
speech, and had he done no more than pour his griefs into
the sympathetic bosom of the great Julius Caesar Scaliger, or
even use language to the public as strong and as abusive as
that of Dolet, he might easily have been forgiven, but it
would seem that, feeling his own powers and scholarship to
be insufficient to cope with the vigour and learning of his
adversary, he was especially urgent upon the Parliament to
imprison or exile Dolet.

But the young student had made other and more powerful
enemies than Pinache. His pen had covered with merciless
if just ridicule the most important personage of Toulouse
after the First President of the Parliament, and his verses,
though only in manuscript, had been handed about, and had
reached the ears if not the eyes of the vain and foolish
dignitary against whom they were written.

After the union of the County of Toulouse with the
French Crown, the great powers of the Seneschal fell gradually
into the hands of his Lieutenant-General, who, until the
establishment of the Parliament, was the most important
person in the whole of Languedoc. No longer appointed
by the Seneschal — whose office soon became merely honorary

ii2 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

— but directly by the Crown, often styled the King's
Lieutenant-General in Languedoc, he was the chief, not only
of the civil and criminal judicature of the province, but of
the civil government. His administrative equalled his
judicial functions in importance, and gave him a position
which, until the institution of the Parliament, was both
higher in rank and in actual power than that which the
First President afterwards held. The final and permanent
establishment of the Parliament in 1444 gave a blow to the
importance and influence of the Lieutenants of the Seneschalty
from which they never recovered, yet the office continued
for more than a century to be of great importance. The
Lieutenant still had the right to sit in person as judge of
first instance in numerous cases, and the appeal from his
judgments, as well as from numerous other courts, lay not
directly to the Parliament, but to his own official or deputy,
thejuge-mage orjuge des appeaux, who at this time exercised
both a primary and an appellate jurisdiction. The Lieutenant-
General still, as the King's Lieutenant, exercised in Toulouse
all such of the administrative functions as the Capitouls were
not entitled to exercise. At the inaugural session of the
Parliament of Toulouse on the I4th of June 1444, Tanneguy
du Chatel, Lieutenant of the Seneschalty, sat on the right of
the First President and before the Archbishop of Toulouse ;
and though this precedence was soon lost, yet at the time of
which I am speaking the Lieutenant seems to have been
entitled to sit in the Parliament among the Presidents a
mortier. But he had retained up to this time, though he
was soon to lose, what gave him in the eyes of the populace
a far higher position than that of the Parliament or its
Presidents, the possession, jointly with the Viguier and to
the exclusion of the Parliament, of the ancient Palais de
Justice, then known as the Chateau Narbonnais or the Palais
Royal. The Parliament struggled for one hundred and ten

vii THE ORATOR 113

years after its foundation to gain a footing in the Chateau,
but in vain. It had to be satisfied with such temporary
accommodation as it could from time to time obtain. The
Lieutenant of the Seneschalty absolutely refused it admission
into the Palais. At length in 1555, on the creation of the
Chamber of Enquetes, the royal commands forced the
Lieutenant to yield and to allow the joint use of the Palais
to the Parliament. From this time his importance rapidly
declined. The joint occupation continued for a century,
after which the Lieutenant of the Seneschalty of Toulouse
disappears from history.1

In 1533, however, the Lieutenant -General of the
Seneschalty was still a considerable personage, and no one of
these dignitaries was more tenacious of his position, or more
determined to uphold it against the Parliament and to retain
possession of the Palais de Justice, than Gratien du Pont,
Sieur de Drusac, who now held the office. Unfortunately
no one could be less fitted for its duties or more likely to
bring it into discredit by his folly and vanity. The Sieur
de Drusac's great ambition was to shine, neither as an
administrator nor as a judge, but as a poet. If we give him
that appellation, we must qualify it by saying he was one of
those indifferent poets whom neither gods, men, nor columns
endure. Embittered against the fair sex, as it would seem
owing to the ill-success of his love affairs (we learn from one
of Dolet's odes that he had obtained a divorce from his wife)

1 See, as to the Lieutenants of the Seneschalty and their powers, Les
Parlements de France, Essai Historique sur leurs usages, leur organisation, et
leur autorit'e, by the Vicomte de Bastard D'Estang, Paris, 1857, 2 vols.
8vo. This work, though nominally on the French Parliaments generally,
is almost wholly devoted to the Parliament of Toulouse. It is a book of
considerable interest, containing much information which would be sought
in vain elsewhere. Its main object, however, seems to be to laud the
family of Bastard, many members of which filled high offices connected
with this Parliament.

ii4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

and to the ridicule of the ladies of Toulouse, he endeavoured
to avenge himself by a bitter diatribe in verse against his
persecutors, which he published under the title of Cont re-
verses des sexes masculin et feminin. Conceived in the worst
possible taste, and written in the worst possible style, such of
the French critics as have noticed it have placed it at the
nadir even of the mass of bad poetry which, though with
some brilliant exceptions, was produced in the sixteenth
century. Yet the author flattered himself that he had
composed a treatise which would be a model of style and of
every kind of verse to the youth who should desire to learn
to compose poetry or to study rhetoric, and which should at
the same time be of the greatest moral benefit by displaying
wicked women in their true colours, and pointing out the
snares which they set for the unwary. The author supposes
himself sitting in a wood, when ' sexe masculin ' appears
before him, complains of ' sexe feminin,' and entreats him to
take up the defence of the outraged and oppressed male sex.
He at first hesitates, but at length consents ; and then follows
a series of tedious harangues, in which, after commencing by
the statement that women were not made in the image of
God but in that of the devil, he proceeds to heap together
all the ill that he could find said of women by any author,
sacred or profane, and to narrate all the stories of wicked
women to be found in Scripture, in history, in prose fiction,
and in poetry. Mixed up with all this is every kind of verse
and rhyme, and all the tedious and pedantic trivialities of
which the old French arts of poetry are so full. ' If such
puerilities,' justly remarks the Abbe Goujet (Bibl. Franc.
vol. xi. p. 187), 'joined to the barbarous style of the author,
disgust the reader, the book becomes still more unsupportable
by the excess of his satire and by the indecent portraits
which he draws ' ; and which, it may be added, have neither
wit nor ingenuity to recommend them. Satisfied that

vii THE ORATOR 115

posterity will interest itself greatly in the book and its
author, the latter is careful to tell us the day on which he
himself completes his work, —

L'an mil-cinq cens trente et sixieme

Du mois de may le jour vingt-et-cinquiesme.

Yet we have an earlier, though not complete, edition printed
by Colomies at Toulouse in 1535, though dated I534,1
which is the earliest at present known. It is however clear
from this edition that the first book had been composed for
some years, and it is evident from the letters and poems of
Dolet that it had been in circulation for some time when he
left Toulouse in the summer of 1534. It is certainly
possible that it may have been circulated in manuscript, as
was not infrequent at that day. Yet I strongly incline to
think that an edition of the first book was printed in or
before 1533, and that a copy may possibly yet be found.2

1 The date, Jan. 30, 1534, would probably be Jan. 30, 1535, new
style.

2 It was reprinted at Toulouse in 1536, again at Paris in 1537, 1538,
1539, 1540, and 1541. To the editions of and subsequent to 1536 are
added the proceedings of the trial before Dame Reason of the complaint
of the masculine sex. It is entitled, ' Requeste du sexe masculin centre
le sexe feminin. . . . Baillee a Dame raison. Ensemble le plaidoye de
partis Et arrest intervenue.' It is needless to say the decree is in favour
of the ' sexe masculin.' Besides the Contravenes, Drusac was the author
of Art et Science de Rhetoricque metrijpee, Tholose, Vielland, 1539, which,
like all the editions of the Contravenes, is extremely rare. For Drusac
and his works see Goujet, Bibl. Franc, xi. pp. 184-192 ; Biographic
Toulousaine, 188 (this article is by M. Lamothe-Langon) ; La Croix du
Maine (who erroneously calls him Gabriel Dupont), and a note of the
President Bouhier in the edition of La Croix du Maine given by Rigoley
de Juvigny, vol. i. 253. By far the best notice is that of Goujet, but in
his last paragraph he has been led into an error, which I have not seen
anywhere corrected or even noticed : 'Je trouve aussi citees (Catalog, de
Barre, p. 445) d'autres Contravenes des sexes masculin et feminin par
Francois Chevallier imprimees en 1536 in 1 6°. Mais j'ignore le but
et la methode de cet ouvrage. La Croix du Maine et Du Verdier ne

n6 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Dolet had undertaken the defence of the fair sex against
its detractor, and had thereby acquired some favour with the
ladies of Toulouse, but the merciless ridicule which he
poured upon both the man and his book accounts for, if it
does not justify, the bitter hostility of the Lieutenant-
General of the Seneschalty. Six odes of Dolet are directed
' in Drusacum vulgarem poetam Tholosanum qui librum in
fceminas scripsit' In one of his odes Dolet says that
Drusac's book would be most useful to the grocers to wrap

parlent point de cet auteur et je ne le connois que par la citation de son
livre et par un rondeau qu'il a fait a la louange des controverses de Gratien
Du Pont, qu'on lit a la tete de ce dernier ouvrage, et dans le titre duquel
rondeau Francois Chevallier est dit natif de Bourdeaulx et qualifie Collegie
du College de Foix a Tholose? The book which is erroneously cited as by
Francois Chevallier is no other than the edition of Drusac's own book
printed at Toulouse in 1536, in which the rondeau of Chevallier
addressed to Drusac will be found. In 1564 the Controverses were
formally answered by Francois Arnault, Seigneur de la Borie, in his Anti
Drusac, ou Livret contre Drusac faicte a I'honneur des femmes nobles bonnes
et honnestes, Tholose, Colomies. This book is erroneously attributed by
M. Lamothe-Langon, who quotes Du Verdier as his authority, to another
Drusac. Nothing of the kind is, however, to be found in Du Verdier,
who gives as the author Francois la Borie de Valois, Docteur es droits
natif de Cahors (Valois, according to La Monnoye, is a mistake for
Valons, a bourg of Vivarais). Fran9ois la Borie was, according to
Goujet, the author of Antiquites de P'erigord, and the translator of a
treatise of Maldonat on Angels and Daemons, and was Canon of Perigueux,
Dean of Carenac, Prior of Lurcy, Grand Archdeacon of St. Andrew of
Bordeaux, and Chancellor of the University of that city. He was also
the author of a Latin treatise, Anti atheon per rationes aliquot congestum
physicas quibus athei tanquam suis baculis seu telis icti refelluntur Deum unum
esse eeternum omnipotentem plenissimum misericordiee et bonitatis infinite
nostrique sollicitum, Tolosae, Guidone Boudevilles, 1561. (Du Verdier,
Supplement to Gesntr.) In the notice of Gratien du Pont in the Nouvelle
Biograpbie generate (almost wholly taken from Goujet), after the state-
ment that his book was refuted by Arnault de la Borie, we are referred to
the article ' La Borie ; ' but, as in so many similar cases in that work, no
such article is to be found, nor have I been able to find anywhere any
biographical notice of Fran9ois Arnault de la Borie.

vii THE ORATOR 117

up pepper and such condiments in, and suggests other still
more humiliating purposes for which it could be usefully
employed ; while in another ode, printed with the orations
and written by a friend of Dolet, whose name is not given,
Dolet is charged with a too flattering partiality to Drusac
in suggesting that any use could be made of such rubbish,
and the writer explains with considerable humour, but in
language which will hardly bear translation into a modern
tongue, why the book of the unfortunate Lieutenant of the
Seneschalty was unsuited even to the humiliating purposes
to which Dolet had assigned it. The authorship of this
ode has hitherto remained unknown, and if there are any of
my readers who have already made acquaintance with Jean
de Boyssone in the pages of M. Guibal, they will perhaps
learn with some little surprise that, as appears from the
Toulouse manuscript, the author of the humorous, though
certainly coarse and Rabelaisian ode which I give in the
note, is the grave, religious, and studiously moderate Jean
de Boyssone.1

Of the Juge-mage Guillaume Dampmartin we know
nothing, except that, as was natural in the official of the
Lieuten ant-General, he allied himself with his chief. It was
he who shortly afterwards committed Dolet to prison, and

1 Tergendis natibus tuum libellum
Aptum dixerat optimus poeta
Blanditus tibi credo tune poeta.
Nam nullus natibus suis Drusace
Dignum judicat hunc tuum libellum
Insulsum, lacerum, asperum, protervum,
Incultum, rigidum, parum pudicum
Et duris salebris ineptiorem ;
Atque ipsis natibus magis lutosum :
Quare tergere podicem volentem,
Chartas ut fugiat tuas monemus,
Ni vult surgere foediore culo.

n8 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

to his influence and that of Drusac the final expulsion of
Dolet from Toulouse was due.1

But besides these two high officials, Dolet had excited
the hatred of a certain Le More or Maurus, a grammarian
and schoolmaster. Among the poems of Dolet, of Jean
Voulte, and of Hubert Sussanneau, are to be found numerous
biting epigrams on this man, described as a grammarian
and pedagogue, and referred to by the two former as a
bitter enemy of Dolet. He appears to have been a man of
some learning, at this time a schoolmaster at Toulouse,
extremely hostile to the new learning and to the new
opinions which were then coming into vogue. An old
man with a young wife, it is easy to see what an oppor-
tunity he afforded to the epigrammatists. His name will be
sought for in vain in the biographical collections, but he
may clearly be identified with one Jean Maur 2 of Coutances
(Joannes Maurus Constantianus}, called by Duverdier,
Jean le More de Constance, who printed at the little town
of La Reole in 1517 three short tracts of each of which one
copy only is known. From La Reole he seems to have
gone to Lectoure and afterwards to Montauban, where he
translated into French and Basque the treatise of Grapaldo,
De partibus Mdium, printed, but without date, at Montauban
by Jean Gilbert. In 1530 we find him at Toulouse, where
he published an edition and commentary on the distiches
of Fausto Andrelini, from the dedication of which, ad-
dressed * Mathurino Almandino Angeliaco,' it would seem
he had not long left Montauban. This commentary was
frequently reprinted between 1530 and 1540 both at Lyons

1 Dampmartin succeeded Drusac in the office of Lieutenant of the
Seneschalty (Du Mege, Instit. de Toulouse, ii. p. 267.)

2 Since the publication of the first edition of this book, M. A.
Claudin has devoted an article to Maurus in La Revue Catholique de
Bordeaux reprinted separately under the title Les Origines de L'lm-
pr inter ie a La Reole en Cayenne.

vii THE ORATOR 119

and Paris, and is the only one of Jean Maur's works with
which I am personally acquainted. The distiches of An-
drelini, like the rest of his poems, are poor and common-
place, and deserve attention neither from the style nor
matter. ' They want but one thing/ said Erasmus ; ' that
which is called vovs in Greek, mens in Latin.' Yet they
acquired that popularity which in all times seems to be
easily obtained by so-called proverbial philosophy, however
foolish or commonplace, when delivered in measured and
stilted phrases. A biographer of Fausto Andrelini l de-
scribes him as ' a mere word-monger, poor in thought, cold
in poetical feeling and fancy, and selfishly malignant in
character ' ; a description which is precisely applicable to his
commentator. In stilted and pompous language — hardly
a sentence of which is not disfigured by some barbarous
pentasyllable unknown even to the writers of the iron age
of Latin literature — Maurus amplifies and elaborates the
commonplaces of his author, finding a recondite meaning in
each sentence and word, much after the same fashion of
worthless and dreary verbosity with which preachers and
commentators have; endeavoured to elaborate theological
systems out of the most ordinary and simple texts of Holy
Scripture. Only when Andrelini speaks of old age does his
commentator (a bachelor far past middle age but con-
templating matrimony) wax enthusiastic and natural. On
the verse of Andrelini, 'Disticha composui matura digna
senecta,' the old pedagogue enthusiastically remarks, ' Matura,
id est senili et sapienti ; maturum enim est quod sole jam
coctum perfecte temperatum est. Unde per translationem
maturus homo dicitur qui omnino aetate perfectus est, quo
tempore maxime sapiens habendus. Unde matura aetas : id
est, senilis et perfecta ac sapiens.'

1 Professor Spalding, in the Biog. Diet, of the Society for Promoting
Useful Knowledge.

120 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

But if the enemies of Dolet were active and virulent,
he had acquired and still retained, notwithstanding the
intemperate character of his speech, and probably from a
secret sympathy for the opinions of which he professed
himself, if not the defender, at least the apologist, the
esteem of all the friends of learning and progress at Tou-
louse. In the volume which contains the two orations are
to be found three books of epistles which passed between
Dolet and his friends. All these appear to have been
written between the latter end of the year 1532 and the
month of August 1534, when he had arrived at Lyons, and
several of them, and those the most interesting, were written
in the interval between his second oration and his first
imprisonment. Of two of his correspondents, Jean de Pins
and Jean de Boyssone, I have already spoken, and their
letters raise very much our opinion of Dolet. With a third
correspondent, however, he interchanged several letters which
especially illustrate this interval.

Among those contemporaries who upon Dolet's arrival
at Toulouse were students of law at the University, there
was no one who achieved more success in the schools, or
who gave greater promise of eminence as a jurist, than
Arnoul Le Ferron. Born in 1515, and thus seven years
younger than Dolet, he had at the time of the delivery of
the orations nearly completed his course of law, and though
only eighteen years of age, was already preparing, as it would
seem with the sanction of the authorities, a course of lectures.
His father, Jean Le Ferron, an Italian by birth, had achieved
a high reputation as a lawyer at Verona, and was brought
from that city by the Cardinal de Bourbon, who obtained
for him the appointment of Councillor to the Parliament of
Bordeaux.1 His young son Arnoul accompanied him to

1 Boscheron des Fortes, Hist, du Parlement de Bordeaux (Bordeaux,

vii THE ORATOR 121

France (or was born shortly after his arrival). In 1536,
when only just twenty-one years of age, Arnoul was ap-
pointed by Cardinal Du Prat a Councillor of the Parliament
of Bordeaux in succession to his father. The age required
for the office to which he was appointed was twenty-five,
but he had already given such proofs of his ability that his
future colleagues, the President and Councillors of the
Parliament, made themselves responsible to the Cardinal for
his capacity for the office notwithstanding his youth, and
letters of dispensation were accorded him.1 The expectation
of his colleagues was completely justified. His appointment
was inaugurated by his great work on the customs of Bor-
deaux, which at once gave him a high reputation, and long
continued to be the standard authority on the subject. ' His
Commentaries on the laws of his native province,' says de
Thou, 'are worthy of a good citizen and an excellent juris-
consult.' For the remaining twenty-seven years of his life
he continued one of the chief ornaments of the Parliament
of Bordeaux, though he never received any promotion, but
remained to his death a simple councillor. Though his
genius and literary merits pale by the side of his illustrious
colleagues La Boe'tie and Montaigne, yet he alone among
the members of the Parliament of Bordeaux in the sixteenth
century achieved any fame as a jurist. But it was not only
in this capacity that he obtained a high and deserved reputa-
tion, as a judge he was distinguished by his integrity, his
impartiality, and his love of justice ; and though in dealing
with matters of heresy, and with the charges made against

1878), vol. i. 117. According to this writer Arnoul was born at Verona,
but all other authorities make him a native of Bordeaux.

1 The same thing occurred a few years later in the case of a still
more eminent man. When fitienne de la Boe'tie was appointed a
Councillor of the Parliament of Bordeaux in 1553, he required letters of
dispensation on account of his youth (he was then twenty-three) before
he could be admitted. (Id. i. 119.)

122 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

men of letters in reference to their opinions, he ever showed
himself on the side of toleration and of mercy, he never
permitted his personal affections or his personal sympathy to
outweigh the claims of justice or of right. There was no
one with whom he was on terms of greater intimacy, or
whom he regarded with greater admiration, than Julius
Caesar Scaliger. It may have been as a native (or the son
of a native) of Verona that he first excited the interest of
the descendant of Can Grande. And it is not unlikely that
between Scaliger and Jean Le Ferron there would have been
an early acquaintance. Before Arnoul was twenty-one years
of age he had become the Atticus of the Cicero of Agen,
and the letters of Scaliger written to his young friend, some
of them as early as 1535, show that the great scholar treated
him as in every respect his equal, and so far as internal
evidence goes, they would make the reader think they were
written to a man of great learning, eminent position, and
mature age. In 1538 Scaliger was charged with heresy;
he had selected as the tutor of his son, Philibert Sarrazin, a
notorious heretic ; heretical books were found in his possession,
and he was further accused of having said that Lent was
neither an institution of Christ nor of the Apostles, and that
transubstantiation was only made an article of faith by the
Council of Lateran, and of having eaten flesh on a fast day.
The Inquisitor-General received a special commission from
the King to inquire into cases of heresy at Agen, but
fortunately for Scaliger, his case was withdrawn from the
Inquisitor, and three councillors of the Parliament of Bor-
deaux were specially appointed by the King to inquire into
the charges against -him. As yet the King loved literature
and learned men, and the selection as the judges of the
charge of heresy against Scaliger, of Briand de Vallee the
friend of Rabelais, Geoffrey de Chassaigne the most popular
of the councillors and an accomplished Latin poet, and Arnoul

vii THE ORATOR 123

Le Perron the intimate friend and correspondent of Scaliger,
did not indicate a desire to press hardly upon the accused.
With such judges the result could hardly be doubtful, and
Scaliger was soon set at liberty.1 But some years later, in a
lawsuit before the Parliament to which Scaliger was a party,
Le Perron, notwithstanding the urgent pressure of his friend,
refused to place the claims of friendship before those of
justice, or to allow his judgment to be warped by his affec-
tions, and a decision adverse to Scaliger was pronounced,
which drew down upon the judge two or three violent and
offensive letters. But it was not only as a jurist and a judge
that Le Perron acquired a high reputation. In literature he
attained eminence as a historian and as a scholar. His con-
tinuation of the History of Paulus ^milius, first printed by
Vascosan in 1550, was in its day a signal success.2 Yet
though it was frequently reprinted, and translated into
French in its author's lifetime, it is a book which is not often
referred to, still less read, and seems indeed to be but of
slender merit. According to La Monnoye,3 ' Perron's
History is filled with unreasonable digressions and wearisome
harangues, and causes immense trouble to the reader by the
extraordinary and absurd manner in which he writes many

1 De Beze, Hist. Ecclesiastique, book i., and Gaullieur, Hist, du College
de Guyenae, 157.

2 Moreri tells us (and it has often since been repeated) that the re-
putation of this and his other works gained for him the name of Atticus.
But this is incorrect ; the name of Atticus was given to him by J. C.
Scaliger, as we have seen, as early as 1535, before he had published any-
thing, and when he was only twenty years of age. See Scaliger's letters
given by Schelhorn in the eighth volume of his Amcenitates Literarite,
pp. 554-618. The following verses of Scaliger explain why he gave the
name of Atticus to his young friend : —

Ferronus ille propter eloquentiam

Puram, suavem, candidam, scitam, gravem.

Quern ego vocavi jure primus Atticum.

3 Note to Duverdier, vol. i. p. 155 (edition of Rigoley de Juvigny).

i24 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

names both of persons and places, which render them difficult
to identify, and which are not always correctly explained by
his translator Jean Regnard.' l On the other hand, Le Gendre2
judges him more favourably, and says, ' If the continuer has
not written with as much elegance as the historian (Paulus
TEmilius) whom he continues, at least he is more exact and
very much better informed. His History is full without
being too long, and contains many interesting anecdotes and
curious details.' J. C. Scaliger, whose judgments on the
works of his contemporaries usually reflected his love or
hatred of their persons, and who in many of his letters had
lauded Le Perron up to the skies, having been defeated in
his lawsuit about the time of the appearance of the first
edition of the work, at the end of one of his angry letters
thus speaks of the Historic : — ' Ineptas sunt, pueriles sunt,
semibarbaras sunt, ineruditae sunt.' 3 Le Ferron merely burst
out laughing on reading this letter, and Scaliger soon after-
wards changed his tone into one of greater moderation.
Arnoul Le Ferron was also an accomplished Greek scholar,
itself a distinction at a time when on this side the Alps a
knowledge of Greek was rare. He translated into Latin
several tracts of Plutarch, and also the book attributed to
Aristotle upon Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorgias, which he
(Le Ferron) appended to an edition which he published of a
tract of Bessarion in defence of Xenophanes and an essay by
himself, Pro Aristotele adversus Bessarionem. He died in
1563, when only forty-eight years of age, to the grief of all
who loved letters or who rejoiced to see the judicial bench
filled by men of learning and probity.

In the edition of his Commentarii consuetudinum Bur-
degalensium^ published in 1565 shortly after his death, we

1 This is a not uncommon fault in the Latin writers of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. 2 Hist. France, i. 12.

3 J. C. Scaligeri Epistolte, Hanoviae, 1612, p. 178.

vii THE ORATOR 125

find no less than forty-four pieces of verse in his honour,
including one by Jean de Boyssone.1

Though only in his nineteenth year he was already
preparing a course of lectures on some branch of law, not
improbably on the customary law of Guyenne. He had for
some time been on terms of intimacy with Dolet, and had
been deeply and favourably impressed with the abilities and
learning of the latter. Though, according to M. Boscheron
des Fortes, a native of Verona, he had all his affections in
Aquitaine, which he considered and spoke of as his native
province. Accordingly Dolet's fierce attack on Aquitaine
and the Gascons could not fail to be most distasteful to him,
and we need no better proof of his admiration and regard

1 For Arnoul Le Perron see Taisand, Vies des plus Celebris Jurisconsultes,
Paris, 1737 (a useful book, and very difficult to meet with). Teissier,
Eloges des Hommes Savans, Leyden, 1715, vol. ii. p. 106 ; J. C. Scaligeri
Epistolte ; Sainte Marthe, Elogia ; Moreri, Le Grand Diet. Hist.; L. de
Lamothe, Notes pour servir a la Eiographie des Hommes utiles ou celebres de
la ville de Bordeaux, Paris, 1863 ; Boscheron des Portes, Hist, du Parlement
de Bordeaux, 1878. [This last is a most disappointing work. In the
prospectus which invited subscriptions a biographical account of Arnoul
Le Perron and of many other eminent members of the Parliament of
Bordeaux were promised, but the notice of Le Perron (as well as of the
rest) is most meagre and unsatisfactory ; the only fact of interest is the
statement that Arnoul Le Perron was born at Verona. The book is
written without method, and contains none of the details as to the consti-
tution and authority of the Parliament which we naturally look for, and
which are most important to enable us to understand the legal procedure.]
Duverdier (Bibliotheque Fran$oise) confounds Arnoul Le Perron with Arnoul
du Ferrier, a more celebrated contemporary, at this time or shortly after-
wards a professor of law in the University of Toulouse, and subsequently
President of the Court of Requests in the Parliament of Paris, and
attributes to Le Perron the very scarce French translation by Du Ferrier
of Athenagoras, which was printed at Bordeaux by Simon Millanges in
1577. Paul Freher in the notice of Doneau (Donellus) in his Theatrum
virorum eruditione clarorum (Nuremberg, 1688), p. 294, with a similar
confusion names Arnoul du Perron instead of Arnoul du Ferrier as the
professor of law at Toulouse under whom Doneau studied.

126 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

for his friend, than the fact that this attack did not alienate
his mind from Dolet, but was only made a subject of a
friendly and temperate remonstrance. Between the delivery
of the second oration of Dolet and his arrest six long letters
passed between the two young men ; interesting as showing
their mutual regard and affection, and also as letting us see
what was thought and said at Toulouse on the subject of the
dispute between Dolet and Pinache.

From these letters I now proceed to give some extracts,
omitting the compliments, the excuses, and the self-
depreciation which make so large a part of all the Latin
correspondence of the Ciceronians of the Renaissance, and
also omitting the greater part of Le Perron's strictures on
Dolet's oration for its attack upon the Gascons, and Dolet's
elaborate defence of himself and, under colour of defence,
repetition of the attack. The correspondence commences
with a letter of Le Ferron written shortly before Jan. 27,

1534-

ARNOUL LE FERRON TO ETIENNE DOLET

* I am on terms of great intimacy with Julius Caesar
Scaliger, a most accomplished man devoted to all kinds of
liberal culture. We have so many grounds of friendship
that you would hardly find any persons more intimate than
we are. In reply to a letter in which I made mention of
your singular erudition, eloquence, and culture, he wrote
most pleasantly and gracefully that he had as great an esteem
for you as I had, and that he had already heard of your
eloquence ; and although he is a man exceedingly averse to
ingratiating himself with others, he specially desired me to
salute you in his name. I do this most gladly, as well on
account of the message itself, as in order to perform that
duty to him which he imposed on me in his letter. I think
you will highly esteem his learning, for he is of the number

vii THE ORATOR 127

of our Ciceronians, and well known to the learned from the
oration which he has published in defence of M. Tullius
against Erasmus of Rotterdam. At the same time the
message is very agreeable to me, since it furnishes me with
an excuse for writing to you. For, my Dolet, I could bring
many witnesses, and those of high repute, to prove how
great account I make and always have made of you. But I
am greatly surprised that in the oration you lately delivered
against Pinache you should have attacked our Aquitaine.
For, so far as I know, the province has never injured you.
But you say " I have been provoked by Pinache." You
might have answered the man without attacking the pro-
vince. You best know what was the motive of your under-
taking, and I certainly will not believe that you would have
descended to these attacks unless you had been urged and
provoked to them. Pinache is said to have no intention of
replying to your oration, so that he who is the cause of all
this danger and flame now gives no aid in extinguishing it.
I wish that before engaging in the conflict he had properly
calculated his strength, and considered whether he was able
by his own force to silence you when provoked and resisting.
Of this tragedy I am a spectator, though I must say a some-
what unwilling one. For I fear, my Dolet, lest hurried by
your feelings you know not whither, and indulging in great
heat and excitement, you may be actually consumed by your
anger, whilst he, either wounded or conquered, may attempt
some injury to you, and may even prepare snares against
your life. Farewell.'

£TIENNE DOLET TO ARNOUL LE FERRON

' That you should take the trouble of writing to me is, in
the first place, agreeable to me, and I am greatly pleased by
your extreme good-will. That Julius Caesar Scaliger has by

128 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

your means become friendly to me is something for which I
confess I am greatly indebted to you, and if I do not
immediately requite so great kindness I shall yet strive by
my gratitude to imitate your friendly disposition. I beg you
to be persuaded of this, that you have conferred a favour on
one who will remember it, and to understand that I shall
spare no pains if there is anything you wish for in which I
can be of service to you. . . .

' Of my good-will to Caesar Scaliger in return for his to
me I shall not write to you at length ; this only I ask of
you, first to bear in mind yourself, then to strive to persuade
Scaliger that there is no one for whom I have a greater
regard or of whom I speak more in praise. You will salute
him from me, and will without hesitation offer him my
services.

' From Toulouse, Jan. 27.'

ARNOUL LE PERRON TO ETIENNE DOLET

' I received your letter of the 27th of January from your
servant, who found me troubled with a disorder of the
bowels, and besides wearied and lying down in retirement.
But your letter so gratified me that it both allayed the disease
under which I was labouring and filled my mind with a great
amount of pleasure. . . .

* You must not think that it was only to Caesar Scaliger
that I have praised your excellence. I have also praised it
to dear friends of mine at Bordeaux, many of them members
of the Parliament, whose friendship I enjoy through my
father, who is a councillor of that body. So that if your
plans should ever admit of a journey to Bordeaux, you will
know that there are some there who are well disposed
towards you. I wonder greatly why you so long delay to
give to the world a specimen of your rich erudition. . . .

vii THE ORATOR 129

' I now come to that part of your letter in which you
deny that you have attacked our Aquitaine. . . . You were
vexed that your native Gaul was insulted by Pinache, and,
that it might not be done with impunity, you attacked
Aquitaine, and retaliated upon it his insults. What is the
meaning of all those repetitions of the word " Gascons " in
your speech? "Who are assassins? The Gascons. Who
are robbers, who are given up to every kind of wickedness?
The Gascons." You know better than I what else you said
of the same kind, for the laughter of the French which
followed these questions prevented me from hearing what
you said next. And then as a chorus, after they had
abundantly applauded you with laughter, they cried out, as
I understand, " How well he paints Aquitaine in its proper
colours." I should not write thus to you did I not know
that by that part of your oration to which I have referred
many of my Gascon fellow-countrymen were offended, and
that nothing was listened to with greater pleasure by your
Gallic friends. How much better would it have been to
have refrained from Aquitaine, and to have poured forth all
the force of your eloquence upon your adversary. ... I do
not say these things at random, for I know many who before
the oration spoke of you with great respect, but who are
now altogether hostile to you ; and I doubt not that there
are many, even of those who laughed with you, whom if you
knew more intimately you would see are not really your
friends, since they detract from your reputation by bitter
and unjust speeches. How eagerly I have devoted myself
to defending your reputation many of the Gascons know,
and indeed, I fear when they see my affection for you, they
consider me a deserter into your camp. ... In answer to
your inquiry about Pinache, unless I deceive myself he will
never reply to your oration, unless indeed (for he is of a
light and inconstant disposition) he changes his mind.

K

130 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Believe me, he has laid aside his spear, nor will he hereafter
descend into the arena unless when he has a good prospect
of success. Let him spread the report if he wishes, that you
have answered his oration in a spiritless manner, certainly so
long as he keeps silence he confesses that he is overwhelmed
by the force of your arguments. Yet there are not wanting
those who strongly urge him to continue the strife, and I
therefore cannot venture to say positively whether he may
not change his mind and venture a reply to you. Farewell,
my Dolet, and receive this trifling of mine in good part. . .
Eloquence cannot be expected from one who, on account of
the burden which his lectures on the civil law entail upon
him, is wholly occupied with the works of Accursius,
Bartholus, Baldus, and other uncouth interpreters of the
law. Finally, there is one thing that I especially require from
you, namely, that you should for the present conceal and
suppress what I have written concerning your contention
with the orator of Aquitaine. For it is not right that what
I have confided to your breast should be open to those who
turn anything into matter for calumny. Pinache has asked
me to show him your letter, but I have replied that I shall
refer the matter to you, and shall not read the letter to any
one without your permission. Farewell, and continue to
love me.'

ETIENNE DOLET TO ARNOUL LE FERRON

' You must not be surprised that as yet I have published
nothing. Know that this proverb (worthy of a prudent
man) has governed my determination, Sat cito si sat bene.
I shall soon try the public taste with something that has
been suppressed until the ninth year, which has grown ripe
with age, and is neither crude nor hastily concocted. It
will soon go forth carefully finished and polished, but is now

vii THE ORATOR 131

undergoing that process in obscurity. Since this is the case,
endure for the present your longing for my lucubrations, and
for your friend's credit suffer them still to be only expected.
Those writings are sometimes approved by the vulgar which
in the judgment of the learned are rough and unpolished.
But that which I have on my hands, begun but at present
incomplete, I hope by care and diligence to bring to such
perfection that it may not displease the ignorant, and at the
same time may be approved by the learned. . . .

'You caution me lest our pleasant and friendly corre-
spondence should come into the hands of strangers. Do
not be afraid on this score. I will if you wish it destroy
your letters, or I will so carefully preserve and conceal them
that they can never be made known. Farewell.

' Toulouse, 29th Jan.'

/
ARNOUL LE FERRON TO ETIENNE DOLET

' . . . There have been two causes why I have not sooner
replied to your letter. One is that I have been suffering
from a very severe and dangerous illness . . . but now that
I am recovered I again with great pleasure to myself write
to you. . . .

* As to what you say that I am not to wonder that you
have not yet published anything since you keep back your
lucubrations till the ninth year (as the poet says), I entirely
approve your plan, and I shall now endure less heavily the
longing which I have for your Commentaries, for I see that
by delaying their appearance you will gain a greater reputa-
tion when you do publish them. Do not change your mind
on this point, since I see how ridiculous many make them-
selves, who in language picked up here and there, and with
patchwork sentences ill-sewn together, put their works
before the public forgetful of the proverb, Cants festinans

132 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

c<ecos parit catulos. Yet I do not the less condemn those
who, on the strength of a couple of tracts produced after an
immense time and labour, insolently arrogate to themselves
the title of most learned. Proceed therefore to polish as
much as possible what you have on hand, and apply yourself
with all your might to obtain that reputation which you
are sure to acquire from the publication of your Commen-
taries.

* Now as to Aquitaine .... I see that you have aroused
the anger of many whom you have admirably and ingeniously
described in your last letter, men who in your presence
admire your poems, praise your letters, and approve your
speeches, but who, when they have left you, paint you in
altogether different colours. I feel disposed to name one or
two of them (but there is no need to do so, you see clearly
to whom I am referring), who show such affection for your
adversary, so highly exalt and extol him, that they rouse my
indignation ; and even in my presence they sometimes speak
of you in so disparaging a manner that I drive them from
me with reproaches. . . . But I think you should despise
these worthless fellows, and consider their vile language of
no more account than Democritus is said to have done in a
similar case. He said he considered the slanders of his
detractors to be of the same character as the exhalations
from the stomach, which have an equally unseemly sound
whether they proceed from the upper or lower part of the
body. . . . But that I may not excite these men against
me, I conjure you to take care, as you have promised, that
this our pleasant and friendly correspondence does not fall
into other and unfriendly hands. Whether you should
destroy my letters is a matter for your own decision. Yet I
would rather that you preserved them, so that they might
sometimes remind you of your friend. This you may both
expect and promise to yourself, that my affection for you

vii THE ORATOR 133

will only be extinguished by death ; and I may very fairly
expect that you will make the like response to my good-will.
On account, therefore, of our singular mutual sympathy I
shall not hesitate to ask from you a clear proof of friendship.
I hear, my Dolet, from men of great learning that your
epigrams are much admired on account of their extreme ease
of expression (a quality rarely to be found), and their
harmonious ring. I could wish you not to forget me in
your epigrams, but to make mention of me, so that posterity
may understand that Arnoul Le Ferron was one whom the
great Dolet did not think unworthy of his friendship. You
might do this in some trifling epigram. I lay aside all
shame in venturing to ask this of you, yet I beg you to add
this to the favours you have already conferred on me.
Farewell.'

i
ETIENNE DOLET TO ARNOUL LE FERRON

' I have been much distressed by the bad state of your
health, and rejoice to hear that it is restored. ... I am
glad that you entirely agree with my opinion that my
writings ought to be of such a -kind as to afford me
an earnest of that fame which you predict for me. At
all events my offspring will be produced in due time,
and if it does not bring to its parent the credit of fer-
tility, it will at least relieve him from the reproach of barren-
ness. . . .

' I shall not fail to comply with your wishes, and that
which you so eagerly desire you will obtain from me
without difficulty. I shall do my utmost that posterity
may understand that Le Ferron was very closely connected
with Dolet, and was bound to him in the most intimate
friendship. . . .

' I shall therefore hasten to send some verses to you,

134 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

and so comply with your request.1 Take good care of
yourself, and especially attend to your health. Farewell.
Toulouse, Feb. i8.'2

Dolet now seems to have come to the conclusion that
Toulouse was no place for him. He does not appear to
have made much if any progress in his legal studies, and
he determined, if his patron Bishop de Langeac approved
and would provide the means, to leave for Italy in the
autumn and proceed to Pavia to study under Alciat, or to
return to Padua, the best place, as Boyssone thought, where
literary and legal studies could be pursued together. His
friend Clausanus, like himself a protege of the Bishop of
Limoges, had agreed to accompany him, and on the ist of
March he wrote the following letter to Langeac : —

' The money which you sent has been paid to me by
your brother. As it was of the greatest use to me, so it
made your great munificence towards me more clear and
evident. Though your good -will towards me does not
permit me to require this of you more earnestly, still I beg
of you to continue to support and foster my studies, which
up to this time you have most kindly and liberally assisted.
More on this subject I shall not write, lest I seem to be
urging a willing horse, and to be distrustful of your great
kindness. This only I will add, that it is my intention to
set out for Padua at the beginning of autumn in order there
to lay the foundation of my legal studies, and to complete
the literary course which I have undertaken. In this as in
all things I have need of your assistance, but I shall not ask
for it more earnestly until I have learned your opinion of
my plan. Since, then, you are the director of my counsels
and the promoter of my studies, I depend altogether upon

1 Dolet seems not to have fulfilled his promise until 1 536, when he wrote
a short ode, 'De Ferroni commentariis in constitutiones (sic) Burdigalenses.'

2 For these letters see Oral. Du& in Tholosam, pp. 75-85 and 152-162.

vii THE ORATOR 135

you, and I desire to hear as speedily as possible what you
wish to be done, in order that I may complete my arrange-
ments.

' The Archbishop l has lately arrived at Toulouse, suffer-
ing from a disease of such severity as to preclude the hope
of a much longer life, upon whom fortune, having been
more than sufficiently kind in loading him with the splen-
dours of rank and with enormous wealth, has now cast a
deadly disease. So the cruel goddess plays with us, and
suffers no one to be happy for long or to be in all respects
prosperous. But no more on this subject, when I consider
to whom I write — a man of the greatest weight, and one who
stands most firm in the midst of that ever to be derided
helplessness of human affairs. Oh, that upon his decease
you might be adorned with his insignia, as you ought by
right to be, as well on account of the greatness of your
virtues as of the pains you have devoted to the affairs of
the King.2 But God will dispose the matter. In the mean-
time I wish you every good wish, and shall pray for your
safety and prosperity. Farewell. Toulouse, March i .3 '

Dolet's wish to revisit Italy was not to be accomplished.
Little more than three weeks after the date of this letter
he was arrested and thrown into prison by the orders of the
Juge-mage Dampmartin, charged with exciting a riot and
with contempt of the Parliament.

1 This prelate was Cardinal Gabriel de Gramont, so well known in
our history as the Bishop of Tarbes, ambassador from Francis I. to Henry
VIII. He had been appointed to the archbishopric of Toulouse only five
months before the date of this letter, on the death of Jean d'Orleans,
Cardinal de Longueville, in Oct. 1533. He occupied the see of Toulouse
for less than six months, and died very shortly after the date of this letter
of Dolet, namely, on the z6th of March 1534.

2 Dolet's wish was not accomplished. On the death of Gabriel de
Gramont, Odet de Coligny, then only eighteen years of age, but already
a cardinal, was appointed to the archbishopric of Toulouse.

3 Orat. Duee in Tholosam, p. 137.

136 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Nullum me scelus in vincula conjici
Poscebat, neque per compita turpiter
Duci.

Thus he begins the bitter ode which he afterwards printed
against Dampmartin.1 It was to him that Dolet owed the
commencement of that long series of imprisonments which
caused one of his bitterest enemies, Franciscus Floridus
Sabinus, to call the prison his native country (patria Doleti},
for during the remainder of his short life (thirteen years
only) he suffered no less than five imprisonments, occupying
in the whole about five years, in addition to this at Toulouse.
This first imprisonment, however, was not of a very serious
character, or of very long duration. The heads of the
Parliament shared neither the ignorance nor the prejudices
of their subordinates. With Jacques de Minut as First
President and Jean Bertrandi as Second President it is
difficult to understand how Jean de Caturce could have been
committed to the flames. But their position, though it did
not enable them to save the evangelical martyr from the con-
sequences of heresy, yet rendered it easy for them to liberate
the young student, whose fault at the most was the use of
intemperate language. At this time Dolet was as it seems
entirely unknown to either of the Presidents. It was not
until some years later that he was introduced by the poet
Hugues Salel to Bertrandi, and the letter which he wrote to
the First President seems to address him as a stranger. It
is probable that Minut's first knowledge of him or his im-
prisonment 'Was the letter addressed to the First President
on Dolet's behalf by Jean de Pins. The good Bishop was
at this time labouring under a severe illness, and his letter
is written from his sick-bed. ' If I did not know,' he writes
to Minut, ' how favourable you were to liberal studies and
to those men who excel in them, I should not write or

1 Orat. Duee in Tholosam, p. 200.

vii THE ORATOR 137

recommend to you Etienne Dolet, a young man of rare
excellence and talent, nor should I ask you to afford him
in his danger your great and just patronage, which I am sure
you would do if you knew his great intelligence and learning.
I know that the singular ingenuity of his genius will delight
you not less than myself. He possesses so full and ready a
knowledge of the Latin tongue that he seems especially
suited to whatever subject he addresses himself. If you take
prose composition you would think he had done nothing else
the whole of his life. Do you seek for wit and acuteness in
speaking or the subtlety and point of an epistle ? You will
find that in each of these he approaches to the ancients. But
what is still more to be wondered at, he so excels in poetry
that you would desire nothing better than his odes, and these
he composes in various metres, which is a difficult task. If
he attempts elegiacs, you would think they were the work
of Ovid or Tibullus. If he writes lyrics, iambics, or hen-
decasyllables, you would think Horace or Catullus had com-
posed them. And yet with all these accomplishments I ask
for nothing more from you than that you would not suffer a
guileless and careless young man either to be exposed to the
hatred of others or to be crushed and oppressed by the testi-
mony of his enemies, but would protect his innocence. There
lately arose between him and some Gascon rhetorician certain
literary disputes which at first delighted me, since I thought
by that means their talents would be exercised and their
eloquence increased. . . . But things have turned out very
differently from what I expected, for, inflamed by the factious
desires of their partisans, they have passed from letters to arms ;
but in this, so far as I hear, no injury has yet been received
by any one. Dolet has been cast into prison, where he is
oppressed with the charges made against the whole of his
party, and he is even accused of a most serious offence,
namely, contempt of the Parliament. But I am unwilling to

138 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

say more lest I should be troublesome. Our common friend
who takes my letter to you will explain the whole of the
matter more fully. Farewell. Written from my sick-bed.1 '

This letter was accompanied by one from the prisoner
himself to the First President, protesting his innocence and
praying for his speedy release. Dolet's other friends, and
particularly Jean de Boyssone, were not wanting in their
sympathy and assistance. Immediately on hearing of his
imprisonment, Boyssone wrote a letter of sympathy and
counsel, assuring the unfortunate prisoner that he should be
most careful to do whatever he thought would tend to his
deliverance, and desiring to be informed what Dolet might
wish him to do or attend to. To this letter Dolet replied
from his prison as follows : —

' It is the special fate of men of letters to experience
more ill-will than falls to the lot of others, and to be unjustly
oppressed by vexation. I am paying the penalty of my pen,
and, absurdly enough, my injuries are caused by that very
thing from which I had hoped to acquire praise. But
personally I do not feel any alarm. This bitterness of
fortune is common to me with many others, and I am
neither greatly astonished nor very much troubled that what
I know to be the common fate of men of letters has
happened to me. The recollection of this alleviates the
grief which my condition occasions me. Moreover, the
many marks of friendship which I have received have both
refreshed and revived me. For, as before this time many
without my knowing it had much regard and good-will
towards me, so in this, my saddest time, they have all given
no doubtful proof how strongly they wish that Dolet should
be preserved safe and sound from all injury. But how much
consolation I have had from the consciousness of my own
rectitude, and how much alleviation in my misfortunes the

1 Orat. Dute in Tholosam, p. 149.

vii THE ORATOR 139

gentle Muses have afforded me, you will easily be able to
understand, though I am silent about it. This one thing I
can assert, that if there had been any love of learning, any
desire to act with justice in those in whom both these
qualities ought to be found in a very high degree, I should
not have been molested.

* I both value and commend your exceeding good-will
towards me, and I earnestly beg of you never to change it ;
I who was free, am now so bound to you that I am indeed
your most loving and devoted friend. My mind is brave
and constant and prepared to suffer all misfortunes which
may happen to me. Farewell. Toulouse, written in prison.' *

The result of the interference of his friends was that
Dolet was set at liberty by order of the First President de
Minut, after an imprisonment of only three days. He
remained two months longer at Toulouse, but his enemies
did not discontinue their machinations. Foiled in their
first attempt, Drusac, Pinache, and Dampmartin left no stone
unturned to obtain his condemnation by the Parliament for
using seditious and contemptuous language of that august
assembly.

1 Orat. Du<e in Tholosam, p. 90.

CHAPTER VIII

GuiLLAUME BUD£ AND JACQUES BoRDING

* Vir ad seculi sui gloriam natus, laudibus literariis abundans magnaque
cum propter singularem rerum omnium scientiam hominum admiratione
affectus, turn ob id potissimum, quod Grascas literas sua aetate intermortuas
exsuscitarit.' — HUET.

N the meantime neither
the persecutions of his
enemies nor the constant
vexation and anxiety
which they occasioned
him had either broken
the spirit or damped
the energies of Etienne
Dolet. His conceit, his
entire belief in himself,
in the goodness of his
cause, in his literary
abilities, and his deter-
mination to achieve
literary reputation, prevented him from feeling dismayed by
his present misfortunes. At no period of his life is his
correspondence more lively, more vigorous, and more
hopeful, than during the period between the delivery of his
second oration and his banishment from Toulouse.

CHAP, viii G. BUDE AND J. BORDING 141

At this time, Guillaume Bude, better known by the
Latinised form of his name Budasus, held the first place
among French men of letters. His friends indeed, and
perhaps the French generally, considered his reputation equal
to that of Erasmus, and were indignant with that great
scholar for placing him in his Ciceronianus on a level with
Josse Bade ; l but though Bude certainly in Greek scholar-
ship, and possibly in technical knowledge of the Latin
language and antiquities, was equal and perhaps superior to
Erasmus, he was little more than a scholar, altogether want-
ing in the genius and grasp of mind of the author of the
Colloquies and the Praise of Folly, who was not only a
scholar, but a man of genius, a social, political, and religious
reformer, occupied much more with men and things than
with words and phrases.

Bude was now (1533) sixty-six years of age. His Greek
epistles could have been written by no other Frenchman
of his time ; his annotations on the Pandects had taken rank
in France as the standard authority on Roman law ; his
treatise De Asse et partibus ejus, first published in 1514,
had already reached more than ten editions, had made its
author's name celebrated throughout Europe, and rivalled
in popularity as well as in solid learning, if indeed in the
latter it did not exceed, the Adages of Erasmus, though
wanting altogether in the play of fancy, the happy illustrations,
and the political and moral reflections which have enabled
the latter work to preserve some remnants of popularity
even in the nineteenth century.

To enjoy the friendship and good opinion of Bude was

1 Erasmus afterwards explained, what indeed is evident to any one
reading the tract, that it is merely in the matter of Latin style that he
places Budzeus and Badius together ; but it is not improbable that
Erasmus took a malicious pleasure in placing, for whatever purpose, his
rival on the same level with the meritorious and scholarly printer.

I42 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

an object of ambition to every young man of letters in
France, and Dolet accordingly, after the manner of those
days, although personally unknown to him, addressed him
in an elaborate Latin epistle, seeking for his favourable
notice ; and at the same time solicited the good offices of
Jacques Bording, who was then in Paris and on terms of
friendly intimacy with the great scholar. It will be re-
membered that it was to Bording that Dolet was indebted
for his introduction to Jean de Pins ; but soon afterwards
a coolness arose between them, which was followed by an
entire cessation of intercourse. When Bording left Tou-
louse for Paris, he and Dolet agreed to engage in a close and
constant correspondence in Latin on literary topics. Some
false friend, however, told Dolet that Bording had censured
his conduct and sympathised with his enemies. The state-
ment so made, which seems to have been entirely false,
rankled in the mind of the self-conscious and sensitive
Dolet, and after a short correspondence, written in a most
unfriendly spirit on the part of the latter, their intercourse
ceased for a time. We cannot but feel surprise that Dolet
should have allowed this correspondence to be printed, since
it is most discreditable to him, while the letters of Bording
are written with the utmost good feeling and good sense,
and are in marked contrast to the insulting and angry tone
of Dolet. The fact that he published the correspondence
is an illustration of the much greater attention which the
Ciceronians of that day paid to form than to matter.
Provided only a composition had the recognised Ciceronian
ring it was considered to give its author a claim to admiration,
however outrageous in sentiments or deficient in sense.

The good Bishop of Rieux had been much distressed by
the quarrel of his young friends, and urged Dolet to become
reconciled to Bording. To what extent the following letter
was due to the entreaties of Jean de Pins, or to the fact of

vin G. BUDE AND J. SORDINO 143

Bording's intimacy with Bude, may perhaps be considered
uncertain, but on the 26th of November 1533, Dolet wrote
to Bording as follows, enclosing the letter which he had
written to Bude : —

* I understand that you kindly and courteously are very
desirous that my mind, which had become somewhat
embittered against you, should again be reconciled. Our
friend Jean de Pins lately told me that he had received a
letter from you written in this spirit, and he strongly urged
me that whatever dissension there had been between you and
me, if I could not of my own accord lay aside, yet that I
should do so for his sake as well as for the sake of litera-
ture. ... So let it be. Certain unjust remarks which you
made about me at first wounded and grieved me much.
. . . But now, since I am disposed either to suspect that
these matters were falsely told me, or to be careless about
them, my mind, which at first overflowed with anger, has
become quiet, and all that enmity which your attack upon
me produced has disappeared. Therefore, in order that it
may be made manifest to all that I am reconciled to you, and
that your friendship is restored to me, I send this letter.
. . . But now let us talk familiarly as is the manner of
friends. I will tell you what is going on here.

' At Toulouse there is the same hatred of letters and the
same love of stupidity that there always has been. Not to
be tedious, the fools are as numerous and of the same
species as ever. But I will make an end of speaking ill, or
rather of speaking the truth, lest the truth may be made a
charge against him who is uttering it. I devote myself
entirely to literature and enjoy excellent health. How
satisfactorily and with what increase to my reputation I
performed my duties as orator (an office to which you know
I was appointed by the French) I would rather you should
learn from others than from myself. This much I may say

i44 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

to you, that no one ever before at Toulouse spoke his mind
more openly than I did. I refuted the decisions of the
Parliament against the French fraternity in an oration not
less brilliant than severe. This I shall shortly transcribe,
and send to you the first opportunity. You may without
doubt expect this gift from your friend. This also I should
tell you, that my term of office having expired, Thomasinus
succeeded me, whose power of writing and speaking is, I
think, known to you. To what extent he is likely to excel
you will readily guess. Our friend Jean de Pins suffers
severely from gout, nor does anything seem to assuage this
complaint, so that for the last two days he has been hardly
able to breathe or rest. More in my next letter. Now it
is your turn to inform me, in as friendly a manner and as
often as possible, of all your affairs, and carefully to write to
me, to whom you are specially attached, to whose friendship
you devote yourself, into whose intimacy you have thrown
yourself, how studies are carried on in Paris, to what extent
Greek literature is cultivated, whom you suspect, whom you
despise, whom you admire, and whom you neglect, who are
now in repute for eloquence, and whom you consider to
have attained the top of the tree. In fine, if you write all
this to me in a friendly letter, it will be very agreeable to me,
and I shall be most grateful ; I shall consider myself bound
to you for ever for so great a favour.

' It is reported here that you are very familiar with Bude.
I heartily congratulate you on having acquired the friend-
ship of so great a man, and beg most earnestly that you
would procure his good-will and favour for me. Farewell.
Love me, and bear in mind that you are especially loved
by me.' x

Bording replied to this letter in the tone and spirit which
his previous epistles would lead us to expect.
1 Or at. Du<s in Tholosam, p. 93.

vin G. BUDE AND J. BORDING 145

/
JACQUES BORDING TO ETIENNE DOLET

* I have received your letter and the one you enclosed
for Bude. As to your letter to me, in which you intimate
that you feel great affection for me, you cannot doubt that
it was most agreeable to me to receive. I read what you
say about our friendship being restored very gladly, but I
could wish, my Dolet, that it had remained undisturbed, and
that as you had begun, you would have continued to love
me, and would not have believed the words of certain evil-
minded persons rather than the testimony of men of virtue
who knew my special affection for you. Had you believed
them there would have been no need of Jean de Pins to
reconcile us, and I should rather submit to his authority in
any other matter than in this. But however it happened,
we may remember Amantium ir<£ amoris redintegratio est.
I rejoice that I have been challenged by your letter into
letting you know by my reply what my feelings towards you
are. Indeed, my Dolet, from the hour when I first knew
you I have both loved you and believed my love returned,
and have had that high opinion of you which I shall never
repent having had.

* It now remains for me to congratulate you on your
satisfactory discharge of your duty as orator. I do not
doubt that you have obtained all the rewards in the way of
praise and glory which are possible in a matter of that kind.
I wish I could have been present both to see and hear, yet I
shall regret my absence the less if you perform your
promise and permit me to read the oration ; remember
therefore that I shall anxiously expect the gift which you
have promised me, and take care neither to break your word
nor to disappoint my expectation.

' I gave your letter to Bude. He read it with much
pleasure, and immediately began to ask where you were,

L

146 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

what you were doing, and who were your associates. When
I asked whether he wished me to give you any message from
him, he replied that he would himself answer your letter ;
and he repeated this at another interview I had with him.
He said however that he was then more occupied than usual,
and but little disposed for letter-writing, and he added that
there was no necessity for hurry in the matter. I will again
remind him and urge him to write to you, so that you may
not think you have written in vain.

' I will now as you ask me write to you familiarly about
my own affairs, about the professors of eloquence and the
state of letters. Literature is still not without its revilers.
Some there are who accuse it of being the source of all
error, so much so as to prevent any good man being also
a philosopher, and many of those who are in authority
approve of this folly. Beda has lately been restored to his
office, but even before this we had felt the commencement
of his disturbance. Jean Cop, before his course of lectures
was finished, was obliged to fly from the city, otherwise he
would have had to make his defence in prison. Then
fierce and bitter attempts were made upon men distinguished
for their virtue and learning. As yet they are only im-
prisoned. No sentence has been publicly pronounced
against them, but we expect this to follow now that Beda is
in power.

' As to the professors of literature I have had the oppor-
tunity of hearing but few of them, and it is not easy for me
to form an opinion of them individually. A great deal is
expected from a certain Italian whom I think you knew in
Italy. He lately arrived here for the purpose of instruct-
ing the king. He promises in three months thoroughly
to teach an ignorant person Greek and Latin, and the
perfect faculty of both speaking and writing on any subject.
He is constructing here an amphitheatre for the king, for

vin G. BUDE AND J. BORDING 147

the purpose of marking out divisions for the memory. He
is also engaged in writing a dialogue against his detractors
and those who deny that he is able to do all this ; in which,
though with a certain covert mystery, he endeavours to
prove his system. At Venice, as I have heard from certain
Italians, commentaries on the language of Cicero on a plan
not unlike his amphitheatre are going through the press,
the work of M. Nizolius, who has squeezed into little nests
(as it were) the whole system of Latin composition. If you
know either the one or the other, write pray in your next
letter what you think we may expect from them.

'At another time I will write to you more at length.
Now I beg of you that you would continue to love me,
and would faithfully remember me to Jean de Pins, through
whom you have been restored to me, and that you take
care he preserves his affection for me. This will be easy
for you to do who enjoy such great favour with him. Fare-
well. Paris, 26th January.' 1

The letter which Dolet had written to Bude is one of
those polished complimentary letters of which we have so
many examples in the Latin correspondence of the men of
the Renaissance — full of pompous complimentary phrases,
but of absolutely no substance. It appears, however,
to have gratified the great man, and drew from him, three
weeks after its receipt,2 the following reply, which was
most acceptable to the young scholar of Toulouse, and
which was forwarded to him by the friendly Bording a few
days after the date of the last letter.

1 Orat. Du<e in Tholosam, p. 1 64.

2 It will be remembered that in somewhat similar circumstances Bude
was six months before replying to a letter of Rabelais. See the letter of
Bude, Budcei Opera (Basle, 1557), vol. i. p. 325.

148 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

GUILLAUME BUDE* TO E/TIENNE DOLET

' I have now for three weeks been disappointing your
expectation, as I gather it from your letter which does not
conceal the strong wish you had in writing it. And I
should show myself deserving of reprehension if I any
longer postponed replying to you ; indeed, in that case I
might be convicted of deceit by your friend Bording, who
delivered your letter to me and who begged me to answer
it. But what makes my procrastination still more blame-
able is that I had put your letter in a conspicuous place
in my study, that it might itself remind me of the duty
of writing to you. I have thus kept your letter before me
so as to have it as a daily appellant demanding of me the
slight labour which you impose upon me. . . .

' You must know that no kind of relaxation is more
agreeable to me when I am spending my time at home
devoted to reading or literary composition than letter-
writing. Those therefore who know my habits, and who
by writing to me call for letters in return, when they find
that I fail altogether in this duty do not on that account
remonstrate with me, especially at this time, at my age,
and with the heavy official duties I have to perform.1
Even omitting my official duties, how much leisure do you
think remains to me which I could devote to this kind of
correspondence ? Besides, since letters are in the nature
of an amusement, they ought to be written with a youthful
sprightliness and liveliness of style. But might I not also
add this, that I am not now the same man that I formerly
was ? For in order not completely to divorce myself from
philology, which has for so long been my companion, my
associate, my mistress, bound to me by every tie of in-
timate affection, I have been compelled to loosen the
1 Bude was a maitre des requetes.

vni G. BUDE AND J. HORDING 149

chains of so devouring a love, and to relax the bonds of
a connection the closeness of which I found to be destruc-
tive to my health.

' What you so kindly and ingeniously say in your elegant
and terse letter of your devotion and regard for me is
both pleasant and acceptable, indeed most acceptable, as it
ought to be ; and I wish you to believe that I have that
disposition towards you that makes me desire to inter-
change good offices with you on equal terms, and to
show to you the same measure of kindness and good-will
which you do to me, and this without any pretence of idle
talk. But although from your letter I have been in some
measure able to judge of your learning, of your mode of
life and your position I really know nothing. Farewell.
That which in your letter you have urged upon me so
strongly, namely that I should include you in the number
of my friends, you may be satisfied on the faith of this
letter you have obtained. Paris, 24th January.' l

Letters of which the following are extracts complete
the correspondence : —

ETIENNE DOLET TO JACQUES BORDING

* I have received your two letters and that from Bude.
What great delight the latter afforded me you cannot
doubt, since I had written to you before how much I wished
to receive a letter from him. . . .

* I am amazed and indignant to learn that the monstrous
and vicious beast Beda, that execrable pest, has been re-
called from exile. There has been a rumour here that he
has again attempted some wickedness, and has on that
account been cast into prison. I hope this may be true,
and that he may receive a punishment worthy of his crimes

1 Or at. Du<e, p. 167.

1 50 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

and of his wicked disposition. I rejoice as heartily to hear
that Jean Cop is restored, as I imprecate upon the head of
Beda as upon a malignant tumour and excrescence, all evils
and injuries. As to those who are devoted to humane
letters in these our unhappy and turbulent times, I wish
that they would care more for their own safety and immu-
nity than for fame and for a distinction which is destructive to
them, and would rather speak cautiously and circumspectly
than pour forth all their opinions without distinction so
openly as they do. If those who have been especially dis-
tinguished by learning had acted with such caution and
prudence, they would not have suffered from nor exposed
themselves to the ferocity of those fools and idiots, nor (as
has usually happened) would they have been cast into prison.
' As to the fellow who promises to give in three months
to an uncultivated man ignorant of the rudiments of gram-
mar, as by a divining wand, a knowledge either of the
Greek or of the Latin tongue, and a perfect capacity of
speaking and writing concerning any subject, I recognise
that portentous specimen of the Italian character, and the
line of Horace comes into my mind —

Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

' The imposture of the fellow however would be endurable
were it not that by its means he is expecting to deceive the
king and is meaning to practise among us [in France] all
those devices for money-getting which he understands. He
really pretends to endow a man without any labour of his
own, with an abundance of that oratorical power in which,
as the severe judges of this have told us, no age since the
memory of man has yet produced any one sufficiently
instructed. He may build his amphitheatre for marking off
his divisions of memory, he may be assisted by the Com-
mentaries on the language of Cicero of M. Nizolius of

vin G. BUDE AND J. HORDING 151

Venice, and if you ask me what I think of it I bid you again
repeat the line of Horace. A commonplace rhetorician
will not persuade me that within three months that subject
can be completely acquired by an ignorant man, a partial
excellence in which scarcely any one in the whole course of
his life after assiduous labour and diligence can attain to.
As far as we are concerned however he may enjoy his own
folly, and may boldly promise that of which he neither
knows the difficulty nor can have properly mastered or
studied the theory. Yet there is one thing which does vex
me much ; it is that our countrymen are so eager after, and
so partial to what is barbarous and foreign that they neglect
those things which they have at home most worthy of praise,
and with a ridiculous folly admire and purchase at a great
price whatever is foreign. But what shall I say of this
man? No one will persuade me that he can add anything
to the most excellent and never sufficiently to be praised
learning of Bude, to the rare and amazing eloquence and
flowing language of Berauld, to the purity and elegance
of style of Danes and Bunel, to the profound and remark-
able erudition of Toussain and Guillaume du Maine, to the
poetical grace of Salmon Macrin, or to the pleasant live-
liness of Nicolas Bourbon. Yet we see neither Bude nor
any of the other Frenchmen who are most accomplished
in liberal studies, and who are admitted into the number
of classics, enriched by any fortune, while we all keep
silence before the windbags and empty triflings of Italians ;
and at their mere words, delivered with swelling breasts and
pufFed-out cheeks, we eagerly hold our breath, we open our
purses, and allow that which is truly excellent to be circum-
vented and supplanted by that astute and deceitful race.

* So much as to these matters. I now relate what has
happened since my last letter to you. The association
of the Gascons as well as of the French has been dissolved

152 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

by decree of the Parliament. This decree was vehemently
complained of by all of us, as both unjust and unusual.
But we were not able to attain our object, and the power
and authority of the barbarians outweighed our desire of
cultivating friendship. An altercation arose between Pinache
and myself. I publicly defended myself against his attacks.
He was utterly crushed by my oration, and when he found
himself intellectually my inferior, he wickedly used fraud,
and with a false accusation that in my oration I had not
only attacked the Parliament but had violated the honour
of the city of Toulouse, he caused me to be thrown into
prison, not only participating in doing the injury to me,
but even taking the lead in it. For some days I suffered
from the general unpopularity of my friends, which how-
ever was easily put down by the authority of our friend
Jean de Pins and the assistance of the President de Minut.
I derived both great advantage and glory from the machina-
tions and perfidy of my enemies, since I was convicted of
no crime, but was formally acquitted by the Parliament.
The oration which I formerly promised you, as well as the
one I lately delivered against Pinache, you must not expect ;
you will read neither of them until they are printed,
together with my collection of poems and epistles, but you
must not on this account accuse me of not keeping faith
with you. I should have kept my promise had I not been
deterred by the too great loss of time which I have found
would be occasioned by copying these things ; but as you
have waited for them upwards of three months you will
easily endure the addition of one or two months more.

* I have replied to the letter of Bude, and I beg that you
would give my letter to him, and would induce him (at
his convenience) to write to me again. Our mutual affection
forbids me from suggesting to you, much less asking you,
to write to me fully and exactly of your own affairs and

viii G. BUDE AND J. BORDING 153

of all matters which go on at Paris. Jean de Pins is well
and sends you a hearty remembrance. Farewell. From the
city of Toulouse, 22nd April.' l

ETIENNE DOLET TO GUILLAUME BUDS'

* . . . Your letter was most agreeable to me, not only
because I found you were not displeased at my writing to
you, but because you showed that you responded to my
affection. I was indeed triumphant in my delight that I
had at length obtained what I so long wished for. I now
rejoice to know that you are so well disposed towards me,
and I could wish that fortune could so bring it about that
you should make as much account of me as I do of you,
and should show as much good-will to me as I show re-
spect to you. Nor do I despair of arriving at this, know-
ing as I do my own singular esteem for you, and relying
upon the great affection which you are in the habit of
showing to those who are students of eloquence. . . .

' I now come to the latter part of your letter, and since
you say that you have been able in some measure to judge
of my learning, but that you know nothing of my mode
of life or position, I will now give you at length both an
account of my life and my present position.

' I was born at Orleans, a noble city of our Gaul and of
much renown, in how honourable and indeed distinguished
a position among my fellow-citizens I leave those to speak
of who place virtue below birth. Liberally brought up at
Orleans, at twelve years of age I went to Paris, where
I received the rudiments of my education, and diligently
devoted myself to all those subjects by which young men
are accustomed to be trained to mental culture. For five
years I there cultivated my mind, giving myself up prin-

1 Orat. Du<e, p. 98.

154 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

cipally to the study of Cicero. Soon, influenced by a desire
of cultivating the highest eloquence, I betook myself to
Italy ; there I passed three years at Padua in intimate friend-
ship and association with Simon Villanovanus, by whose
death being deprived of so dear a friend, and one who was
so great a help to my studies, I thought of returning
forthwith to France. But I was detained for some time
longer in Italy, as well at the request as by the authority of
Jean de Langeac, who at that time filled the office of
ambassador to Venice, and who employed me to write letters
both to the Supreme Pontiff and to other correspondents.
In this employment another year was added to the three
which I had already spent in Italy ; nor, though I wished it,
was I able to return, but was compelled to wait until the
business of the embassy was finished, and then in the
ambassador's company I returned to France less ignorant
and more devoted to the study of eloquence than I had left
it. Now I think you know the greater part of my history,
the rest I will relate in a few words. Now that I am
returned to France I resolutely pursue the same course
which I began in my earliest youth. I am absorbed in
literature ; and as from the first, out of all the number of
Latin writers I set Cicero before me as my model, so now I
am writing commentaries on the Ciceronian diction, adding
also illustrations from the pure language of Sallust, Caesar,
Terence, and Livy. This useful work will appear in due
time, with my other lucubrations. I thus pass over the
second act of my drama and proceed to the last By the
advice of my many patrons and friends who are always
helping me with their most loving and friendly counsels,
and who wish me to be covered with honours and to aspire
to the highest reputation, I have decided to devote myself
to the civil law, which I have thought not to be altogether
opposed to the course of my studies. For certainly my

vin G. BUDE AND J. BORDING 155

oratorical power may be very much embellished by legal
studies, and may even be considerably assisted by them. In
order to devote myself to these subjects as satisfactorily as
possible, and to follow the advice of those who say that no
art can be properly studied without a teacher and without
some practical instruction, and who assert that the civil law
especially needs both a teacher and an explanation, I have
come to Toulouse, a city of greater celebrity and renown
than of real knowledge of the civil law, and the inhabitants
of which are more barbarous than the Getas of the Scythians.
But be this as it may, no rudeness of this barbarous city
withdraws me from my design. I have now devoted to the
civil law not much less than two years continuously, and
I have so spent my time that I have given some hours
each morning or evening to the reading of Cicero. The
remainder of the day I give to my principal subject, either
in private study or public exercises. Thus I devote myself
to the science of law as my friends wish me to do and as
I am not ashamed of doing, for certainly a knowledge of
law will be a great assistance and recommendation to me in
seeking for public employment, and at the same time it will
increase my power of expressing myself by giving me an
insight into the true and just. It is not however certain that
I shall finish my legal studies at Toulouse, as I am think-
ing of setting out for Padua or Pavia in order to see Alciat l
and the other Italian professors of law utter their sesquipedalia

1 Alciat at this time enjoyed the highest reputation of any living man
as a commentator and lecturer on the civil law. He was now Professor
of Jurisprudence at Pavia. He had filled the chair of Civil Law at
Bourges from 1528 to the end of 1532, when he returned to Italy,
Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, having conferred upon him the appoint-
ment of Professor in Pavia, with a salary of 1 500 crowns. He continued
at Pavia until 1537. Panciroli, who knew him well, thus describes him,
' Vir fuit corpulentus, procerae staturae, auri avidus habitus est et cibi
avidior* (De claris legum interpret, lib. ii.).

156 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

verba with solemn pomp, or furiously attack Accursius and
Bartholus, lest they should seem to know too little. I shall
then insinuate myself into some one's intimacy with whom
to laugh in a learned and familiar manner at these matters.

' I hope before long to make a journey to Paris and to
meet you there face to face. If before this happens you
write a letter to meet me on the way informing me of your
health and telling me what is passing at Paris, I shall believe
that you keep me in your memory, and you will gain this
advantage, that when I come to see you you will not have
to narrate to me what you have already written. Farewell.
Toulouse, 22nd April.'1

The Italian referred to in the letters of Hording and
Dolet was the clever, eccentric, and learned charlatan Giulio
Camillo of Forli, surnamed from his father's birthplace
Delminio. Philosopher, orator, poet, philologist, mythologist,
and astrologer, of great skill in the cabalistic sciences, of
much real and of more pretended learning, he had conceived
the extraordinary and impracticable idea of a number of
categories which should embrace all the divisions and sub-
divisions of human knowledge and of human thought. These
he proposed arranging in a number of small drawers or
niches in a large machine or box in the form of an amphi-
theatre, in which the signs of the planets marked off the
primary divisions of the mind. Each drawer was labelled
with some quality of the mind, and by changing the labels
it could be adapted to any science. By the aid of this
theatre an ignorant man was to become master of any
language or branch of science in an incredibly short time.
It was however specially adapted for the study of Latin and
Greek, and for enabling a student to attain proficiency in
composition and oratory. To the perfecting of this theatre
he devoted forty years. He was at this time in Paris in

1 Orat. Duee, p. 103.

vin G. BUDE AND J. BORDING 157

high favour with Francis I., who gave him five hundred
ducats to enable him to carry out his idea and build his
theatre, a model or portion of which, containing all the
principles and rules of oratory as laid down by Cicero,
symmetrically arranged, had much interested the king. In
Paris he became intimate with Sturm and Calvin. The
former believed both in the depth of his learning and the
earnestness of his piety. Calvin seems to have had much
less respect for him.1 Dolet had known him at Padua, and
had as it appears taken a violent dislike to him, besides
having that feeling of contempt which any man of real

1 Schmidt, Mem. sur Roussel, 219, 220 ; D'Aubigne, Hist. Ref. Temps
de Calvin, b. iv. c. i. In 1537 we find hftn at Padua, where Paleario
knew him, and thus refers to him in one of his letters to Lampridius
(Book i. Ep. 17) : — 'Giulio Camillo is building a theatre at great cost.
There never was such a conspiracy among the ignorant, who think that
without study or labour they will be able to write like Cicero. With a
view to this he arranges a number of cards in little boxes. This is a fact,
my Lampridius. dvrjp 6 Aoyo&uSaAos TOV ' A/HO-TITTTTOV Aa/z/3avei /?Aevoi>s
KCU TOV MiSov 6rjp€vet dvay/Dovs. You laugh ! I am not joking ; he has
collected a great deal of money from those to whom he promises mastery
in eloquence.' Camillo died in 1544 (and not in 1550 as stated in the
Biographie Generate], without having completed his theatre or published
any account of it. He left, however, in manuscript two not very intel-
ligible descriptions or explanations of it, one of which has remained
unpublished, and is probably in the Bib. Nat. (an early copy of it is in
my possession). The other was edited by L. Domenichi and printed
at Florence by Torrentino in 1550, under the title of V idea del
Theatro delt excellen. M. Giulio Camillo (4°, 88 pp.). It was reprinted
the same year at Venice and reappeared in the editions of the collected
works of Camillo given by Giolito of Venice in 1552, 1554, 1567, 1568,
1579, 1580, and 1581. See for Camillo, in addition to the works before
cited, his life by Federigo Altan di Salvarolo contained in vol. i. of Nuova
raccolta a" opuscoli scientifci e filologici (Venezia, 1755) edited by Calogiera ;
also Tiraboschi, vol. vii. p. 2226 (edit, of 1824) ; Freytag, Apparatus Lin.
vol. iii. pp. 128-132 ; Young's Life of A. Paleario, i. p. 545 ; Erasmi
Epist. ccclxx. p. 1754 ; Gilb. Cognati Opuscula, p. 84, where, in an epistle
to Metellus, is an account of the theatre as described to the writer by
Sebastian Rosarius.

1 58 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

learning, or who knew what learning really meant, could
hardly fail to have for one who professed by mechanical con-
trivances, however ingenious, to enable one wholly ignorant
of Latin and Greek to become complete masters of these
languages in three months.

Two odes directed against Camillo appear amongst
Dolet's poems, one of them written about this time and
sent in manuscript by Dolet to Francis de Langeac, a brother
of the Bishop of Limoges, with the following remarks :
' I send you an ode, the subject of which is as follows. A
new master of eloquence has appeared from the shades ;
an ignorant, uneducated fellow has rushed down upon us
from Italy, ignorant of "the Latin language and of all polite
letters, and since no other kind of imposture has succeeded
with him he has adopted this method of making money,
namely, by promising in less than a month to teach the use
of the Latin tongue, the faculty of oratory, and the art of
making verses — a thing within the memory of man unheard
of and worthy only of perpetual laughter : if you wish to
remain like yourself, you will treat his system as one for
taking pains to be mad by rule. Yet (for the French
are easily cheated with words) he has finely choused1 the
king out of his money, having promised him certain com-
mentaries by means of which, even against our will or
when we are asleep, he can imbue us with all learning. I
am half ashamed of being so wanting to myself as to
have ridiculed so small a matter at such great length.
Yet I am anxious to hear what you say about these things.
I know many in France by whose talents and attainments

1 It is curious to note that here, and in the ode which follows, Dolet
uses the same word in reference to Camillo as Alciat in a letter to Fran-
ciscus Calvus, printed in Gudii Epistolte cur ante Burmanno, pt. i. p. 109.
Dolet says, ' Regem tamen nummis pulchre emunxit ' ; Alciat's words
are, ' (Regem) emunxit sexcentos aureos.'

vni G. BUDE AND J. BORDING 159

I hope the Italian will be made to understand that eloquence
and literary renown (of which his countrymen claim a
monopoly for themselves) are also common to the French,
and that they will then cease to treat us as dumb children
who, having neglected the study of literature, tend beyond
others into weakness, and may be deluded into any scheme
however mad.' l

' Ardua promittis, solo vel mense disertos

Cum te nos juras reddere posse viros ;
Promissum hoc nihil est, nihil est has fundere nugas,

Est quoque nil, musas vel superare novem.
Id tibi cum multis commune est, Gallia centum,

Qui facile id praestent Gallia mille dabit.
Ast aliud nosti solus, quo Pallada vincis

Quicquid et Atlantis scit vafer ille nepos.
Vis dicam ? nosti Reges emungere nummis :

Est id, quo doctum vincere quenque potes.
Hos nobis astus tua si documenta recludent,

Quis tibi pro tantis artibus astra neget ?
Major eris Phoebo, quod si Jovis aula placebit,

Tu Jove depulso Jupiter altus eris.' 2

The time for Dolet's final departure from Toulouse had
now arrived. At the end of May or in the first days of
June 1534, and whilst suffering from a fever, the result
as it would seem of mental anxiety, he had hastily to
withdraw from Toulouse to avoid a second arrest. He
retired to a friend's house in the country, proposing to
remain there in concealment until the storm had passed
over, as he at first thought it would do, when he might again
return to his studies. Yet he was apparently in some
doubts as to his future. His inclinations led him to desire,
as we have seen, to pay a second visit to Italy ; and if he
was to continue his legal studies, to do so either at Pavia
or at Padua. But before leaving France, Dolet was

1 Orat. Du<e, p. 97. 2 Id. p. 1 86.

160 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

desirous of committing to the press his two orations, his
poems, and some letters which had passed between himself
and his friends. It is not probable that Toulouse would
have afforded a printer for a book which contained such
violent attacks upon the city, its magistrates, and its
populace, and it was towards Lyons that he already directed
his views. He proposed taking it on his way to Italy,
and remaining there so long as might be needed to see his
lucubrations through the press.

On the 8th of June he wrote to Boyssone a letter
full of indignation against his enemies and against Tou-
louse, and giving his friend an account of his studies and
occupations. ' I devote myself to literature with as much
energy as my health allows. I am amplifying and polishing
both my speeches, and intend to publish my lucubrations
as speedily as possible. The passage in which I have
sought to celebrate and exculpate you, you will receive with
this letter.' l

The following is an extract from Boyssone's reply :
* Until I received your letter I did not know where in the
world you were. Different reports had reached me about
you, some saying that you had started for Lyons, others
for Limoges. With such different reports reaching me
how could I write to you ? But from the time I learned
from your letter where you were, I have thought of
nothing more constantly than of writing to you.

* As to what is going on here, since you wish me to
tell you about it, know that you have left behind you much
affection among many, and that the number of those who
esteem you and grieve that you have departed is not small :
among them are the noblest and most honourable matrons
of the city, with whom you have acquired great favour on
account of your epigrams against Drusac. For my own
1 Orat. Du<z, p. 1 20.

vin G. BUDE AND J. HORDING 161

part, my Dolet, if I took account only of my own wishes,
nothing more grievous could have happened to me than
your departure; but since your plans required it, I should
show myself ignorant of the laws of friendship if I did not
cheerfully give up my habit of living in the enjoyment of
your society, and did not put in the first place the considera-
tion of your interest. Go then where your interest calls you ;
fly this ungrateful land, fuge littus avarum. When you
reach Lyons salute in my name Sebastian Gryphius, whom
I extremely love and hold very dear. Take care of your
health ; for while I have been writing your friend Clausanus
has told me that you are ill, which I very much grieve to
hear, knowing as I do that if you were well in mind you
would be well in body.

' A certain Omphalius * has lately come from Paris, with
a great reputation for learning. I have not yet seen him ;
when I have done so I will write to you again. Farewell.
Toulouse, June I3/2

A week later Dolet thus writes to the same friend : —

'The severity of the illness which up to this time has
racked me has alone prevented me from replying to your
letter earlier, and though I have to some extent improved
and have got rid of the disease, yet I am not in any way
restored to health nor have I recovered my bodily strength.
But I am taking care of myself, and I am in good hopes
that God will afford me some remedy, so that shortly by the
help of nature I may throw off the remainder of my disease.

' You would scarcely believe what great pleasure letters
from my friends afford me in this my retreat, and especially
the letters of those who, together with the expressions of
their love, display no ordinary purity and elegance of style.

1 See his Dialogus ' Fatum,' at the end of his Nomologia, Colonize,
1558. He mentions Minutius, Pinus, Boyssone and Vulteius.

2 Or at. Dutf, p. 174.

M

162 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

In this you particularly excel, and afford me a certain hope
that one day you also will be reckoned among those who are
distinguished for eloquence, unless indeed the nonsense of
Bartholus and Accursius prevent you from pursuing that
kind of reputation. What I very much fear is, that inhabit-
ing a city hostile to eloquence you will become less and less
disposed to study it, and will be inclined to treat polite
literature somewhat too scornfully and disdainfully.

' I am very pleased to learn that there is affection felt for
me and a pleasant remembrance of me left among the good ;
this is a proof that I am hated by the wicked only. I hear
that Drusac is continually and with increased bitterness
urging the Parliament to issue an edict against me. He is
a savage and brutal wild beast, whose unbridled fury not
even the flight of his enemy has allayed.

* In conclusion, there is one thing of which I wish to
assure you, namely, that I feel no less grief at being separated
from you than you do at my departure ; but since we cannot
longer be together, and my plans call me elsewhere, let us
fill up our separation by the frequency of our letters. Of
Omphalius I only know the name. If you have ascertained
what sort of a man he is or what is the extent of his learning
let me know, and let me receive from you, what I greatly
desire, a letter about all manner of things. Farewell.
Written in the country, 22nd June.' l

Dolet's withdrawal from Toulouse had not the effect of
putting a stop to the attempts of his enemies against him.
That the First President used his influence in his favour is
certain, and Dolet always referred to him afterwards with grati-
tude and esteem. But neither the moderation of the First and
Second Presidents, nor the friendship of the Bishop of Rieux,
was able to prevail against the bigotry and not improbably
the personal dislike of the major part of the Councillors,
1 Or at. Du<e, p. izi.

viii G. BUDE AND J. HORDING 163

instigated by the Lieutenant-General of the Seneschalty, and
the Juge-mage, and supported by the capitouls. Dolet had
just signed the last letter to Boyssone on June 22nd, when
he received the news that the Parliament had passed a decree
sentencing him to perpetual banishment from the city and
from the whole of the district within its jurisdiction. He
thereupon added the following postscript : —

' Since signing my letter to you I have received news,
both by messengers and by letters, that Drusac has obtained
an edict forbidding my return to Toulouse. I am in no
degree disturbed by the persecution of so worthless a fellow,
nor in this season of trouble and wretchedness do I any the
less preserve my courage, but, as in tranquil and prosperous
times when my affairs go on as I wish I endeavour to show
myself firm and steadfast, so now I endeavour bravely to
resist misfortunes. Hence my troubles are not increased,
but alleviated by the firmness of my mind and the record
of a good conscience. I devote myself wholly to literature,
and with this occupy all my time ; this takes away my mind
from my annoyances and troubles, and brings no slight
forgetfulness both of my pain and sickness, and forcibly
impresses on me, as a man exposed to all the shafts of
fortune, that one ought only to be troubled if one is guilty
of some crime or wickedness, and not because of misfortune
or of the insults of the wicked. I therefore desire to be
judged by my character, not by my fortunes. If you would
write to me what you hear or see of this matter you would
alleviate my vexations and gratify the desire of your friend.
Again farewell.'

Shortly after the date of this letter Dolet found it
needful, although suffering severely from illness, to leave his
hiding-place and start for Lyons. He would seem to have
performed the journey, about two hundred and fifty miles,
on foot, in company with his faithful friend Simon Finet.

164 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, vin

The summer was an unusually hot one, the roads deep in
dust, and on his arrival at Le Puy en Velay he was again
attacked by fever and detained some days. Here, just as he
was leaving for Lyons, his heart was gladdened by receiving
a letter from his friend Clausanus, to whom at his first halt
on the same day he wrote or commenced a reply : ' Your
letter delivered to me early this morning filled me with joy,
because I found that all with you was as I wished it to be,
and also because I found that you had not changed your
intention of accompanying me to Italy. This letter, full of
dust and hurry, I have written to you on my journey, at
three hours' distance from Le Puy, where I had to stay for
some days owing to a severe attack of illness. Now I am
two days' distance from Lyons, where, unless my health
prevents me from making my regular day's march, I shall
arrive on the ist of August.' l

Although he accomplished his design and reached Lyons
on the ist of August (1534), he arrived worn out both in
mind and body. ' When I reached Lyons,' he afterwards
wrote to Boyssone, ' I had no hope of restoration to health
and even despaired of my life.'

1 Or at. Duee, p. 126.

CHAPTER IX

LYONS

' C'est un grand cas voir le Mont Pelion,
Ou d'avoir veu les ruines de Troye :
Mais qui ne voit la ville de Lyon,

Aucun plaisir a ses yeux il n'octroye.'

CLEMENT MAROT.

N ancient city known by
the name of Lugdunum
formerly reared its head
in a lofty situation, which,
after it had been burnt
down, was rebuilt by
Plancus, then in command
of the Roman armies, at
the foot of the mountain
looking towards the north.
Through its centre the
Saone rolls its sluggish
waters, and on one side
it is girded by the Rhone ;
then each of the two streams flowing with a gentle current
receives the other into its bosom. Rich, populous, and
adorned with splendid buildings, it opens its markets as well
to strangers as to its own citizens.'

1 66 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Such is the description which in one of his poems Dolet
gives us of the city which was henceforth to be his home,
and which during a considerable part of the sixteenth century
may fairly be considered the intellectual capital of France.
It recalled Italy not only in its climate, but in its literary
and artistic tastes, and in the intellectual freedom which
(compared with the rest of France) it enjoyed. In civilisa-
tion, as well as in commerce, it was more Italian than
French. Upwards of a century earlier we find the founda-
tions laid of that colony of noble and learned Florentine
merchants, some brought by political, others by commercial
emergencies, which towards the end of the sixteenth century
numbered upwards of fifty-nine families. The Pazzi and
the Gondi had settled at Lyons in the fifteenth century, and
had shown to the French that in the most civilised nation in
the world the pursuit of commerce was not incompatible with
nobility of birth, with polished manners, or with literary
and artistic culture. Coming from what was the home of
literature and art, the Italians brought with them that higher
civilisation to which France was generally then a stranger.

Learned Italians and Greeks who followed introduced on
this side of the Alps a knowledge of Greek and of a better
Latin literature. Lyons then, as still, wealthy, turbulent,
liberal and progressive, had given to the colony a hospitable
welcome, and had been rewarded, not only by the advances
made in civilisation and culture, but by the substantial
advantages which the Italians rendered to the city. Great
and flourishing as it had been for centuries, it is to the
Italian colony that Lyons is indebted for the introduction of
that art which subsequently made it the greatest and most
flourishing commercial city of France — the manufacture of
silk. It became the headquarters for all the monetary and
commercial transactions between France and Italy. The
strangers built mansions which rivalled in solidity and dignity

ix LYONS 167

those of their forefathers at Florence or Lucca. They
adorned the churches with a magnificence till then unknown.
It was for the Florentine Chapel in the Dominican Church
at Lyons (which by a special privilege was declared to be
the parish church of the Florentines) that Salviati painted
his great masterpiece The Incredulity of St. Thomas.

Nowhere out of Paris were there to be found during the
sixteenth century so many or so distinguished men of letters
as at Lyons. The literary natives and regular residents
even were great in number, and many of them men of ability
and eminence. Symphorien Champier, equally distinguished
in medicine as in literature, occupied now in founding the
College of Medicine, now in deciphering and arranging in
order the old chronicles ; Benoit Court, whose delightful
commentaries on the Arresta Amorum afford one of the
earliest specimens of that spirituelle finesse in which the
French writers have since been so proficient ; Maurice Sceve,
a poet and an antiquary, whose praises have been sounded by
men so different as Marot, Du Bellay, and La Croix du
Maine ; his cousin Guillaume Sceve, equally devoted to
literature ; Charles de Sainte Marthe, a poet, a theologian,
and a reformer ; Guillaume du Choul, whose collection of
Roman coins and antiquities was the only one on this side
the Alps worthy to be called a collection, and whose work
on the castrametation of the Romans continued for two
centuries the standard authority on that subject ; Charles
Fontaine, whose literary criticisms are always marked with
point and sense, if we cannot accord to him the high rank
as a poet which his contemporaries considered was his due ;
Barthelemi Aneau, whose Mystere de la Nativite is by many
regarded as the parent of the French opera ; Sanctes Pagnini,
the great Hebraist, who had been a pupil of Savonarola ;
all these were at this time living at Lyons, where indeed
they passed the greater part of their lives, and they form a

i68 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

company of men of letters who could not be equalled in
France out of Paris. Yet they were far eclipsed by the men
of still greater eminence who resided for longer or shorter
periods, and some of whom paid more than one lengthened
visit to Lyons.

Francois Rabelais, Clement Marot, Michael Servetus,
Bonaventure Des Periers, Salmon Macrin, Hubert Sussanneau,
Nicolas Bourbon of Vandceuvre, all passed several years of
their lives at Lyons between 1530 and 1540, whilst Erasmus,
Robert Estienne, Pole, Sadolet, Calvin, Beza, Antoine de
Gouvea, fimile Ferret, and Jean Second were no infrequent
visitors ; and Bude, the greatest in repute of all, must have
visited Lyons at least twice, though I find no detailed
accounts of his visits. It may be indeed that the greatest
intellects of the time either resided wholly in Paris, or made
but a temporary sojourn at Lyons. The Estiennes, Marot,
and perhaps Beza, desired never to leave Paris, and only the
bitter persecution which they experienced at the hands of the
enemies of all learning, of all literature, of all enlightenment,
drove them to seek homes in the freer commonwealths of
Geneva and Berne, or among the mountains of Piedmont.
Yet at Lyons there was far more intellectual freedom than
at Paris. The sinister action of the Court and of the
Sorbonne was less felt. The Cardinal de Tournon, bigot
though he was, seems to have left the capital of the south,
of which he was first the governor and afterwards the arch-
bishop, more liberty than he allowed the royal city where
his hopes and ambitions centred ; while his lieutenants, the
Trivulces and Jean de Peyrat, had strong sympathies with
intellectual progress, and used all their influence (though
often in vain) to protect letters and their students from the
attacks of ecclesiastical bigotry. And a society that numbered
among its members Rabelais, Marot, Des Periers, Dolet,
Sceve, Macrin, Champier, and Aneau, must have enjoyed a

ix LYONS 169

freedom of intellectual intercourse which was wanting in the
great capital so jealously watched over by the Sorbonne and
the Parliament, where every word that could tend to religious
or intellectual freedom was instantly pounced upon and
brought its utterer under the censure — if not worse — of one

O

of these venerable bodies.

If we are to believe the Pere de Colonia l — and his state-
ment has often been repeated — it is to Lyons that the
honour belongs of the establishment of the earliest of those
literary societies or academies for which France was after-
wards to become so famous. The Academy of Fourviere
(so called from the venerable mansion on the slopes of
the hill of that name, the remains of the palace of the
Roman emperors, in which the meetings took place) was
founded, as we are told, very early in the sixteenth cen-
tury by Humbert de Villeneuve and Hugues Fournier,
afterwards successively First Presidents of the Parliament of
Burgundy, Humbert Fournier, a brother of the last-named,
Symphorien Champier, Benoit Court, Gonsalvo of Toledo,
a learned Spanish physician then resident at Lyons, and
others.

It is on a letter from Humbert Fournier to Symphorien
Champier in 1507, and on a letter and certain odes of
Voulte written in 1536, that the Pere de Colonia has based
his account of this Academy. But the letter of Fournier,
which is printed at the end of Champier's treatise De
Quadrupled Vita? though full of interest, and proving the
abundance of intellectual vigour at Lyons at this time, seems
only to be an account of the mode in which Fournier and
four friends passed their time in a summer visit to the
country-house of Fournier, situate on the slopes of Fourviere ;
while the letter and odes of Jean Voulte, thirty years after-

1 Hist. Lit. de Lyon, vol. ii. pp. 4.66 et seq.
2 Lugduni, 1507.

1 70 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

wards, certainly refer to nothing more than the casual
meetings of his literary friends.1

But it was not only by the presence of men of letters
and science that Lyons was distinguished in the sixteenth
century, but also by the extraordinary activity of its press,
which rivalled that of Paris itself. Lyons was the second
city in France where the art of printing was exercised,
but it achieved a greater distinction than Paris, inasmuch
as from its presses issued the first books printed in France
in the French language. Nor is it at all improbable that
the first French book printed in France was one, the publi-
cation of which in the vulgar tongue has ever been most
bitterly objected to by all who have opposed themselves to
intellectual, political, or social freedom. In 1472 Barthelemy
Buyer, a wealthy and eminent citizen of Lyons, caused
Guillaume Regis, or Le Roi, a skilful printer, to set up a
press in his house, and there, shortly afterwards, under
the superintendence of two learned Augustin friars, Julien
Macho and Pierre Farget, was printed the New Testament
in French, and also an abridgment or paraphrase of the Old
Testament. 2

1 See as to this pretended Academy, Allut, Etude sur Symphorien
Champler (Lyon, 1859), pp. 62-67.

2 If, as seems now to be the generally-received opinion, Le Recueil des
Histoires de Troyes, variously attributed to Caxton, to Colard Mansion,
and to Ulric Zell, was not printed until 1475 or 1476, the books printed
by Barthelemy Buyer at Lyons would be the earliest that were printed
in the French language. Of these, La Legende Doree is certainly the
earliest with date (1476); but several bibliographers of repute, notably
M. Pericaud Aine (Bibliographic Lyonnaise du xv. siecle, p. 7) and Berjeau
(Bibliophile Illustre, ii. p. 14), are of opinion that the New Testament
and the Abridgment of the Old given in French by Buyer appeared in
1472, or 1473 at the latest. Berjeau is however in error in stating that
these books bear date 1472. Two editions, as well of the New Testament
as of the Abridgment of the Old, were given by Buyer about the same
time, both undated, one of them printed with the same characters as the

ix LYONS 171

The good work which Buyer commenced, continued and
extended itself. More than seventy master printers practised
their art in Lyons in the fifteenth century ; and in addition
to many of these, who continued to print for a considerable
part of the following century, one hundred and eighteen
additional names are found in the sixteenth century, besides
many booksellers who were not themselves printers.1 The
printers of Lyons in the century and a quarter next after
the introduction of the art were far more numerous than
in the two centuries and three-quarters which have followed,
and a prodigious number of books were given by them to
the world. Eighty -four complete editions of the Bible
(including the New Testament) are enumerated by Masch 2
as having issued from the Lyonese press during the first
half of the sixteenth century, besides numerous editions of
separate parts.

At the head of the profession when Dolet arrived there
in 1534 (for printing was a learned profession, not a manual
art) was Sebastian Gryphius, who, in the thirty-three years
that he exercised the profession of a printer (from 1524 to

Lotharius Diaconus of 1473, the first book printed with a date at Lyons.
Both the editions are in small folio, but one has long lines, and the other
double columns. A copy of the edition of the New Testament with long
lines, the property of Lord Spencer, was in the Caxton Exhibition. In
the catalogue, 1477 is the suggested date, and this is the date also sug-
gested by Madlle. Pellechet (Cat. Gen. des Inclinable;, 1897). The
British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale each possess a copy.
Another was bought by the Due D'Aumale at the Solar sale for 1045
francs. The Due de la Valliere's copy of the edition in two columns,
which sold at the sale of his books in 1783 for 100 francs, was subsequently
acquired by M. A. Firmin-Didot, and was sold at his sale (May 1879) for
3550 francs. Lord Crawford's copy of the New Testament (also in two
columns) sold at his sale in 1887 (No. 367) for .£200. See as to the
difference in the two editions, Brunet, Manuel, vol. v. 746.

1 Monfalcon, Manuel du Bibliophile et de F Arch'eologue Lyonnais.

2 Bibliotheca Sacra.

172 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

1556), printed upwards of one thousand different editions
in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. His
son and successor was almost as prolific. The presses of
the Tournes, the Rouilles, the Rigauds, the Frellons, and
numerous others were constantly at work ; and if it was
not the good fortune of any Lyonese printer to give to the
world an editio princeps of a Greek or Latin classic, yet it
was to their presses, and particularly to those of the Gryphii,
that the numerous small and cheap reprints of Latin texts
were due, which were a greater boon to poor students.

But at the Lyonese presses of the sixteenth century there
were also published original works which have placed their
authors in the first rank of scholarship and literature. It
was at Lyons that Gargantua and Pantagruel first saw the
light, that Marot first printed his Enfer and a complete
edition of his works, that Sanctes Pagnini gave to the world
his great Hebrew Lexicon, which, though now all but
forgotten, contributed more than any single book to advance
the study of the sacred language. When the study of
Hebrew was forbidden at Paris by the Sorbonne, as impious,
dangerous, and heretical, at Lyons Sanctes Pagnini could
compose, and Gryphius could print without danger, a work
which deservedly ranked with Robert Estienne's Latin
Thesaurus^ and the still greater Greek Thesaurus of his
greater son.

Nor were the printers and correctors of the press un-
worthy of the authors. The prefaces and dedications
written by Sebastian Gryphius would prove him to have
been an excellent Latin scholar, even if this had not been
made known to us by the praises given to him by J. C.
Scaliger, Gesner, Sadolet, and many others. Rabelais,
Sussanneau, and Dolet were readers or correctors of his press.
The elder Tournes, for some years his journeyman, rivalled
Gryphius in scholarship, and excelled him in typography ;

ix LYONS 173

while to Trechsel belongs the distinction ot having the
proofs of his edition of the Canon of Avicenna (printed
in 1498) corrected by no less a person than the first Greek
scholar in Europe, the French ambassador to Venice, in
whose veins ran the blood of three emperors — the celebrated
Jean Lascaris.

Yet one distinction of Lyons in the sixteenth century
remains to be noticed. In no other city of Europe does
there seem to have been so many cultivated women. Their
glories must indeed pale before that of La Marguerite des
Marguerites, but the ladies by whom she was surrounded
do not seem to have emulated the literary culture of their
mistress, and we look in vain in Paris or elsewhere in
France for anything to compare, in the matter of cultivated
female society, with Lyons. The name of Louise Labe —
La Belle Cordiere — is perhaps the only one that is familiar
to the English reader, and she alone of the ladies of Lyons
has attained the high position of a French classic. She
well deserves her pre-eminence. Beautiful, accomplished,
and wealthy, the centre of all that was noblest in the
society of Lyons in the middle of the sixteenth century,
she anticipated the nineteenth in her regrets that the severe
laws of men hindered persons of her sex from devoting
themselves to study, and she exhorted them as far as
possible to raise their minds above their distaffs and spindles,
and to show themselves worthy companions and rivals of
the other sex in the pursuit of higher things, not indeed
for the purpose of ruling, but of showing their capabilities
for rule. Perhaps Louise Labe is the only one of the
Lyonese ladies whose poems are still read : yet the rhymes
of ' the gentle and virtuous dame Pernette du Guillet of
Lyons ' have been honoured with no less than five editions,
two of them being in the nineteenth century ; and if inferior
both in polish and force to those of her younger friend,

174 'ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

her verses have a simple grace which still interests. Con-
temporary with these ladies were the two sisters Claudine
and Sibylla Sceve (near relations of Maurice), of a rare
talent for poetry as well as prose, to whom Marot has
addressed one of his happiest odes ; Jeanne Gaillard, whose
response to a rondeau of the same poet has been thought
fit to be placed by its side in the subsequent editions of
Marot's works ; and Clemence de Bourges, whom Duverdier
calls the pearl of the Lyonese ladies of his time, the friend
or the rival — possibly both — of Louise Labe, and who
excelled in music equally as in poetry.

It was in the salons of the dame du Perron, the wife of
Antoine de Gondi, that all that was most distinguished in
the society of Lyons at this time was wont to assemble.
There were to be found men of letters, musicians, and
artists, together with persons of the highest rank, — ' princes
prelates, and kings,' according to the enthusiastic description
of the poet and musician Eustorg de Beaulieu, in whose
poetical account of the charms of the society which sur-
rounded his patroness we may easily pardon a little
exaggeration.

Dolet arrived at Lyons on the ist of August I534,1

1 It is clear that it was the ist of August 1534 that Dolet arrived at
Lyons, and not the ist of August 1533, as stated by Nee de la Rochelle,
who is of course followed by Boulmier. It was not until the 1st of
August 1533 that the King visited Toulouse. Yet this event is referred
to in Dolet's second oration, which must have been delivered, and Dolet's
imprisonment at Toulouse must have occurred, subsequently to that date.
The imprisonment was on the 2§th of March, and as we know that he
arrived at Lyons on the 1st of August following, this would be 1534.
Moreover, in the letter of Jacques Bording dated Paris, Jan. 26, and
written before Dolet's first imprisonment, he mentions that Beda had
been lately restored to his office (Or at. Dune, p. 166), but this event
occurred at the end of 1533. He had been banished on the 26th of
May 1533, and was recalled at the end of the same year. (Herminjard,
Correspondance des Reformateurs, iii. pp. 53, 162, 272.) The orations,

ix LYONS 175

and immediately visited the learned printer Sebastian
Gryphius, and delivered the message of Boyssone. Born
about 1491, at Reutlingen in Suabia, where his father,
Michael Greyff or Gryff, exercised the art of printing,1
Gryphius had settled at Lyons certainly as early as 1524, in
which year an edition of the Commentary of Nicolas de
Tudeschi upon the Decretals appeared with his name.2 He
printed certainly one other book, and probably more, in the
next three years. But it was not until 1528 that his press
became of importance. Previous to this year his only books
had been huge folios of mediaeval jurisprudence. He now
set himself to rival the Aldi by publishing a series of Latin
books, resembling theirs not only in form and type, but in
general utility ; and though he did not aspire to the glory
of rivalling their Greek series, and published scarcely any
original critical editions of Latin classics, yet, from the
immense quantity of excellent books which issued from his

then, must have been printed between the I3th of August 1534, the date
of the prefatory letter of Chrysogonus Hammonius, and the I5th of
October the same year, the day on which Dolet arrived in Paris.

1 Twelve books are enumerated by Panzer as issuing from his press
between 1486 and 1496.

2 According to Breghot du Lut and Pericaud Aine (Biographie
Lyonnaise) he printed as early as 1520 the tract of Romanus Aquila, De
Nominibus Figurarum, but I have been unable to meet with a copy of
this book, or to find any other mention of it and I doubt its existence.
There are certainly several errors in the notice of Seb. Gryphius contained
in the Biog. Lyon. He is there said to have printed a number of Greek
classics. I have been unable to discover more than four Greek books, of
which only one (^Esof's Fables) can be considered as a Greek classic.
Latin translations, however, of nearly all the Greek classics were printed
by him. He is further said (Biog. Lyon.) to have printed many other
works (beaucoup d'autres ouvrages) from 1520 to 1528. I can find no
traces of more than three before 1528, the edition referred to in the text,
of N. de Tudeschi (Panormitanus) on the Decretals printed in 1524, the
Repertorium of Bertachini de Fermo in 1525, and an edition of the works
of Bartholus, referred to in the preface to Panormitanus.

1 76 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

press, Latin classics, Latin translations of Greek classics,
reprints of the best recent or contemporary writers, Erasmus,
Politian, Bude, he contributed more than any other printer
to the popularising of literature and to the cause of intellec-
tual progress. A few books in Hebrew, Greek, French and
Italian, but the vast majority in Latin, issued from his press
between 1528 and his death in I556,1 and were rapidly
spread through the South of France, the North of Italy, and
the adjacent parts of Switzerland and Germany. Many
original works also, though not in equal numbers, nor
generally (though occasionally) equal in merit, to those
which the Manutii or the Estiennes had the good fortune
to publish, were printed by Gryphius. But even original
works of the highest merit were not wanting, and especially
such as the Roman Inquisition and the censorship of the
Sorbonne would have either refused to sanction or required
some modifications of, in Italy or in Paris. It was through
his press that the purest Latin prose writer of the age, the
tolerant and excellent Bishop of Carpentras, Cardinal Sadolet,
gave most of his works to the world, not seldom with a
dedication or other grateful reference to the learned and
accurate printer, with whom he was on terms of great
intimacy and friendship.2 It was Gryphius who in 1536
first printed that poem on the immortality of the soul by
which the then unknown Aonio Paleario was recognised as

1 I doubt whether any printer in the sixteenth century gave to the
public an equal number of books during an equal period. In the same
number of years Robert Estienne printed four hundred and sixty-six works.

2 In 1535 appeared from the press of Gryphius the first edition of
Sadolet's Commentary on the Romans, — a work to which the author had
given much time and labour, but which, to his infinite mortification, was,
very shortly after its appearance, censured and ordered to be suppressed
by the Court of Rome on account of a fancied tendency to Pelagianism.
Hence very few copies exist. It was reprinted in 1536 and 1537, with
important suppressions and corrections.

ix LYONS 177

the equal of Vida and Sannazar ; a poem modelled in style
and manner (though not in its motive) after Lucretius, and
which in the judgment of many contemporaries approaches
near to that author's excellencies ; a poem which, although
it placed the writer in the first rank of the Christian poets of
the Renaissance, yet gave to the bloodhounds of the Inquisi-
tion the scent of a future prey, and which was followed in
1552 by the orations of the same author, also from the
press of Gryphius, in which was the fatal sentence describing
the Inquisition as a poniard directed against all men of
letters (sica districta in omnes scriptores *), a sentence not to
be forgotten or forgiven until it was expiated by the author
on the scaffold nearly twenty years afterwards.

It was through the press of Gryphius that the elder
Scaliger's critical treatises first saw the light ; and the great
Julius Caesar even condescended to address and print a
complimentary letter to the printer on the occasion of the
publication of his treatise, De Causis Lingua Latin<e.
Sebastian Gryphius was also the printer of the great Hebrew
Thesaurus of Sanctes Pagnini, and of the Latin Thesaurus of
Dolet, two works not easily rivalled in their several depart-
ments of scholarship in the sixteenth century, and which
would have been considered as chefs-d'oeuvre of typography
had they not been thrown into the shade by the magnificent
Latin Bible — the largest up to that time issued both in size
and type — which Sebastian Gryphius printed in 1550.

Nor were lighter works wanting. Although Gryphius
was pre-eminently the learned printer, as Francois Juste and
Claude Nourry were the popular printers, of Lyons, yet
the two earliest editions of the Arresta Amorum, with the
erudite commentaries of Benoit Court, were printed by him :

1 Oraf. pro se ipso ad Senenses. The works of Paleario share with
those of Dolet and of most others who have written what is worth reading
the honours of the Index Expurgatorius.

N

i78 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

and numerous Latin poets and epigrammatists found in
him not merely a publisher, but a valued friend. The Latin
classics of Gryphius have not preserved their value, and are
but little sought for ; yet they performed a most useful part
in their day, and although he was perhaps not the first to
use the small and convenient size which is generally known
as i6mo or 24mo,1 he first employed it to any large extent
in his editions of the classics, and in this form they became
the school-books of nearly half Europe.

Dolet's reception by the learned printer was, as we should
expect from the latter's character, most friendly. ' I visited
Sebastian Gryphius,' he wrote a few days afterwards to
Boyssone, ' and saluted him in your name. I found him to
be a man full of learning and kindness, and most worthy of
the friendship of all learned men. He rejoiced greatly in
my news of your prosperity and of your recovery of your
position, and wished me to take up my residence with him ;
but whilst I was most grateful for his kindness, I was un-
willing to be a burden to him.' 2

But if from a feeling of independence Dolet declined the
worthy printer's hospitality, yet the two soon formed a
friendship which, unlike most of the friendships of Dolet,
seems to have lasted unbroken to the close of his life. He
dedicated to Gryphius the fourth book of his poems in 1538,
and addressed him in these words : —

* What I more expressly aim at in this the fourth book
of my poems, is that those who have been cultivators of
virtue in their lifetime should after their deaths receive a

1 The earliest book with which I am acquainted printed by Gryphius
in this form (which is rather smaller than that which he subsequently
adopted) is dated 1532. It is the aphorisms of Hippocrates, with a
preface by Rabelais. In the same year Simon de Colines printed a
Martial, and Robert Estienne a Terence, of the same size. These appear
to be the earliest classics, if not the earliest printed books, in that form.

2 Orat. Dutf in Tholosam, p. 125.

ix LYONS 179

testimony to their merits.1 You contribute to the same
object by transmitting to posterity in your beautiful types
the books on which the fame as well of the ancient authors
as of our own contemporaries rests. I wish then this fourth
book to be dedicated to you as an evidence of the laudable
efforts of each of us, and as an eternal and perpetual pledge
of the friendship which has so long subsisted between us.'

From this time and for the remaining twelve years of
his life Lyons was the home of Dolet. Two visits to Paris
of no great length, a flight to Piedmont in 1544, and his
two long imprisonments, each of about fifteen months, leave
him nearly eight years at Lyons, and eight years of hard
incessant literary work. During these eight years, besides
for a time correcting for the press of Gryphius and editing
certainly three books for other printers, he published at least
fifteen distinct original works of his own composition, some
of them of considerable extent. He translated into French
and printed at least five others. He printed and personally
superintended through the press more than fifty other works
of different writers in Greek, Latin, and French, to many
of which he acted as editor and prefixed an ode or preface
of his own composition.

His original purpose in making his way to Lyons was,
as we have seen, to commit to the press his orations, poems,
and letters ; but on his arrival at that city, his physical and
mental prostration were such, that he gave up for the
present his intention. In his letter to Boyssone, written
shortly after his arrival, where the passage already quoted
occurs in which he says that on reaching Lyons he had no
hope of restoration to health, but even despaired of his life,
he continues, —

' Accordingly I have given up the intention with which I
came here, namely, of printing my orations against Toulouse,
1 The fourth book of Dolet's Carmina consists entirely of epitaphs.

i8o ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

and I am determined they shall not see the light until some
certain hope of a restoration to health is afforded me ' ; and
a few lines further on he speaks of himself as tormented
with bodily pain, and feeling very near his last hour. A
week later however he writes to Jean de Pins from a country
retreat to which the Lyons physicians had sent him, and
speaks less despairingly of himself, yet still implying that he
was not thinking of immediately publishing his book.

ETIENNE DOLET TO JEAN DE PINS

' My silence has been occasioned by a severe illness from
which I have until now been suffering. Now that I am
recovering from my almost hopeless and desperate state,
and am hoping in a short time to be free from disease, I
return to my former alacrity in letter-writing, and I hope
by diligence to fill up the interval of my letters to you.

' When owing to the envy of despicable men and the
hatred of wicked ones I left Toulouse, by the advice of my
friends I concealed myself in the country and fled from the
sight of my enemies. I chose a most pleasant spot, and
one very convenient for the residence of the studious ; but
the happiness which I expected to find there was grudged
me by fortune, and the violence of my enemies deprived me
of it. I fled thence at the right time, and so prevented my
enemies from feasting their eyes on my calamities, and
gratifying their infamous cruelty by my arrest. Yet even
whilst I stayed there I was unable, owing to my weak health,
to enjoy the pleasantness of the place. Then, compelled by
the persecution of my enemies to fly, and suffering from a
severe disease, I set off for Lyons, with what intention, my
orations against Toulouse and my epigrams would have shown,
had not the weak state of my health prevented me from
•publishing them. For, the same diligence which I formerly

ix LYONS 181

used in studying I now devote to the recovery of my health.
I am now, by the advice of my physicians,1 spending my
time in the country, where they think, on account of the
greater coolness of the climate, the remains of my disease
may be more easily driven away ; nor do they hope without
cause, the fever having left me for eight days. Indeed I
am now recovering the flesh which when sick I had lost,
and I already perceive myself to be twice the size I lately
was. I only need the pleasure of your society, for great as
was the delight and profit which I derived from the full
enjoyment of it, still greater is the loss which I feel for
the want of it. I grieve to a surprising degree that it is
not permitted me to look upon, and to tend him, whose
defence of my welfare was perpetual, firm, and invincible,
than whom no one, however great his services, will ever be
more honoured by me, and in speaking of and recalling to
mind the many benefits which he has conferred upon me I
could willingly pass all my time. You will hardly believe,
my friend, how religiously I preserve the remembrance of
your kindness. I often think with gratitude and pleasure
how affectionately you treated me, how humanely you con-
soled me when I was harassed by troubles. Those plans of
yours, so sensible and thought out with such wonderful care,
by which you provided for my reputation, my position, my
welfare, often come into my mind, and I do not forget that
I owe everything, even my life, to you. . . .

' I will now bring my letter to an end, only adding the
rumours which are noised abroad and talked over at Lyons.

' It is reported here that Clement the supreme pontiff
has been suddenly carried off by poison. Owing to this all

1 Who would these be ? Rabelais, Fournier, Symphorien Champier,
Canappe, Du Castel, and Tolet were all then practising their profession
at Lyons, and very soon after this time we find all of them, except
Champier, on terms of great intimacy with Dolet.

1 82 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the French cardinals have assembled here in order to proceed
together to Rome for the purpose of choosing a God in the
room of that God who has proved mortal, and of giving
without corruption, and according to their convictions, their
votes on the election of a pontiff. Many hope for a French
pope ; l all talk of war, and have a suspicion that the matter
will be the occasion of tumults.

* Among many there is an expectation that the king is
about to arrive, and this is much talked of. Yet it is a
thing rather wished for than expected, and the rumour just
now is growing fainter and is almost extinct. These are
the matters talked of here. . . . Farewell. Written in the
country, Aug. 8.'2

In the meantime, strange as it must seem, the orations,
the epistles, and the poems were preparing for, if not actually
proceeding through, the press of Gryphius, under the editor-
ship of Simon Finet, and, as the latter asserts, without the
sanction or knowledge of Dolet. The book was rapidly
pushed through the press, and was completed and issued
some time between the I4th of August and the end of
September 1534. This, the first work of Dolet, is a small
octavo of two hundred and forty -six numbered and ten
unnumbered pages, without date, place, or printer's name.3
It commences with a letter from Simon Finet to Claude
Cottereau, which begins as follows : —

1 Du Prat had hopes of being elected.

2 Orat. DU& in Tholosam, p. 142.

8 The title-page is simply as follows : — Stephani Doleti Orationes Duee
in Tholosam. Eiusdem Epistolarum libri ii. Eiusdem Carminum libri ii.
Ad eundem Epistolarum amicorum liber. Although the words ' Lugduni
apud Gryphium ' are given both by Brunei and by Boulmier as being on
the title, they are really not so. Boulmier indeed, although giving these
words in his Bibliographic Doletienne, yet says correctly elsewhere (p. 73)
that the orations appeared without the printer's name or place of
publication. But he goes on to say, ' Mais une lettre de Chrysogon

ix LYONS 183

'Do you think what I have done is to be considered
as a crime, or is it not rather a matter for praise ? Here
is the fact in a few words ; do you decide upon itv You
are not ignorant of the great intimacy between Etienne
Dolet and myself. When the violent threats and still more
the baleful influence of a certain wicked and abandoned man
compelled him to leave Toulouse, he took me as his
companion to Lyons, with the intention of publishing both
what he had written against Toulouse, and also some
letters and very graceful odes which he had addressed
to divers persons. In this way he sought by his pen to
avenge the injuries which he had received at Toulouse.
But no sooner were we come here, than he was again
attacked by a serious illness, similar to that from which
he had only just recovered, and it was speedily turned into
a quartan ague. You who know so well the force and
nobleness of his mind, so ready to despise and even to laugh
at external misfortunes, will not doubt how manfully he
struggled against the effects of disease. At length, how-
ever, growing weary of the perpetual conflicts against hostile
fate, he has laid aside his intention of publishing his
writings, and thinks of nothing but how his health may be
restored as speedily as possible. It has, however, been a
source of great grief to me that the publication which
would so greatly increase the reputation and fame of our
friend should be any longer deferred, and especially that
this should be caused by his illness, and it has also been
a great trouble to me that those who have so infamously

Hammonius, un des amis de Dolet, nous apprend qu'elles furent imprimees
chez Gryphius.' Not a word of this appears in the letter of Hammonius.
It is, however, abundantly clear from the typography, and particularly
from the woodcut initial letters, that the book was printed by Seb.
Gryphius. We learn from the letter of Odonus (post p. 224) that
Gryphius was unwilling to print the volume, and perhaps this unwilling-
ness was the cause of the absence of his name.

1 84 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

outraged him by their insults, should any longer boast
themselves against him with impunity. You now know
the course I have taken with a view to promote the
reputation of the man whom I love, and it is for you to
judge whether I am to be praised or blamed for it. The
two orations which he delivered at Toulouse (to a greater
crowd of auditors than has within my memory been ad-
dressed by any orator), upon no far-fetched or imaginary
subject, but upon one which was real and as it were
thrust upon him, I have furtively seized. I have increased
my theft by two books of epistles, which marvellously
harmonise with the arguments of the orations ; and, lastly,
grown still more eager by so rich a prey, I have purloined
two books of odes, and I now publish these without the
sanction, and even without the knowledge of their author.
Well ? Now I am awaiting your judgment.'

The rest of the epistle is occupied with a defence of
his own conduct, and with greatly exaggerated praise of
the genius and attainments of Dolet, which, ridiculous as
they are in the original, would appear still more so in
English. The writer then concludes : ' Whatever may be
your judgment, whilst Dolet by the advice of his physicians
is avoiding the heat of the summer and is staying in the
country, I shall give my attention to printing the works
to which I have referred, but shall not inform the author
of the fact until we arrive at Padua. I have already
written to you that so soon as the heat is less we think
of setting out for that city. In the meantime let me hear
from you what you are doing, and how diligently you are
devoting yourself to literature. Farewell. Lyons (Aug. i P1).'

This letter is followed by one purporting to be addressed

1 The date of this letter, ' ad calend. Sext.,' is clearly wrong. It was
written some time after Dolet's arrival at Lyons, which was on August I.
For ' Sext.' I should read ' Sept.'

ix LYONS 185

by Chrysogonus Hammonius, an Italian, ' Critoni Archa-
gato,' : which, after some generalities and laudatory remarks
on Dolet, thus proceeds : ' By chance yesterday I was visit-
ing the publisher, when whom should I meet but Simon
Finet, the most intimate friend of Dolet. Noticing from
his countenance that he was somewhat excited and per-
turbed, I asked him what his business was with the printer ;
he (a man of no small culture) replied, " I am about to
make public a treasure," and at the same time he showed
me two orations of Dolet, than which I have never read
anything more elegant or clever. These, out of regard to
his friend's reputation, he had purloined from their author,
who, having decided to postpone the publication of a work
of such great merit, afforded to Finet a pretext for his
theft. . . . But I am not able to express how severely the
author will feel this publication of his treatises or how
bitter will be his complaints against us. ... Lyons,
Aug. 13.'

It is difficult to believe that any one could be taken in
by these pretences, and the publication certainly reflects
as much discredit upon the good faith of Dolet as that
of the letters of Swift upon the good faith of Pope. In
both the motive was the same, in both great abilities were
disfigured by inordinate vanity. The issue of the orations

1 I am unable to discover who Chrysogonus Hammonius or Crito the
Archagatus were. Dolet has an ode on the death of the former in the
fourth book of his Carmina. Of Simon Finet we know nothing save that
he was the Pylades of our Orestes. MM. Des Marets and Rathery are
clearly in error in attempting, in the biography of Rabelais prefixed to
their excellent edition of his works, to identify him with a certain ^iveros,
a friend and brother cordelier of Rabelais at the abbey of Fontenay, who
is referred to by Bude in his Greek epistles, ^iveros, who was a man and
probably a priest when Bude wrote of him, at the latest in 1522, was
much senior in age to Simon Finet, the fellow-student of Dolet at
Toulouse in 1533.

1 86 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

however — though there is nothing in them to deserve
publication, and much that could not fail to irritate — was
merely an indiscretion, and one easily pardonable in the
vain and clever author, whose head had been turned as
much by the bitter hostility which his orations had excited
among the bigots and the ignorant, as by the exaggerated
praises of his friends. But for the publication of many of
the letters no excuse can be made. Dolet, indeed, may well
be pardoned for desiring to set before the world the terms
on which he corresponded with Jean de Pins, with Langeac,
and with the great Bude himself, nor is there anything in
their letters which the writers could object to have printed ;
but to publish the letters of Boyssone, who had so narrowly
escaped the fate of Jean de Caturce, and whose letters were
of so compromising a character that Dolet did not even
venture to affix to them the name of the writer (however
apparent from internal evidence), of Arnoul Le Ferron,
who had expressly requested that his letters might be
preserved in the strictest secrecy,1 of Bording, who clearly
expressed himself about persons and things with a freedom
he would not have used had he supposed his letters would
be given to the world, and the publication of which might
have brought him into most serious danger as long as Beda
was in power at the Sorbonne and Lizet First President of
the Parliament, was more than an indiscretion, it was an
act deserving of severe censure, — a censure which must be
increased when, as we find in the case of Le Ferron's letters,
that they were not precisely as their author had written them,
but that some expressions had been altered, possibly to others
more agreeable to the irritable vanity of Dolet.2 At the

1 See ante, p. 130.

2 See letter of J. C. Scaliger to Le Ferron, Schelhorn's Amcenitates, viii.
584: 'Quid enim perfidiosius quam amicos inter se committere ?
Epistolas ad se abs te datas invertisse ? Aliis alia verba substituisse ?

ix LYONS 187

same time we should, in justice to Dolet, bear in mind that
he may in all these cases have omitted what he thought the
writers would disapprove of being published, and that in the
case of Le Perron and Boyssone the publication did not
interfere with their friendship with our hero — whether it
was that they believed or professed to believe the transparent
fiction of Finet, or whether their regard for Dolet induced
them to overlook an indiscretion which a combination of
youthful vanity and youthful talent had perhaps occasioned.

The letter of Chrysogonus Hammonius is followed by an
ode of Guillaume Sceve l to Dolet, in which, after lamenting
the untimely deaths in Italy of the two lights of France,
Longolius and Simon Villanovanus, the writer says that the
hopes and expectations of Gaul are now fixed upon Dolet.

After the orations come two books of letters from Dolet,
from which I have already made many extracts.2 Then

delevisse ? induxisse ? ' This letter shows us that both Le Perron and his
friends felt that he had good grounds of complaint against Dolet for
printing the correspondence.

1 G. Sceve seems about this time to have acted as the principal editor,
reader, and corrector of the press of Gryphius.

2 These letters consist of seven letters to Boyssone, six to Bording,
five to Breslay, four to Jean de Pins, three to Le Perron, three to Jean de
Langeac, three to Petrus Castellanus, two to Bude, two to Finet, two to
Eustace Prevost, two to the President de Minut, one to Francis de Langeac,
one to Claude Cottereau, and one to each of the following persons —
Thomas Cassander, Jean Maumont, Arnold Fabricius, Joannes Clausanus,
Jacobus Calanconius, Jacobus Rostanus, Claudius Barroo, Joannes Lepidus,
and Claude Sonnet. Petrus Castellanus cannot be, as I stated in the first
edition of this book, Pierre du Chatel (afterwards Bishop of Tulle), and
was probably Pierre du Castel who succeeded Rabelais as physician to the
Hospital of Lyons in 1535. See W. F. Smith's translation of Rabelais,
vol. ii. p. 509.

Hallam's just remark on the Ciceronians of Italy is equally applicable
to many of these letters : ' The praise of writing pure Latin, or the pleasure
of reading it, is dearly bought when accompanied by such vacuity of sense
as we experience in the elaborate epistles of Paulus Manutius and the
Ciceronian school in Italy.'

1 88 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

comes a book of letters from his friends, comprising three
from Le Ferron, two from Boyssone (though without his
name), one from Jean de Pins to Dolet, and one from the
same to Minut in his behalf, five from Bording, two from
Breslay, and one from Bude.

The epistles are followed by two books of Carmina,
several of the more noteworthy of which I have already
cited or referred to. Of various merit and without ever
attaining to the foremost rank of the Latin verse of
that period, many of them display much skill in versifica-
tion, and some a high degree of poetic feeling and grace.
Julius Caesar Scaliger indeed, who joined in hounding the
unfortunate author to death and branding him with the
name of Atheist, and who brutally rejoiced over the flames
which consumed him, calls his poetry ' languida, frigida,
insulsa, plenissima vecordias,' and says that its author de-
serves the name, not of poet, but of ' poeticum excremen-
tum.' l But when we recollect that Julius Caesar Scaliger
placed Homer far below Virgil, and that his own poems
are justly described by Huet as ' les poesies brutes et
informes dont il a deshonore le Parnasse,' we shall probably
not feel disposed to follow him as our guide in his judg-
ment of one whom he hated with so bitter and relentless
a hatred.

On the last page of the book appears for the first time
the motto, taken from the Epistles of his master Cicero,
which afterwards when a printer he placed at the end of
all the Latin and many of the French books printed by
him, and which is so applicable to his life, Durior est
spectate virtutis quam incognita conditio.

On his restoration to health Dolet passed about six
weeks at Lyons, where he soon became intimate with
several of the leading men of letters there, upon whom he
1 J. C. Scaliger, Poetices lib. vi.

ix LYONS 189

would seem to have made a most favourable impression.
Hortensio Lando was then at Lyons, superintending through
the press of Gryphius his Cicero Relegatus and Cicero
Revocafus. It is not improbable that Dolet had known
him in Italy. Certainly at this time at Lyons the two men
were on terms of intimacy. It was at this period that
his friendship commenced with Maurice and Guillaume
Sceve, and that he made the acquaintance, soon ripening
into intimacy and friendship, of the great man with
whom his name has ever since been inseparably connected —
the greatest genius of the age — Francois Rabelais. Rabelais
had arrived at Lyons from Montpellier early in 1532,
but although he had as yet published nothing, his repu-
tation as a physician, a scholar, and above all as a humourist,
had preceded him ; and he had no sooner arrived at the
intellectual capital of the South, than his services were
secured by two printers and booksellers, — the learned
Sebastian Gryphius, for whom he edited certain apocryphal
fragments of Cuspidius which he believed to be genuine,
wrote and signed several Latin prefaces, and edited the Greek
text with a revised translation of the Aphorisms of Hippo-
crates, and Claude Nourry, the printer for the vulgar and in
the vulgar tongue, for whom he wrote, though anonymously,
comic and satirical almanacs and prognostications x and ' the
great and inestimable Chronicles of Gargantua^ and through
whose press, some time before Dolet's arrival at Lyons, he
gave to the world the first book of the divine Pantagruel.
For the first time the comedy of human life was faithfully

1 M. Michelet (Hist, de France au Seizieme Siecle) states that Rabelais
wrote for Dolet and other booksellers popular publications, such as
almanacs and satires. He quotes no authority for this statement, which
is certainly, as far as Dolet is concerned, erroneous. Dolet printed no
almanac or satire, nor any work of Rabelais except Gargantua and the
first book of Pantagruel, his edition of which appeared in 1542.

190 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

represented ; it may be profanely and coarsely, but with a
vigour and geniality, a goodness of heart, a kindness and
a sympathy for the sufferings and weaknesses of humanity,
for the weak against the strong, with a jovial humour, and
above all a keenness, yet never bitterness of satire, such as
never, either before or since, has been elsewhere seen.

In Rabelais the genius of the Renaissance appears in
its fullest development, and he alone is sufficient to disprove
the shallow judgment so often repeated, ' The Renaissance
gave birth to nothing.' The Renaissance was not the mere
return to the literary forms of antiquity, it was a return to
its substance, a return to freedom of thought, and it brought
with it a recognition of natural goodness, which the theo-
logians of the Middle Ages had refused to allow, and which
the Reformers equally with the followers of Rome agreed
in declaring to be heresy.

' Gens libres, bien nes, bien instruits, conversant en com-
pagnies honnetes, ont par nature un instinct et aiguillon qui
toujours les pousse a faits vertueux et les retire de vice ;
lequel ils nomment 1'honneur.' l

There is a species of biography which deals largely in
imaginary facts, and few temptations are stronger to a
biographer of one who, like Rabelais, has so greatly in-
fluenced all subsequent generations of Frenchmen, than to
consider how in his great work he was himself likely to be
influenced by his contemporaries and friends, and from that
likelihood to infer and state not only the fact of such
influence, but to imagine in detail the circumstances attend-

1 Garg. c. Ivii. M. Martin (Hist, de France, lib. 48) remarks on this
passage, ' Ce n'est pas seulement 1'antipode du monachisme : c'est au
moins autant 1'antipode du protestantisme, qui part de la corruption totale
de la nature, et de 1'entiere impuissance de 1'homme pour le bien ; c'est
1'extreme contraire. . . . L'evangile de Rabelais n'est que celui de la
charite et non de la grace et de la redemption.'

ix LYONS 191

ing it. That Rabelais and Dolet formed a close intimacy
and friendship during the two months that the latter spent
at Lyons in the autumn of 1534, and that the friendship
so formed continued for several years, until, like most of
the friendships of our unfortunate hero, it was terminated
in circumstances which, in the opinion of Rabelais, gave him
the right of bitter complaint against Dolet, is certain ; but
though, from Dolet's odes to Rabelais, we see that he
recognised the genius of the latter, yet of the genial humour
and gentle humanity of the great satirist there is no trace
in Dolet.

The Encomium Mori<£ was the true precursor of Panta-
gruel^ and the words with which the former concludes form
an admirable prologue to the latter, ' Quare valete plaudite
vivite bibite Moriae celeberrimi mystae.' 1 Yet the Praise of
Folly was not to the taste of Dolet, though whether this
arose from an incapacity to appreciate wit and humour, or
from his dislike to the anti-Ciceronianism of Erasmus, may
be doubtful. This is how he expresses himself in reference
to perhaps the wittiest book of the day : 2 ' Most persons
vehemently praise the Encomium Morite, many really admire
it ; yet if you examine it, the impudence of Erasmus will
strike you rather than the real force of his language. He
laughs, jokes, makes fun, irritates, inveighs, and raises a
smile even at Christ himself.' These words, which I regret
to quote, suggest to us a doubt whether Dolet was or could
have been a Pantagruelist, whether he could have looked
on life otherwise than most seriously, and whether there
could have been really much in common between him and

1 The remark of Erasmus, the first time he tasted real Burgundy, is
worthy of Brother Jean des Entommeures himself : ' O felicem vel hoc
nomine Burgundiam planeque dignam, quas mater hominum dicatur,
posteaquam tale lac habet in uberibus.' As to the wines of the country,
'Digna quse bibantur hereticis.' — Epist. 650, p. 752.

2 I Comment. Ling. Lat. 1084.

1 92 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Rabelais. But here is what one of the best informed, ablest,
and most spirituel of the critics and biographers of Rabelais,
M. Eugene Noel, says of the intercourse between him and
Dolet : * From Montpellier Rabelais went to Lyons, where
with Dolet and several other Pantagruelists conversation
went on more vigorously than ever. Dolet was not only
an able printer, he was a philosopher and a poet, one of the
most elevated and noblest spirits of the age. We have
more than twenty works by him in Latin and French, in
verse and prose. He translated Cicero and Plato. He
was one of the first to print the Gospel in the vulgar tongue.
// was he who advised Rabelais no longer to confine himself
to translations and commentaries, but to cast into the in-
tellectual conflict a work really his own. He wished him to
give a summary of the philosophy of the agey to give to the
disquieted world a word of new consolation.

' Yes, Rabelais would say, but a book really human must
address itself to all. The time is come for philosophy to
go out of the schools, and shine like the sun on the whole
universe. At this time we ought to hold the ignorant as
well as the learned at the breast of truth. For my part, if
I write a philosophical book, I should wish that it should
console and amuse as well the worthy vine-dressers of La
Deviniere and the topers of Chinon as the most learned men ;
that it should be the universal piot ; x that princes, kings,
emperors, and poor people should come there of their own
accord to drink together gaily. The truth — the path to
which is sufficiently difficult — should be, no less than the
Gospel of God, presented under a living form so human, so
gentle, that, being accepted by all, it may rouse the soul of
all to a community of thought. What other course is there
than, taking one's stand on the eternal conscience, to relate

1 'Cette nectarique, delicieuse, precieuse, celeste, joyeuse, deifique
liqueur qu'on nomme le piot.' — Pantagruel, ii. c. i.

ix LYONS 193

to the people the stories which they delight in hearing, and
which they themselves have composed ? For example, those
chronicles of giants, printed over and over again in our time
since the discovery of that divine art which you practise,
seem to me extremely suited to my purpose. Through all
France I shall recount the astonishing feats of the enormous
giant Gargantua. I must seize upon this story, include the
whole world in it, and then return it so ennobled to the good
people who originated it. Here is the true secret ; learn
from the most simple folk their idea, and then ornament it
with all that study and philosophy have revealed to us.
The rustic and the village thought is the point with which
I wish to connect all the hidden treasures, up to this time
concealed by the enemies of light.

' Well, Dolet would say, here are my presses, they are
ready for you. Recount the history of Gargantua ; fill it
with pantagruelism, make of it our chronicle, our philo-
sophical chrism. Courage ; the world is perishing with
thirst and with rage, it is for you to quench it. I place
myself at your service ; be the invincible propagator of the
truth ; with you, if needs be, I shall brave the funeral pile.

' Up to what point the preceding is true as to its form
I am ignorant, but what is certain is, that Rabelais and
Dolet conversed much upon these things, that Dolet urged
Rabelais to write his chronicle, and that the Gargantua ap-
peared in the month of December in the same year, 1532.'

Now the reader will be surprised to learn, not only that
there is no evidence whatever on which to base M. Noel's
statements as to the influence of Dolet upon Rabelais, and
as to these conversations and Dolet's suggestions, but that
such conversations could not possibly have taken place, nor
could such suggestions possibly have been made.

In sober fact, in December 1532, the latest date which
can be ascribed to the first edition of the first book of

194 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, ix

Pantagruel) Dolet was still a student at Toulouse, he was
not a printer until six years later, and Rabelais and he
had never met. Their acquaintance, which commenced in
August 1534, soon ripened into friendship, though in a
very few weeks after they first met their opportunities of
personal intercourse ceased for a time.

CHAPTER X

THE CICERONIANS

Ira truces inimicitias et funebre bellum.

HORACE.

Seraphic Doctor. The Lord have mercy on your position,
You wretched, wrangling culler of herbs !

Cherubic Doctor. May he send your soul to eternal perdition
For your treatise on the irregular verbs !

LONGFELLOW.

N the meantime Dolet
had given up the idea
of practising the law
and of returning to
Italy to prosecute his
studies. In the culti-
vated literary society of
Lyons he returned to
his original intention of
devoting his life to
letters, an intention which
he had only given up
out of deference to the
advice of Jean de Lan-
geac. The latter had now retired from public affairs to the
seclusion of his episcopal city of Limoges, and his influence

196 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

was probably but slender. The decree of the Parliament of
Toulouse had cut off all hopes which Dolet might have
entertained of filling some legal office within its jurisdiction
which the influence of Jean de Pins might have obtained
for him. Moreover, the publication of the Orations had
certainly taken away any locus pcenitenti<e, if indeed any such
had previously been possible. He was now hard at work
on his Commentaries on the Latin Tongue p, his opus magnum,
which he hoped and believed, and not on altogether in-
sufficient grounds, would be the most important contribution
to Latin scholarship the modern world had as yet seen. As
a Trdpepyov he was preparing to break a lance in defence of
Cicero and Longolius with the most eminent and popular
writer and scholar of the age.

By the publication (in 1528) of his dialogue Ciceronianus,
Erasmus had excited the violent hatred of the Ciceronians.
The object of the book was to ridicule those pedants whose
admiration for Cicero was so great that they refused to
make use of any word or phrase which was not to be found
in that writer, and who accordingly, when treating of
Christian subjects, were obliged to make use of the most
inappropriate names, titles, and expressions, adapted only
to the pagan worship. What absurdity could be greater
than to call the apostles Patres conscripti, the Virgin Mary
Lauretana Virgo^ or to substitute for excommunication
inter dictio aqu<e et ignis ? The three persons of the Trinity
were the Dii major es, the saints the Dii minores. But the
Ciceronians regarded Cicero not only as a master of style,
but as an infallible guide on every subject on which he had
spoken. Erasmus had long treated these foolish pedants
as they deserved, being himself perhaps too careless of style
and form, and judging of all writings according to the
weight and value of the matter. Treating of the subjects
which interested his own day he used freely all kinds of

x THE CICERONIANS 197

expressions, not altogether barbarous, which he found in
any Latin writer, whether heathen or Christian. The
opinions and practices of Erasmus on this subject had long
been well known, and the Italians in particular, who were
the chief Ciceronians, could not bear to see themselves
eclipsed in reputation by a barbarian, especially one who
placed matter above form and style, and while paying all
due respect to Cicero, declined to worship him as a god.
They accordingly accused him of heresy, they nicknamed
him Porrofhagus because of his frequent use of the word
Porro, they charged him with stealing his translations, and
with blundering in his emendations. To revenge himself
for these attacks, and to crush once for all the folly of the
sect, was the object of the Ciceronianus, which, after the
Encomium Mori<e, is perhaps the most lively and entertaining
of his works, written, as Gibbon has remarked, with that
exquisite species of humour of which the Lettres Provinciates
offer so fine a specimen. It is in the form of a dialogue
between Nosoponus the Ciceronian, and two others, Bule-
phorus and Hypologus, who by pretending to sympathise
with him, draw out the full admission of his absurdities, and
succeed at last in restoring him to a greater soundness of
mind than before. Nosoponus recounts how he has disposed
of his library and has devoted himself for seven entire years
to reading nothing but Cicero, how he has made an alpha-
betical index of all the words used by Cicero, another of all
his expressions and forms of speech, a third of the feet of
which he has made use at the beginning, at the middle, and
at the end of his sentences, how he has noted all the words
that Cicero has used merely in the singular or merely in the
plural. The true Ciceronian, he says, must not only use no
word which is not to be found in Cicero, but no inflection
or part of a word : thus if Cicero use Amo, but not Amamus,
the former is alone allowable ; when he desires to compose,

198 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

say an epistle to a friend, he must carefully examine the
letters of Cicero, must for each sentence first select from
them words and parts of speech, expressions must then be
added as appropriate ornaments. Thus a night will some-
times be spent in the composition of a single sentence, but a
sentence which even then will need careful and anxious
revision and recasting again and again. The sense is
altogether a minor consideration. Bulephorus then proceeds
to expose the absurdity of all this, using the Socratic method,
and putting his questions in such a form, that Nosoponus is
unable to refuse to admit what his opponent requires. He
draws from Nosoponus the admission that humour is a part
of rhetoric, but that there Cicero was deficient ; that brevity
is sometimes required, but that in this Sallust and Brutus are
better models ; that some parts of Cicero are lost, and there-
fore no one could be a perfect or complete Ciceronian, since
he must be ignorant of many words and phrases which
Cicero would have used ; that even in his extant writings
Cicero is not always equal ; that he himself valued some of
his books more than others, and that those who imitated
him so exactly are after all but apes, sharing neither in his
genius nor in his thoughts, and making but ridiculous
imitations of his style. Then Bulephorus proceeds to show
how utterly impossible it is to describe Christian mysteries
and Christian doctrines by Ciceronian words, and into what
absurdities they have fallen who have attempted this. He
then passes in review the several Latin writers from the
days of Cicero downwards, and shows that not one of these
was a Ciceronian according to the views of Nosoponus. It
was in this part that Erasmus gave so much offence to the
French, by placing Badius and Budasus on a level, perhaps
giving the superiority as a writer of Latin to Badius. To
Longolius he devotes several pages, and while admitting
the elegance, purity, and other merits of his style, the

x THE CICERONIANS 199

ingenuity of his arguments, and the justness of his senti-
ments, he shows the utter emptiness and fatuity of the
orations of the vain and formal young Ciceronian, consisting
as they did for the most part of words and phrases devoid
of any substance, and often utterly absurd, and taking a
dozen lines to express what half a line would have been
sufficient for.

Notwithstanding the respectful terms in which Erasmus
had spoken of all who then wrote or aimed at writing in
the style of Cicero, and especially of the two leading
Ciceronians, Bembo and Sadolet, the publication of the
Ciceronianus roused much indignation among the servile
imitators of the great Roman orator. The French were
irritated by the apparent slight on Bude, the Italians
professed to think that by Nosoponus, Bembo was intended.
The two future cardinals indeed, being not merely Ciceronians,
but accomplished men of the world, were in no degree
offended by the book, and were probably willing to laugh
at the absurdities of their followers. There resided, how-
ever, at this time at Agen, a then unknown and obscure
Italian possessed of great learning and great abilities, but
whose vanity, self-conceit, violence of temper, and virulence
of language, certainly equalled if they did not outweigh
his real merits. His family was the noblest and most ancient
in the world. In his veins flowed the blood of emperors
and princes who had excelled all others in bravery, generosity,
and magnanimity. He was sixth in descent from the
Emperor Lewis the Bavarian. Matthias Corvinus, King of
Hungary, the last, the most accomplished, and the most
unfortunate of the Hunniadae, was his near kinsman.
Every one has heard of the ten daughters of his kinswoman
Beatrice Duchess of Milan, all of whom married into the
greatest sovereign houses of Europe, one to the King of
Sicily, another to Edward, son of the King of England. Yet

200 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

his own greatness of character far exceeded that of the most
distinguished among his ancestors. He united in his own
person the characteristics of Masinissa and Xenophon, but
the combination affords only an insufficient and feeble idea
of the man. Indeed, he must have excelled both of them, as
well in bodily as in mental qualities. At sixty-two years of
age, when he had almost lost the use of his hands, he lifted
into its place an enormous beam which four ordinary men
had not been able to move. Many similar feats, in which
we are at a loss whether most to admire his strength or
his agility, make us think that an excessive modesty only
induced him to compare himself with Masinissa. Hercules
would have been a more fitting subject for comparison.
His military prowess equalled his learning. He had no
less distinguished himself by his bravery as a private soldier
than by his skill and ability as a general ; and if he had not
always been successful, this was owing neither to want of
courage nor to want of military skill, but to the shafts
of adverse fortune. At the battle of Ravenna he displayed
prodigies of valour on the side and under the eyes of the
Emperor Maximilian ; he recovered from the French the
dead bodies of his father and his brother Titus, and the
eagle of which Titus was the bearer, and which he restored
to his imperial cousin. Maximilian could do no less than
reward the valour of his kinsman with the highest honours
of chivalry; with his own hand the Emperor conferred
upon him the collar, the spurs, and the eagle of gold, in like
manner as the Emperors Henry VII. and Lewis V. had
conferred them upon his ancestors Alboin, Can Grande, and
Mastino. Yet, were it not for the letter in which these
details are related, we should have said that it was proved
as clearly as any historical fact could be that Maximilian
was not present at the battle of Ravenna, and that his
five thousand lansquenets fought by the side of Gaston de

x THE CICERONIANS 201

Foix and contributed in no small degree to the French
victory. But the military powers of the man were eclipsed
by his literary genius. There was no branch of literature
or science which he had not mastered. At one time he
had determined to take holy orders, in the expectation
that in due time he would be appointed cardinal, and then
elected pope, when he would have wrested from the
Venetians his principality of Verona, of which the Republic
had despoiled his ancestors.

That so great a genius should have been contented with
the role of physician to the Bishop of Agen — it is in this
humble position at the age of forty-two that the light of
contemporary history first shines upon Julius Cassar Sca-
liger — was not to be expected. Whatever the truth or
fable of the first forty-two years of his life, whether he was
really of the blood of those to whose memory the noblest
monuments of the Middle Ages were erected, or whether,
as his enemies said, he was the son of Benedetti Bordoni,
schoolmaster or illuminator at Verona, it is certain that
for his last thirty years he displayed no lack of bodily
or mental vigour. Chafing in the obscurity to which fate
had condemned him, he seized the opportunity which the
Ciceronianus afforded of making himself known and of in-
suring for himself — at least from the numerous enemies
of Erasmus — a favourable hearing. After preparing the
way by certain pompous and violent letters to the Rector
of the University and the students of the several colleges of
Paris, he wrote in 1529, but did not succeed in printing
until 1531, his first oration against Erasmus. It was
printed under the supervision or editorship of Noel Beda,
and with the express permission of the Lieutenant-Criminel,
Jean Morin. It consists almost wholly of violent abuse.
The following are a few only of the expressions applied to
the great scholar : — carnifex, parricida, furia, canicula,

202 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

calumniator. He is accused of folly, arrogance, spite, lying,
drunkenness, ' canina impudentia.' Yet in Scaliger's letters
to Le Ferron he outdoes even these flowers of rhetoric ;
Erasmus is there referred to as ' omnium ordinum labes,
omnium studiorum macula, omnium astatum venenum,
mendaciorum parens, conviciorum sator, furoris alumnus.'
He is * scelestus, mentiens, insaniens, barbarus, blaterans.'

The publication of this harangue, if in one respect it
satisfied its author's expectation by giving him the notoriety
which he had hoped for, was yet the occasion of a most
bitter mortification to him. He had expected that
Erasmus would at once reply to it, and that he thus
might enjoy the honour of a controversy with the greatest
scholar of the age. But Erasmus was too accustomed to
abuse to pay much attention to it, and he as well as
his friends saw that his reputation could in no way be
injured by this violent harangue. He accordingly took no
public notice of it ; never having before heard the name
of the writer, and thinking, not unnaturally, that such vio-
lent personal abuse could only arise from violent personal
enmity. Erasmus did not believe that Scaliger was the
real author, but attributed the oration to Aleander, whose
style he was certain he recognised. He wrote on May 3,
1532 : — 'I who know Aleander inside and out, am as sure
that it is his as I am of my own existence.' l Scaliger
waited in vain for a reply to his book. Mortified by the
contemptuous neglect of Erasmus, he was contemplating
a further harangue on the same subject, when he received
in April 1535 from his friends Merbelius and Laurentius
a letter 2 which Erasmus had written to them on the 1 8th

1 Erasmi Episto!*?, No. 1218 (Le Clerc's edit.). ' Ego qui de domestico
convictu ac lectuli quoque contubernio totum intus et in cute novi, tarn
scio esse ovum illius quam scio me vivere.'

2 Epist. 1278.

x THE CICERONIANS 203

of the previous month defending himself from the charge
of being an enemy of Cicero, and saying that he knew the
oration of Scaliger, so full of lies and abuse, was not written
by him. We can understand the combination of rage and
mortified vanity which filled Scaliger's mind on reading
this letter, sent to him without a word of sympathy or
even politeness by his good-natured friends. He instantly
applied himself to the composition of a second harangue,
more violent, more abusive, with more self-glorification,
but with even less literary merit, than the first. It was
completed in the month of September the same year,
and immediately sent to Paris to be printed. But delays
occurred ; a year elapsed before it appeared ; and when in
December 1536 it was given to the world, Erasmus, who
had heard that it had been written, but had not seen it,
had joined the majority.1

Dolet was not less displeased than Scaliger with the
Ciceronianus. It was the attack — so he was pleased to
consider it — upon the cherished master and friend of Simon
Villanovanus, Longolius, the only man from this side of
the Alps who had made a name as a Ciceronian, and whom
Dolet had accustomed himself to consider as the most
perfect disciple of the great master, that especially roused
his indignation ; a feeling which we must allow to have

1 Although printed (and published) in November or December 1536,
yet in accordance with the vicious practice early introduced amongst
publishers, and not yet obsolete, it is dated 1537. The original editions
of both harangues are extremely scarce. The first harangue was reprinted
at Cologne in 1600, and again, with notes by Melchior Adam, at
Heidelberg in 1618. In 1621 the President de Maussac having discovered
a copy of each of the harangues, and also some unpublished letters and
portions of letters of J. C. Scaliger, which Joseph's pious regard for his
father's reputation had induced him to suppress, and which are still more
discreditable to Julius Cajsar than the harangues, published them at
Toulouse, together with the Ciceronianus of Erasmus.

204 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

sprung from a generous impulse, even though we may
not share it. But this was not the only cause of his
indignation. If there was one living man for whom he
had an unfeigned respect, and whom he placed at the
head of all living scholars, it was Bude, and he conceived
that Erasmus had intended a deliberate insult to this great
man by placing him on a level with Josse Bade.

He left Lyons early in October 1534, and arrived in
Paris on the I5th of the same month. His principal object
in visiting the capital seems to have been to obtain the
royal license for the publication of his Commentaries. For
some weeks after his arrival he devoted himself partly to
his great work, partly to composing A Dialogue concerning
the imitation of Cicero in defence of Christopher Longolius
against Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. It is dedicated
to Bishop de Langeac, and as soon as it was completed
he sent it to Guillaume Sceve, accompanied by the following
letter : —

1 On the 1 5th of October I arrived at Paris without ex-
cessive fatigue and without meeting with any misadventure
on the way. And as I fancy you will expect me to write
to you what I am doing, and how I occupy myself in
cultivating and prosecuting my studies, I will in the first
place explain this to you, and will then inform you of what
is passing here.

' My studies, my dear Sceve, become more serious daily.
Indeed I can hardly express, and you will with difficulty
conceive with what alacrity, inflamed as it were by a new
love, I devote myself to literature. I both plan and write
many things, as to which however I shall not arouse your
expectation until I perceive that I am able to complete
them. I send you a dialogue concerning the imitation
of Cicero against Erasmus, which you will hand to
Gryphius. I shall be under very great obligation to you

x THE CICERONIANS 205

if you will see that it is printed as carefully as possible.
Do not allow your kindness to me, which has never yet
failed, to fail in this instance. The trivial crowd of gram-
marians who worship Erasmus as a deity, and place him
before Cicero, will scarcely refrain from attacks upon me.
Moreover I do not doubt that the old man1 (who is now
almost childish with age) will ridicule the young man
with his usual and persistent scurrility. But nothing
troubles me less than the scurrility of a buffoon, nor do
I fear any sharper bite from the toothless old food-for-
worms 2 ; while as to those who may accuse me of in-
solence, and may cover me with reproaches because I
attack Erasmus, let them in the first place consider in
what way they can defend Erasmus himself from the
charge of insolence and scurrility in venturing to ridicule
Cicero and those who strive to imitate him.

* I spend my evenings in rewriting my Commentaries
on the Latin Language, which I hope to complete by the
beginning of January. The remainder of the winter I shall
devote to enlarging my orations and epistles for another
edition. I should not promise so many things if I had
not determined on this, that for once I would show what it
was to be eagerly and studiously devoted to letters, and
what it was to undergo labour for the sake of immortality,
and would also show that I hated idleness worse than
death. . . .

' Yet however much study, labour, and diligence I devote
to literature, I refer whatever I compose to your judgment,
so that you may order my writings to be suppressed, or
may decide that they shall be published, for I am certain
that you will neither desire that I should remain for ever
unknown, nor, owing to the premature appearance of the

1 Erasmus was only sixty-seven years of age.
2 * Silicernium.'

206 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

fruits of my studies, that I should obtain a merely slight
reputation rather than one which is firmly fixed. I think
it is my duty, whilst my age and the abundance of my
leisure allows, to devote myself as vigorously as possible
to literature, but only to publish such things as, without
flattery, I may understand to be approved as well by the
judgment of other learned men as of yourself.

' My great devotion to study forbids me from setting
foot out of doors, so completely am I bound to literature.
It thus happens that I have not yet visited your friend
^milius l ; I have, however, taken care to send him your
letter. Nor have I as yet paid my respects to Bude, which
may indeed be considered as a great omission on my
part. I shall visit him the first opportunity, and to this
I shall for a short time postpone my work and my present
studies.

' Now you will expect to hear what is doing and what
is talked of at Paris. You shall then have all I can tell
you. It would be a tedious and difficult task for me to
describe the great confusion and excitement in which
things are here. In the talk of the vulgar one hears of
nothing but the insults offered to Christ by the Lutherans.
That foolish sect, led away by a pernicious passion for
notoriety, has lately scattered abroad certain reproaches
directed against the Christian worship,2 which have still
more vehemently inflamed the hatred under which they
had previously been labouring. Many have been cast into
prison on suspicion of Lutheran errors, some of them be-
longing to the dregs of the people, others to the highest

1 Probably Emile Perrot, who was at this time a councillor of the
Parliament of Paris, and was certainly afterwards known to Dolet. Emile
Ferret, whe was also a councillor of the Parliament, may, however, be the
person intended.

2 The well-known affair of the placards occurred in October 1534.

x THE CICERONIANS 207

rank of merchants. At these tragedies1 I play the part
of a spectator. I grieve over the situation, and pity the
misfortunes of some of the accused, while I laugh at the
folly of others in putting their lives in danger by their
ridiculous self-will and unbearable obstinacy.

* Write to me as long and as frequent letters as possible,
telling me, in the first place, all about yourself, and in the
next what is passing at Lyons. Do not omit to tell me
who are favourable and who are hostile to me on account
of that edition of my Orations which has lately been
published. I hear that the rage of the Tolosans against
me is in no degree allayed, and that they are wickedly
striving to do me some mischief. Unless, however, they
cease from their attacks they will irritate one who at
present is quiet, but whose bite when once excited they
will hardly be able to bear, and by the severity of my pen
I shall make the fools bitterly repent of their folly.

' I will, however, say but little on these matters, lest the
recollection of my enemies should excite my indignation
at a time when I am unwilling to be so excited. Salute
specially from me your friends the Vauzelles,2 most culti-

1 It was only the day after this letter was written that the fifth acts
of these tragedies were performed. On the loth of November 1534, as
we learn from the journal of a ' Bourgeois de Paris,' three heretics were
committed to the flames in the Place Maubert, Paris, and from that day
to the 5th of May 1535, no less than twenty-two persons were there
burned for heresy.

2 ' No one,' says M. Baudrier in his interesting introduction to the
Police Subsidiaire of Jean de Vauzelles (privately printed for the learned
President of the Court of Appeal by Perrin and Marinet in 1875), 'but
he who is completely a stranger to the history of our city, can be ignorant
of Mathieu, George, and Jean de Vauzelles, the three illustrious brothers,
so styled by their contemporaries, who shone each with a different lustre,
the first under the robe of a jurisconsult and the mantle of an echevin,
the second by arms, and the third in the church and literature.' Notices
of the three Vauzelles will be found in Colonia, Hist. Lit. de Lyon, ii.

208 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

vated of men, and most cordial well-wishers of all men
of letters ; also our very kind friend Fournier.1 All
these I especially love and hold dear. Farewell. Paris, 9
Nov. 1534.'

It is impossible to defend and difficult to excuse the
scurrility with which Dolet in this epistle — afterwards
printed as a preface to his Dialogue — speaks of the greatest
scholar and the foremost man of letters of the age. All

568-575, in Pernetti, Les Lyonnois dignes de memoire, i. 322-328, in two
interesting articles by Ludovic de Vauzelles in the Revue du Lyonnais,
1870 and 1872, on Mathieu de Vauzelles and Jean de Vauzelles, and in
the Vie de Jacques Comte de Vintimille by the same author (Orleans,
Herluison, 1865). The three brothers were all men of wealth and
literary tastes. George, a commander of the Order of St. John of
Jerusalem, was especially a liberal patron of men of letters. Jean, Prior
of Montrottier, was distinguished by his practical benevolence ; and in
his Police Subsidiaire, ou Assistance donnee a la multitude des pauvres, first
printed in 1531, and fortunately rescued from oblivion by the pious care
of M. Baudrier, 'we have,' as the editor remarks, 'la premiere idee de la
creation de I'AumSne Generale, une des gloires de Lyon, le type des
etablissements destines a lutter centre le pauperisme,' and which ' a servi
de modele a tous les autres hopitaux du royaume, meme a I'h6pital
general de Paris.'

Voulte has the following epigram on the three brothers : —

Ad tres Vauxellios Fratres.
Tres fratres celeberrimi optimorum ;
Tres vita, et genio, et pares amore ;
Quibus una domus tribus, fidesque
Una est, una eadem tribus voluntas j
Vos sic vivite semper et valete
Humanis pariter Diisque grati.

Epigrammata (Lugd. 1537), p. 258.

1 The Fourniers were a family of wealth and position at Lyons in the
sixteenth century, distinguished by their love of letters. Hugues Fournier,
First President of the Parliament of Dijon, died in 1525 ; and I imagine
that his more celebrated brother Humbert was dead before this time.
Probably Dolet's friend was Claude Fournier, author of a Latin ode on the
death of the Dauphin inserted in the collection edited by Dolet in 1536.
The second wife of Mathieu de Vauzelles was a Fournier, his first a
Sceve.

x THE CICERONIANS 209

that can be said in extenuation is that scurrility of this kind
was a common practice of the literary men of the day in
writing of their opponents, that we find it in men distin-
guished for their ability, learning, and virtue, and that,
violent as the language of Dolet appears to be, it is far less
violent, far less scurrilous, and far less unseemly than that
which Julius Cassar Scaliger used of the same great man,
or that which Luther applied to Henry VIII. and his other
opponents, whilst it is absolutely moderate in comparison
with the language of Filelfo, of Poggio, and of Valla.
Nor must we forget the graceful tribute which Dolet
afterwards paid to Erasmus when dead, nor his admission
that he had used language towards him of too hostile a
nature.

The publication of the orations seems to have been
against the judgment of Gryphius, who would not allow
his name to appear as the printer, and who was resolute
against printing a second edition, although pressed to do
so both by Dolet and several of his friends. The Dia-
logue, although learned and ingenious, was yet written in
so intemperate a style that it could scarcely have been
approved by the more prudent among the friends of the
author, and Sceve and Gryphius showed themselves in
no hurry to publish it. On the 3ist of December it was
still unprinted, and Dolet, in writing from Paris to Jacques
Rostagno, sent a message to Sceve urging the printing
of the Dialogue. Whether it actually appeared before
its author returned to Lyons we do not know. Certain
it is that Dolet had returned, and that the Dialogue had
been printed, some time before the middle of 1535.

The book is in the form of an imaginary conversation
between Sir Thomas More and Simon Villanovanus, which
is supposed to take place at Padua during Dolet's residence
at that University. The introduction and conclusion,

210 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

from which I have already made some extracts, are
written with much spirit, and it would be pleasant to
think that it might have been possible for Sir Thomas
More to have met Dolet and Villanovanus at Padua ; but
though we know that Sir Thomas More's desires, like
those of all other learned men of the day, tended towards
a visit to Italy, the accomplishment of his wish was denied
to him. More, as the friend of Erasmus, is his defender ;
and nearly all that is put in his mouth is to be found in
the writings of the great scholar. It cannot be said that
thej Dialogue itself is of much worth or interest. Though
far less intemperate than the orations of Scaliger, yet,
as might be expected from the author, the abuse lavished
on Erasmus equals that which all with whom Dolet dif-
fered received from his pen.

The publication of the Dialogue, whilst it could not but
shock the friends and admirers of Erasmus, was treated
by the latter with the same silent contempt which had
so irritated J. C. Scaliger. Curiously enough he attributed
this new attack also to Aleander.1 He more than once
refers to the book. In the letter to Merbelius and
Laurentius,2 already mentioned, he says, ' I have heard
that a work has just appeared against me at Lyons. The
author is Etienne Dolet. ... I have not yet seen it, and
when I do see it I have no intention of replying to it.' 3

1 'Aleander denuo emisit librum furiosum sub nomine Doleti : quo
et Morum quern acceperat esse in carcere ulciscitur ; et Villanovanum
mendicum mortuum facit imperiosum, Morum timide loquentem.' Epist.
1288, written to Goclenius, Sept. 2, 1535. Again he writes to the same
on June 28, 1536 : ' Suspicor harum molestiarum Tfxvirijv esse eum qui
Scaligeros, Doletos, Merulas in me subornat. ... In furioso dialogo
Doleti Morus vexatur.' Epist. 1299.

2 March 18, 1535. Epist. 1278.

3 Nee de la Rochelle, whose language here as elsewhere is borrowed
by M. Boulmier, says the Dialogue ' lui (Dolet) valut la haine d'firasme.'

x THE CICERONIANS 211

Melanchthon, while censuring the attack of Dolet, paid it
the compliment (which he had not paid to the harangue
of Scaliger) of thinking it ought to be answered, if not by
Erasmus, at least by some one. He writes to Camerarius
in 1535, 'I have seen Dolet's book, and I am thinking of
instructing some one to reply to it. Erasmus indeed is
not altogether undeserving of the Nemesis which he has
met with, but the impudence of this young man displeases
me.' l Shortly afterwards, writing to another correspond-
ent, he says, ' Have you read that very impudent book
of Dolet written against Erasmus ? I have taken care that
it should be answered.' 2

The publication of the Dialogue considerably increased
the reputation of its author for scholarship, and indeed
may be said to have introduced his name for the first time
to the world of letters. The volume containing the ora-
tions was not of general interest, and its circulation, probably
to some extent surreptitious, would be confined almost
entirely to those persons at Lyons and Toulouse who
were specially interested in the details of the author's
quarrels. The Dialogue obtained a much wider circulation,
and whatever its merits or demerits, at least informed men
of letters that a new and vigorous aspirant to literary
honours had appeared. The subject of the Dialogue was
not however at the time of its publication of very absorb-
ing interest. Six years had elapsed since the appearance
of the Ciceronianus. The popularity of the Ciceronians
was on the wane. The men of the new learning rightly
looked upon Erasmus as. their great leader, as one who

There is no evidence to support this statement. The only references
made by Erasmus to the Dialogue or its author are those which I have
quoted.

1 Epist. MelanchthoniS) lib. iv. No. 180, p. 732 (edit, of London, 1642,
fol.).

2 Epistolarum Liber, primus editus (Leyden, 1647), p. 91.

212 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

more than all others had contributed to the promotion,
as well of literature generally, as of the study of Greek,
and as having by his ridicule and his common-sense greatly
contributed to the overthrow of superstition and bigotry ;
while the quarrel of the Ciceronians and anti-Ciceronians
was one with which the opponents of the new learning
troubled themselves but little, as being a matter with
which they had no concern. But the publication of the
Dialogue, if it did not obtain for its author all the fame
which he hoped for, procured for him the bitter and re-
lentless hatred of Julius Cassar Scaliger.

We have already seen that messages of civility had been
interchanged between Scaliger and Dolet through the inter-
vention of Arnoul Le Ferron, but it seems as if during
Dolet's troubled residence at Toulouse the great scholar
and critic entertained a somewhat unfriendly feeling to-
wards the young student, and that he had taken the part
of Pinache in the matter of the orations. But on the
subject of the quarrel of the Ciceronians they were on the
same side, both ardent supporters of the purity of the
language of Cicero, both bitterly prejudiced against Erasmus.
But as we have seen, nearly three years before the
appearance of the Dialogue, Scaliger had published his
Oratio •pro Cicerone contra Erasmum, a production of
even less merit than the Dialogue of Dolet, less lively and
entertaining, and far more violent in its language. In
the opinion of Scaliger, when he had spoken, nothing
further was needed, or even allowable. His venom was
bitter enough against his adversaries, but what he wrote
of them was as it were with a pen dipped in honey com-
pared with the language he used against the presumptuous
young man who had dared to think that Erasmus was
not completely demolished by his oration, and that anything
further could possibly be said in favour of the Ciceronians.

x THE CICERONIANS 213

The violent abuse which Scaliger lavished upon the poetry
of Dolet induced Naude1 first to suspect that the critic
must have had some private enmity to the poet, but it
was reserved to Bayle to discover the ground of that
enmity, and to call attention to a letter written by Scaliger
to Arnoul Le Ferron immediately after the appearance of
the Dialogue, in which Scaliger shows how bitterly wounded
his self-love was by its publication.2 ' I suppose,' he says,
* you have seen Dolet's Dialogue against Erasmus, the
author of which was not ashamed when my writings were
in print, to steal everything from me, by giving my oration
another turn and decking it out with his tinsel.3 There
appear the same extravagances as in his orations, a style
indeed a little less rough, but for which he is indebted to
another, so that his loquacity seems to be supported rather
by other people's words collected and raked together than
by solid arguments. But you will say he praises Caesar ; 4
he does so ; for they say you advised him to consult his
reputation by doing so, he having already rashly and

1 Dial, de Mascurat. p. 8.

2 The greater portion of this letter, as well as the others in abuse of
Erasmus, were suppressed by Joseph Scaliger, and did not appear in the
collection of his father's letters published in his lifetime, nor in the
subsequent editions based on this. Copies however were discovered at
Toulouse by the President de Maussac, who published them in 1621.
Schelhorn afterwards found copies in the library of Z. C. von Uffenbach,
and printed them in his Amanitates Literariee (vols. 6 and 8), not knowing
of Maussac's edition.

3 This is an utterly groundless charge. The oration of Scaliger and
the Dialogue of Dolet have really nothing in common, — except abuse of
Erasmus ; neither the treatment, style, nor matter of Dolet is borrowed
from Scaliger.

4 Dolet had spoken of Scaliger in the following terms : 'Julium
Caesarem Scaligerum tibi hie objicerem, virum Ciceronis lectioni multum
deditum, in quo grammaticae subsidia non desideres, dicendi facultatem
laudes.'

2I4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

foolishly ridiculed the Italian name. You had informed
him also that I was preparing a Dialogue wherein I should
expose his malicious temper and empty arrogance, his
petulance and stupidity, his impropriety and loquacity, his
raving expressions and impudence. Having thus soothed
me with design to divert me from my purpose, he praised
me in such a manner that he seemed unwillingly to
follow the judgment of other people rather than express
his own. Wherefore I have endeavoured that both he and
others may for the future repent of their rage and impu-
dence. I hear he is a corrector of the press at Lyons ;
and if it be true that he was concerned in correcting the
books I bought which were lately printed by Gryphius,
our very schoolboys have therein discovered faults for
which he deserves a severe whipping. I have reprimanded
him in this second oration, not by name indeed, but
painted in such colours that he may be known by the very
children of Toulouse.' l

In this and several other letters, written about the same
time to Le Ferron, Scaliger shows himself equally sore and
equally violent. We can forgive the great critic for
feeling somewhat mortified that a young and unknown
man should have thought that his oration needed supple-
menting, for, as Bayle remarks,2 ' There are very few authors
who like such a procedure ; it is looked upon as adopted
with a design either of surpassing the first champion or
of depriving him of the glory of being the only person who
breaks a lance. It is even thought that he who interposes

1 Scaliger must have struck out of his second oration, possibly at Le
Perron's request, the passages here indicated. In the second oration as
printed Dolet is only once referred to, and merely as having imitated
Scaliger's first oration. Niceron (Mem. xxi. p. 119) is in error in saying
of this second oration, * Dolet qui en faisoit le principal objet, ne fut
point epargne.'

2 Diet. art. Dolet.

x THE CICERONIANS 215

in the combat judges the cause as not being well defended,
and as standing in need of assistance.' But it is impossible
to justify either the violence of Scaliger's language, or the
undying hatred which he bore to Dolet during the latter's
life, and with which he violated his memory after his
death.

The poems of Dolet do not indeed seem to justify the
exaggerated admiration which many of his contemporaries,
and even those most competent to judge, lavished upon
them. The literary men who in the sixteenth century
were bound together by the ties of friendship seem to have
constituted mutual admiration societies, and whatever was
written by one was lauded up to the skies by the rest.
But there are certainly some among his poems which, if
not equal to the best Latin poetry of the Renaissance, to
that of Vida, Sannazar, or Paleario, are devoid neither of
beauty of thought nor elegance of language ; and no one
will find fault with Gruter for inserting several of them
among the Deliti<e poetarum Gallorumy whilst of those he
has omitted, there are not a few which are superior to the
poems of several authors who are included in his collection.
The ode on the death of Simon Villanovanus is alone
sufficient to show how absolutely unfair and unreasoning
is the criticism of Scaliger contained in the following
passage, written, it pains one to remember, after the flames
had consumed the body of Dolet, and when all purely
literary enmities should have become extinct. But the
violence of Scaliger increases to brutality as he insults the
memory and gloats over . the fate of the unfortunate poet.
' Dolet may be called the canker or ulcer (carcinoma aut
vomica) of the Muses. For besides that in so great a body,
as Catullus says,1 there is not a grain of wit, fool as he is,
he sets up for a tyrant in poetry. He has according to his

1 Nulla in tarn magno est corpora mica salis. — CATULLUS.

2i6 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

own fancy set Virgil's pearls in his own resin in such a
manner that he would have them pass for his. A wretched
prater, who out of scraps of Cicero has patched up certain
wild orations as he calls them, but which the learned judge
to be latrations. He imagined he had as good a right to
make free with the divine works of Virgil. So while he
was singing the fate of that good and great king Francis,
his name met with its own evil fate, and the Atheist alone
suffered the punishment of the flames which both he and
his verses deserved. Yet the flames did not purify him,
but he rather sullied them. Why should I speak of the
filth which is to be found in the common sink or sewer of
his Epigrams ? They are dull, cold, and witless, and full of
that arrogant madness which, being armed with the most
consummate impudence, would not even confess the being
of a God. Wherefore as the greatest of philosophers, Aris-
totle, in discoursing of the nature of animals, first describes
the several parts of which they are composed, and then
takes notice even of their excrements, so let his name be
read here, not as that of a poet, but of a poetical excre-
ment.' a

Scaliger's judgment on the style of the orations as being
patched up out of scraps of Cicero is not altogether unjust ;
both the orations and epistles are to a great extent made up
of expressions and portions of sentences borrowed from
Cicero, so as to form a sort of cento. But his criticism
upon the odes of Dolet is equally if not more applicable
to his own compositions. Whatever defects are to be found
in the poems of Dolet are still more conspicuous in those
of Scaliger himself; and the judgment of the Bishop of
Avranches will be concurred in by every one who has
read them. ' With all the merit which he ( J. C. Scaliger)
really had,' writes Huet, * and with all that he believed

1 Poefices, lib. vi. (Hypercriticus).

x THE CICERONI ANS 217

he had, he has clearly shown in his Hyper criticus, by
the false judgments which he has there delivered, that
he had no delicacy of taste. . . . He has shown it still
better by the brutish and formless poems with which he has
dishonoured Parnassus.'1 'Julius Cassar Scaliger was in
truth a man of a vast and elevated spirit, but of the very
worst taste in poetry. Even if one had not read his
Hypercriticus, so full of false views, so much more occupied
in judging the details of single lines and in correcting minute
points, even changing them from bad to worse, than in
bringing a sound judgment to bear on complete works, could
one ever submit oneself to the decision of a man who has
given to the world so much bad verse ? ' 2 Maittaire, who
quotes this passage, remarks,3 ' Far from disapproving the
criticism of Huet, I think it perfectly just, for how can we
believe that he could be a competent judge of literary style
who is incapable himself of good writing ? yet no creatures
are more commonly met with than critics who, wanting in
all decency of manners, full of nothing but pedantry, with
the utmost effrontery would submit all writers to their
audacious ferule, while they themselves are most notorious
for their awkwardness and ruggedness of style.' ' There is
hardly a more wretched book,' remarks Menage of the Latin
poems of Julius Caesar Scaliger ; * we can hardly find four or
five epigrams which can pass muster.' 4

But the violence and intemperance of Dolet's Dialogue
not only offended the admirers of Erasmus, but were a
source of regret to the author's own friends, and to none
more than the sensible and moderate Jean de Boyssone,
who was now fully restored to his position as a professor of
law in the University of Toulouse. In the year 1535 his
reputation was greatly increased by a public discussion with

1 Huet i an a, c. 5. 2 Ibid. c. 35.

3 Annales, vol. iii. p. 16. 4 Menagiana, ii. 275.

218 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Ambrose Catharin,1 in which he maintained with signal
success and ability, that the cultivation of literature was not
only no hindrance, but even an assistance to legal studies.
In a letter to Dolet, written shortly before the end of August
in that year, after giving an account of the discussion, and
making some remarks on Dolet's expected Commentaries on
the Latin Tongue, he thus proceeds : 2 ' As to what is thought
here of your dialogue De Imitatione Ciceroniana, though you
will no doubt have heard everything from others before this,
yet I must tell you that the bitterness of your style, which
you once promised me you would discontinue, has produced
a bad effect upon many, because (as they say) you ought not
to have attacked so violently an old man who has rendered
such great services to literature. The rumour is that the
Germans are preparing a vigorous attack upon you in order
to avenge the wounded dignity of Erasmus. Whatever
happens I trust you will not be disturbed by these matters,
but will continue, as is your wont, to show an unshaken
firmness of mind. This only I would beg of you, that you
would so accommodate yourself to the time as that it should
not seem inevitable for you to offend the good and pious.
When I ask this of you, you will understand what I mean.
But more of this presently when we meet, for I am thinking
of going to Lyons if the king should come there. If you
wish to know what is going on here I will now tell you. Six
French students are in danger of capital punishment ; indeed
they would already have been condemned to the gallows, had
not Minut, who is the devoted friend not only of the French
but of all the really studious, by great prudence prevented it.

1 See A. Touron, Histoire des Hommes Illustres de Fordre de S. Dominique
(6 vols. Paris, 1747), iv. p. 133.

2 MS. Correspondence of Jean de Boyssone in the Toulouse library,
fol. xvii. The interest which the Dialogue excited is further shown by a
letter in the same volume, fol. vi. from Castellanus to Boyssone, asking
for the loan of the book.

x THE CICERONI ANS 219

I know not by what evil fate it happens that Toulouse is
always persecuting the studious. Yet owing to this very
persecution their names are rendered so much the more
illustrious. If they should after all be punished with death,
I could not bear to see it, but should betake myself some-
where or other so as not to be a witness. But enough of
these matters, which cause me the deepest grief whenever
they recur to my mind.

' The Queen of Navarre was at Toulouse lately for some
days. It was really wonderful how kindly she received me,
although I had never before been personally known to her.
She very earnestly pressed me to reside at Bourges, and I
have not decided whether I shall not at some time do so.
Farewell.'

Dolet replied to this letter on the 3ist of August:1
' What you designate as the excessive severity of my Dialogue
I have determined not to excuse to you at great length. I
will excuse it, or rather defend it, with all my might against
those who undertake the cause of Erasmus. You will
scarcely believe how little account I make of the attack of
that young German fellow,2 an attack which I attribute to

1 MS. Correspondence of Boyssone in the Toulouse library, fol. i.

2 I have been unable to discover who the young German was who
took up the defence of Erasmus against Dolet. I am acquainted with no
book printed before the end of 1536 that refers to the Dialogue. It is
curious to observe that Melanchthon's letter, in which he says, 'cogito de
aliquo instruendo qui respondeat,' is dated November 1535, whilst this
letter of Dolet (though only dated August 31) is clearly written in 1535,
and therefore before Melanchthon had carried out his design. M. Guibal
indeed, who quotes this letter (Revue de Toulouse, 1864, p. 97), suggests
that Latomus (Masson), then a professor at Paris, was the person referred
to. But, besides that Latomus was then fifty years of age, and could
hardly be called by Dolet 'juvenis Germanus,' he was a professed and
bitter enemy of Erasmus. M. Guibal seems to have confused this young
German with ' quidam Germanus grammaticus publicus Lutetiae praslector'
to whom Dolet refers in the second volume of his Commentaries, 636, as
having found fault with a passage in the first volume, and who may very

220 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the influence of wine and intoxication, or perhaps indeed to
a childish ostentation of German garrulity and a love of
chattering. I know what the fellow's strength is, excessive
in relation to wine and women, but in respect to other
matters weak and feeble. But I would have any one who
defends Erasmus against me to know that I shall not write
against him, but against Erasmus. I am however about to
treat of the whole matter in four orations and two books of
iambics.

' As to the one thing you specially ask of me, namely,
that I should so accommodate myself to the time as that it
should not seem inevitable for me to offend the good and
pious, this only is wanting, that I should understand what
you mean, for I am so far from understanding it, that I
have not even anything from which to form a conjecture.
But we can talk of this matter hereafter when we meet, as
you are thinking of coming to Lyons.

' I am extremely grieved at the mischance of the French
students, who have fallen into such great danger of their
lives at Toulouse. But why does not every sane man fly
from such barbarians ? Who unless he is out of his mind
would pass his life among them ? If the French students
would only take my advice, they would pursue their studies
in a French University, and would avoid the barbarism and
brutality of Toulouse.

possibly be Latomus. The Dialogue of Dolet was severely attacked by
Menapius in his funeral oration on the death of Erasmus in 1537 (Op.
Eras. v. 10), and still more severely and in more detail by Franciscus
Floridus Sabinus in his Lectiones Succisiva (Basle, 1540). I know of no
other answer to it. Though Melanchthon wrote shortly afterwards
Curavi ut respondeatur, it seems probable that the answer never appeared.
A certain Joannes Gigas published at Wittenberg, in 1540, a volume of
Latin verse containing several bitter epigrams upon Dolet. One of them
thus begins : —

Quid laceras magnum divinum munus Erasmum,

Quid laceras summos fade Delete viros ?

x THE CICERONIANS 221

' But let me pass to more agreeable topics. I am delighted
to hear that you have been received by the Queen of Navarre
in so gracious and cordial a manner, and since she wishes
you to remove to Bourges, I conjure you by that close
friendship which exists between us do not show yourself
churlish to fortune, who now recalls you to your former
dignity and seeks to make reparation for the injuries which
she has heretofore inflicted on you ; fly into France, whose
cultivated civilisation is known to you, while the barbarism
of Toulouse is unknown to no one. I conjure you, my dear
Boyssone, if your arrangements will allow of this, listen to
the friendly advice of your friend, devote yourself to Gallic
culture ; sometime you will become excessively weary of
living in anxiety amongst the barbarians, especially when you
have finished the Commentary which you are writing on
that chapter of Ulpian. Farewell. Lyons, 3ist August

(1535)-'

A few weeks later, and after the receipt of a further
letter from Boyssone,1 Dolet again writes to him : 2 —

' You plead the want of leisure as an excuse for writing
to me both less often and more briefly than you otherwise
would. But how much leisure do you think I possess, who
am the slave both of the public and (as he himself says)
of Sceve ? 3 But what is there that I would not neglect for
your sake, for to you I am more wholly devoted than
either to the public or to Sceve. But what leisure I can
snatch from business I had best devote to those matters
which you may be desirous of having information about.
The rumour, which had almost worn itself out, that the

1 This letter is not in the MS., but is only referred to in Dolet's letter
of October 6.

2 MS. fol. i.

8 This seems to refer to his (Dolet's) duties as a corrector or sub-
editor for Gryphius under Guillaume Sceve.

222 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

king was coming to Lyons has revived, and it is everywhere
and constantly repeated that he is about to come. If this
happens we shall, as you lately wrote to me, be able to
talk of many things face to face. The book of Ulric
Zazius, De Feudis? is here offered for sale. A furious
partizan of Erasmus 2 has brought it here, and if you have
a mind to possess it or any others, I shall not fail to give
all diligence so that you may receive them as speedily as
possible. From Erasmus himself there has also appeared
a short answer to the Roman P. Curtius ; I have sent you
both the attack and defence.3 As yet the old Dutchman

1 The first edition of the book of Zazius here referred to, Udalrici
Zazii, In usus feodorum epitome . . . ejusdem orationes aliquot disertte
(Basileas, apud Bebelium, MDXXXV), had only just appeared. The preface
is dated '1535, Id. Junii.'

2 Probably J. A. Odonus.

3 The two books referred to are Petri Cursii Defensio pro Italia ad
Erasmum Roterodamum (Romae, apud Antonium Bladum, MDXXXV) and Des.
Erasmi. Rot. Responsio ad Petrii Cursii defensionem (Basileae, in officina
Frobeniana, MDXXXV). Erasmus in his Adages, under Myconius Calvus,
had said that these words were an ironical expression, as if one should say
learned as a Scythian, warlike as an Italian (Italum bellacem). The tract
of Cursius is directed against this, and extols the valour of the Italians as
far greater than that of the Germans. Erasmus, in his Responsio, says
that he used bellacem in a bad sense, not for a man of valour, but for one
who had a rage for fighting. The Responsio proves the spuriousness of
the letter attributed to Erasmus (Epist. 1276) addressed to Cursius, and
accepted as genuine by Bayle {Diet. : Hongrie, Marie, Reine de, Note H),
and Heuman (Parerga Critica, p. 56), in which Erasmus is made to say
that Italum is an error of the press, that he had written Attalum bellacem,
and that in future editions it should be corrected. In this letter occurs
the excellent story so often repeated, but which one regrets to be obliged
to admit is only ben trovato, of the malicious printer's error. A workman
to whom he had omitted to give a present determined to be revenged in
the next book of Erasmus, which he printed. ' Cum enim in Vidua mea,
quam serenissimae Hungarian reginae dedicaveram ad laudem cujusdam
sanctissimae fceminae, inter alia liberalitatem illius in pauperes referrem,
hasc verba subjunxi : " Atque mente ilia usam earn semper fuisse, quas
talem foeminam deceret." Unde scelestus ille animadvertens sibi vindictae

x THE CICERONIANS 223

has attempted nothing against Dolet. I look round about
me in good spirits. Whether I am well prepared the
issue of the battle will show, when the time comes for
us to join hand to hand in fight. Farewell. Lyons, Oct.

6(1535)-'

Among the correspondents of Gilbert Cousin of Nozeray,

better known by his Latinised name of Cognatus, the secre-
tary of Erasmus,1 is a certain Joannes Angelus Odonus, an

occasionem oblatam esse, ex mente ilia, mentula fecit. Itaque volumina
mille fuere impressa.' Ep. 1276.

1 I may here note by the way, that M. L. M. A. Dupetit-Thouars,
more eminent as a botanist than as a biographer or literary historian, has
invented and devoted a short article in the Biographic Universelle to an
imaginary Gilbert Cagnati, whom he describes as an Italian author born
at Nocera in the kingdom of Naples, who lived about the middle of the
sixteenth century, and was the author of the treatise De Hortorum laudibus
(Basle, 1546), afterwards printed and inserted by Joachim Camerarius II.
in his collection of treatises De re rustica. In fact however the treatise
De Hortorum laudibus is one of the works of Gilbert Cousin. At the
end of the book of Camerarius, Opuscula qutedam de re rustica partim collecta
partim composita a Joachim Camerario (Noribergae, 1 596), is a list of authors
and treatises de re rustica, among which is Gilberti Cognati Nozareni De
Hortorum laudibus, Basileae apud Oporinum, 1546. The work itself how-
ever is not inserted in the Opuscula of Camerarius. M. Dupetit-
Thouars clearly knew nothing of the book or its author, but having
copied the title from the book of Camerarius, and never having heard
either of Gilbert Cognatus or of Nozeray in Burgundy, and knowing
there was a town of the name of Nocera in Naples, he made an un-
successful guess, and then amplified an imaginary fact into a detailed
biography. Of course Dr. Hoefer in the Nouvelle Biograpkie Generate, as was
his wont in the case of the less important names, simply pitchforked M.
Dupetit-Thouars' article into his work, adding however (as was also his
wont, in order to suggest independent research) imaginary authorities to the
imaginary biography. The authorities cited in the Biog. Gen. for the
notice of Gilbert Cagnati are not the Biog. Universelle, but Biographie
Medicale and Eloy, Diet, de Medicine, neither of which works contains any
mention of Gilbert Cagnati, or indeed of Gilbert Cousin or Cognatus.

On the subject of the Biographie Universelle and the Biographie
Generate, see an article in the Quarterly Review for January, 1884.

224 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Italian settled at Strasburg, where he would seem to have
held some office in the University, a devout worshipper of
Erasmus, from whom, as he tells his correspondent with
much pride, he had on one occasion received a letter signed
with the great scholar's own hand. I have been unable to
find any notice of him or to obtain any other information
than is to be found in his letters to Cousin.1 Possibly he
may have been of the same family as Caterina Odoni, the
wife of Paulo Manuzio. The longest, and the most inter-
esting in every respect, of his letters is one on the subject of
Dolet and his attack on Erasmus ; and, although marked
by a spirit of the bitterest dislike and the greatest unfairness
to our hero, it yet gives us the only description which we
have of his personal appearance and manners, written (as
Odonus happily does not aim at Ciceronian elegance) in
a most racy and graphic manner.2

' JOANNES ANGELUS ODONUS TO GILBERTUS COGNATUS,
HIS FRIEND AND VERY DEAR BROTHER

' I have just heard that it has been written from hence
that the friends of Erasmus here wish that he should briefly
reply to the rage and fury of that very mad fellow (Dolet),
which those who have heard so great a croaking think is

1 Erasmus refers to him in a letter to G. Cousin (No. 1296, p. 1519) :
' Epistolam Odoni ac Philenii cupide legi, ad te quidem scriptam sed de
me totam.'

2 M. Boulmier, who tells us in his Preface that we are not to look
for an impartial history from him, and who either omits or slurs over
whatever is unfavourable to the client, of whom he admits himself
to be the advocate, has only referred to the letter of Odonus to quote a
remark on the age of Dolet and to describe the letter as unfriendly to
him. Following as usual Nee de la Rochelle, he says this letter has been
preserved to us by Niceron. This letter is to be found in Opera G. Cognati,
Basle, 1562, vol. i. p. 313, but is quoted, neither quite fully nor quite
accurately, by Niceron, vol. xxi. p. 114.

x THE CICERONI ANS 225

the roaring of some great animal (as the fable of the Lion
and the Frog has it). But I who when at Lyons both saw
the man (or rather the mindless thing in human form) and
talked with him, know him to be a worthless beast. He
somewhere calls himself a young man, but he is nearer to
his fortieth than to his thirty-eighth year. He is bald to the
middle of his senseless head. He wore a short Spanish
jacket, coarse and much worn, scarcely covering his
buttocks. His countenance is of such a funereal and black
pallor, and has such a wretched air, that you would fancy
an avenging fury had fastened on his breast and was dragging
him to the punishment of the wheel. You will ask who
introduced me to this portentous spectacle. It was that
other precious Ciceronian,1 that despiser of the Greek
language and studies, who has published those dialogues
Cicero Revocatus and Cicero Relegatus. He indeed is
banished from, but is not yet recalled to, Italy ; where
(though his native country) not only did he fear to be
recognised, but was so conscious of his own deserts that
he even suppressed his name on the title-page. I was
however on terms of great intimacy with him at Bologna.
At Lyons he repeated this saying to me, " Let others choose
other masters, I approve only of Christ and of Tully ;
Christ and Tully are sufficient for me." I saw nothing of
Christ however in his hands or in his books ; God knows
whether he had anything in his heart. This however I
know from his own mouth, that when he fled into France
he brought with him as a consolation in the wretchedness
of his journey neither the Old nor the New Testament,
but only the Familiar Epistles of Cicero. Both the circum-
stances of this fellow, which are worthy of his life (yet the
Phrygian has not yet undergone the stripes of God calling

1 Hortensio Lando.
Q

226 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

him to repentance ; l oh, that he might at length feel them),
and his levity, his effeminacy, and his irreligious conduct,
I should have briefly described to you were it not that we
know that all these apes of Cicero are characterised by the
same depravity and impudence. This fellow took me to
the bird of ill -omen. Outside his chamber there was a
good deal of noise and untidiness, caused, as I suppose, by
boys learning the rudiments of grammar. (By this means
as you know banished tyrants are accustomed to earn their
living.) Inside, I do not remember what books the exile
had. In the course of conversation he referred to a passage
in his orations where he speaks of Erasmus, and as it seemed
not so bitterly. And this passage he wished to be recited
by Hortensio, lest I should be shocked with his (Dolet's)
Gallic pronunciation ; nor was there any mention made
of the rabid dialogue which he was about to publish.
He earnestly begged Lando however to write a preface to
his orations, and offered to dedicate them to whomsoever he
(Lando) wished ; but the latter declined the proposal. Nor
did Gryphius appear willing to undertake the publication
of them ; indeed he complained to me of the vehement and
unreasonable pressure which certain persons had put upon
him to induce him to print them. Then as we were going
away he offered me the poisonous trash of Carvaialus 2 and
Scaliger, which I had not seen in Italy. No doubt with
books of this kind the wretch consoles himself for his

1 'Utrum igitur nostrum est, an vestrum, hoc proverbium Phrjgem
plagis feri solere meliorem' Cicero, Pro Flacco, 27.

2 Ludovicus Carvaialus (Caravajal), a Minorite, wrote against Erasmus,
in defence of the monks, Apologia monastic*? professions, Antwerp, MDXXIX.
Reprinted at Basle the same year. Erasmus replied to him by his
Responsio adversus Febricitantis cujusdem Libellum, Basle, 1529. This
produced a rejoinder from Carvaialus, entitled Dulcoratio amarulentiarum
Erasmicee responsionis ad apologiam fratris Ludovici Carvaiali, Paris,
Colinasus, 1530.

x THE CICERONIANS 227

banishment from Toulouse, and again inflames his mind,
worn out as it must be by his quarrels. The next day I
returned both books to him with certain pages turned down,
and we had some conversation concerning the king and the
theatre of Giulio Camillo.

' Now, my dear Gilbert, I see no reason why this fool
should be answered according to his folly. Perhaps I am in
error ; but, as Alciat writes, he is still more in error who has
so mean an opinion of the majesty of the name of Erasmus
and of the veneration which men of letters have for him
as to think he could ever be cast down from that citadel of
learning and virtue, where he has for so long been estab-
lished, by the calumnies and insolence of a fellow of this
kind. He is no jester, to amuse one with his writings while
making a great profession of piety, like Amsdorf ; he has
not the title of knight or count or monk ; he is indeed
scarcely human in his appearance. Moreover we do not
know whether the University and Parliament of Paris have
not taken care that he shall be capitally punished by law at
Paris. For as it often happens to these atheists, when they
are specially rejoicing and saying (as it is written in the
epistle), Peace, peace, let us eat and drink, then suddenly
they are overwhelmed with a deserved destruction.

* Perhaps, however, friends from Paris may have sent you
a more full account of the wickedness of this hornet or
chameleon, who bawls out to the very breaking of his jaws,
and, for the sake of a slight breath of applause, is rushing to
certain destruction both of body and soul. Yet who could
ever carve in stone or paint in colours a better representation
of a foolish, senseless, insane, furious, rabid, boastful, insolent,
scurrilous, petulant, vain, lying, impudent, arrogant, impious1
fellow, without God, without faith, without religion, than

1 ' Stulti, vecordis, insani, furiosi, rabiosi, gloriosi, procacis, maledici,
petulantis, vani, mendacis, impudentis, arrogantis, impii.'

228 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, x

this man has by his own words shown and expressed himself
to be? To me he seems to be of the number of those
whom St. Augustine and Erasmus himself order us to laugh
at when they weep, and to weep over when they laugh, both
which I certainly did when I read his book. It has indeed
been a matter of great grief to me that a man should be
found so well versed and baptized (so to speak) in polite
letters, and yet of such brutality and impiety. God is my
witness, my dear Gilbert, that not forwardness but affection
has induced me to write these things to you.

' And now let me stop in the middle of my course, lest
if I say more I may seem to wish to be wise overmuch.
For even on this matter I do not profess to see all sides.
Therefore whether Erasmus thinks fit to reply to Dolet, or
thinks it not worth his while to do so, I shall be satisfied.
For whatever he thinks right I doubt not will really be so.
So now I will conclude, commending both you and Erasmus
to God. Strasburg, 29th Oct. 1535.'

Notwithstanding the unfriendly tone of this letter it
enables us to see Dolet as he really was, worn with study
and hardship, so that, though he was only twenty-seven years
of age, Odonus judged him to be near forty. Mean and
squalid in his dress, unattractive in his countenance, full of
enthusiasm for learning, and above all for Cicero, filled at
the same time with vanity and conceit, and believing that
his worthless orations were really deserving the attention of
the world, caring only for study and literary fame ; such is
the impression which the letter of Odonus makes upon us.

CHAPTER XI

THE 'COMMENTARIES'

'Liber est lumen cordis, speculum corporis, virtutum magister,
vitiorum depulsor, corona prudentium, diadema sapientium, gloria honorum,
decus eruditorum, comes itineris, domesticus amicus, collocutor et con-
gerro tacentis, collega et consiliarius praesidentis, vas plenum sapientias,
myrothecium eloquentiae, hortus plenus fructibus, pratum floribus dis-
tinctum, memoriae penus, vita recordationis.' — LUCAS DE PENNA.

JHE principal object of
Dolet's journey to Paris
at the end of the year
1534 was to obtain the
royal sanction for the
publication of his Com-
mentaries, which had now,
after ten years of labour,
approached at least a
partial completion. But
the moment was unfavour-
able for obtaining permis-
sion to print any original
work, even one merely
devoted to Latin literature. The father of letters, as the
French are fond of styling Francis I., although he had un-
questionably a genuine love for literature and literary men,
and though the influence of his beloved sister, La Marguerite
des Marguerites, induced him at times to lend a not un-

230 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

willing ear to the teaching of the religious reformers, yet,
alternating between fits of vicious indulgence and of religious
remorse, allowed himself to be the tool and prey of the
bigots who surrounded him, and who persuaded him that
the salvation of his own soul required the destruction of the
bodies of those whom, had he followed his own tastes, he
would have especially desired to protect and encourage.
Really caring at all times in his heart for literature and
intellectual progress, and sometimes even for a reformation
in religion, yet, as M. Henri Martin has remarked,1 he
allowed the Reformation to be burned in the person of
Berquin, and the Renaissance in that of Dolet. Physically
brave, he was yet morally a coward, and dared not call his
soul his own in the presence of the priests. He was at this
time in one of those fits of piety in which he sought to make
amends for his vices by the persecution of heretics and the
suppression of literature. At the moment when Dolet
arrived in Paris the Doctors of the Sorbonne were urging
him to suppress absolutely, so far as an edict could do so,
the art of printing, to forbid the printing, not only of
heretical books, but of any books whatever, and, incredible
as it may appear, they actually accomplished their purpose.
It was as early as the yth of June 1533 that the Sorbonne,
then under the influence of Beda, presented to the King at
Lyons a memorial against heretical books, in which it was
formally urged that if the King wished to preserve the
Catholic faith, which was already shaken at its base and
attacked on all parts, he must abolish once and for ever by a
severe edict the art of printing, which every day gave birth
to dangerous books. For some time the influence of Bude,
and Jean du Bellay then Bishop of Paris, succeeded in induc-
ing the King to refuse to grant this petition ; but in October
1534 the indiscretions of some members of the Reform

1 Hist, de France, vol. viii. p. 343.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 231

party in affixing on the walls of the streets of Paris, and even
on the gates of the royal palace, placards violently and
indecently attacking the mass and the clergy, gave their
enemies a handle, of which the latter were not slow to avail
themselves. The affair of the placards gave rise to just
indignation among the Catholics, and to a more severe
persecution of heresy and heretics than Paris had as yet
witnessed. Dolet refers to it in the letter to G. Sceve
already quoted. From the loth of November 1534 to the
5th of May 1535 twenty -two persons were burned for
heresy in the Place Maubert, and if we believe that Sleidan
is in error in stating that the King and his Court were
present at the most horrible of these spectacles, where six
persons were committed to the flames, and where the
strappado l seems to have been employed for the first time,
the fact remains that not only were these burnings with his
sanction, but that the same sanction must have been given
to the frightful tortures which accompanied them, and which,
had they not been the invention of Christian priests, we should
have thought only fiends could have invented or applied.

1 The strappado was a kind of see-saw, with a heretic at one end
suspended above a fire. He was allowed to descend and burn for a short
time, and was then drawn out again, and so on from time to time. By
this means the burning lasted much longer, the torment was much more
exquisite to the heretic, and the spectacle much more grateful to the
pious spectators. Though Sleidan and Beza state positively that the
King was present and lighted the fire on this occasion, and though the
fact of his presence has been gloried in by orthodox historians, yet M.
Martin has pointed out (Hist, de France, vol. viii.) that the Bourgeois de
Paris, who was present, and who notes the details of all the executions
most precisely, says nothing of the King's presence, which he would hardly
have failed to notice had Francis really attended and lighted the fire. Pere
Daniel, writing so late as the eighteenth century (Hist, de France], exults
in the King's display of piety in being present and lighting the fire on
this occasion. 'Francis,' he says, 'in order to draw down the blessing of
Heaven on his arms, wished to give this signal proof of his piety and zeal
against the new doctrine.'

232 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

It might perhaps have been expected that the Sorbonne,
now that Beda had fallen into disgrace, would have been
under better influence, and would no longer have desired
the destruction of that art of which it ought to have been
the protector and promoter ; but this was not the case : it
was again urged upon the King that printing was the source
of all heresy, and on the I3th of January 1535 letters
patent were issued by which the King prohibited and forbad
under pain of death any person from thenceforth printing
any book or books in France, and at the same time ordered
all booksellers' shops to be closed under the same penalty.

The Parliament, notwithstanding that it was presided
over by Pierre Lizet, protested against this edict, and refused,
unless absolutely compelled, to ratify or register it. Its
remonstrances, supported by those of Bude and Du Bellay,
were successful, and on the 24th of February in the same
year new letters patent were issued by the King suspending
the operation of the former, and directing the Parliament to
choose twenty-four well-qualified and prudent persons, out
of whom the King should select twelve, to whom alone per-
mission was to be given to print in Paris editions of needful
and approved books, but forbidding even the twelve to print
any new composition under pain of death. It would seem
that the Parliament again remonstrated, and that these
letters patent were never formally ratified. They were how-
ever inscribed in the register entitled Conseil, from whence
they have been for the first time disinterred during the
present century.1 That such an edict had been threatened,

1 We only know of the letters of January 13 by a recital of them
in those of February 24. These latter were first discovered by M.
Taillandier, and afterwards printed by him in the Memoires de la Societe
des Antiquaires, torn. xiii. They had before appeared in Crapelet's Etudes
sur la Typographic, 34, a copy having been communicated by M.
Taillandier to M. Crapelet. They will also be found in A. F. Didot's
Essai sur la Typographie, 760 ; and in Werdet's Histoire du Livre, ii. 75.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 233

though mentioned by Dolet himself in his Commentaries,
had previously received but little notice. ' I cannot,' he
says, ' pass over in silence the wickedness of those wretches
who, planning destruction as well to literature as to men of
letters, thought in our time of destroying and putting an
end to the exercise of the art of printing. Thought, do I
say ? Who actually used all their influence with the King
of France, Francis of Valois himself, the guardian, the
supporter, the most loving promoter of literature and of
men of letters, to obtain a decree for its suppression. They
used this pretext, that literature was the means of propagating
the Lutheran heresy, and that to this, typography was made
subservient. Ridiculous race of fools ! As if arms were by
themselves evil or destructive, and as if, because wounds and
even death are inflicted by them, the use of those arms by
which the good defend both themselves and their country
from attacks ought to be suppressed ; it is only the wicked
who use them for unjust purposes. So if there are those
who foolishly over-curious or factious, disseminate some error
or other by means of the press, who is there who by reason
of their fault, would say that printing ought to be suppressed ;
printing, which is of itself not in the least pernicious, and is
more essential than anything else for celebrating the glory
and reputation of men ?

* This most abominable and wicked plot of the sophists
and topers of the Sorbonne was brought to nought by the
wisdom and prudence of Guillaume Bude, the light of his
age, and Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, a man equally
distinguished by his rank and by his worth.' l

Dolet, however, as well as all other writers, was ignorant
that such an edict had actually been issued by ' the guardian,
the supporter, the most loving protector of literature,' an
edict which justly entitles Francis I., as M. Crapelet says, to

1 Com. i. 266.

234 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the name of proscriber rather than of promoter of literature.
But although neither of these edicts was ever actually en-
forced, no permission could be obtained at this time for
printing the Commentaries. Dolet was not indeed without
influential friends to urge his suit. From Bude he would
receive, we are sure, every assistance and support ; Breslay
held high office in the great Council, and, as well as Nicolas
Berauld, Dolet's old master, would also give his assistance ;
but it was for the present of no avail, persecution, not
promotion of literature, was now the order of the day.
Dolet was already suspected, as the letters of Odonus and of
Scaliger show us, of being, if not a heretic, what was almost
as bad — an atheist. He was known to be the friend and
favourer of suspected heretics, and the imprudent and abusive
language as to Beda contained in his printed letters could not
have been other than offensive, and justly offensive, to the
Doctors of the Sorbonne. Besides, as the letter of Odonus
seems to imply, Dolet's enemies at Toulouse were at this
very time urging the registration by the Parliament of Paris
of the decree of banishment issued by that of Toulouse ; and
if they were not successful in this, at least they carried the
day so far as to cause the permission for the printing of the
Commentaries to be refused.

* No one,' wrote Jean Voulte a few months later in a
dedication of his Epigrams to the Cardinal of Lorraine,1 * (to
declare my opinion ingenuously), is so great an enemy to the
French name as a Frenchman. This has been experienced
by many, and lately by Etienne Dolet of Orleans, who has
done great service to the Latin tongue (to say no more)
even in his youth ; and what may not be expected in the
future part of his life from a person born with so excellent
a genius, of such unwearied diligence and application, and
aspiring with such alacrity of mind to immortal fame ? This

1 Printed by Gryphius in 1536.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 235

person, I say, who is the ornament of the age, and will be
the eternal glory of France, has experienced the severest
strokes of envy, for when he designed to publish his Com-
mentaries on the Latin Tongue (a work of immense labour
and exact judgment, and hardly to be expected from so
young a man), for the public use of all lovers of that
language, he found none to oppose him more violently than
those from whom he had just reason to expect the most
grateful return for his labour. But may such pests of the
republic of letters continue to flourish, for when they en-
deavour to prejudice the rising glory of learned men, they
really contribute most effectually to establish it.'

Dolet returned to Lyons early in 1535, probably before
the publication of the Dialogue, which it would be his first
business to see through the press. The two years which
followed (1535 and 1536) were two of the most peaceful
and presumably happiest of his life. It was not in his nature
to live without wrangling and disputes, and the abuse which
he received for his Ciceronian Dialogue would hardly do
more than add zest to his life. His time was passed in
revising and superintending through the press the first
volume of his great work, in private study, in editing and
correcting for the press of Gryphius,1 and, as would seem

1 After examining in vain about eighty volumes, mostly editions of
Latin classics, printed by Sebastian Gryphius, 1535-38, in hopes of de-
tecting the hand of Dolet as the editor, I at length met with an edition of
the Orations of Cicero bearing date 1536, in the dedication or preface of
which, addressed to Cardinal du Bellay, and purporting to be by Gryphius,
I at once recognised the style of Dolet. A long passage I found to be
identical with one in his Commentaries (i. 266), and this is followed by a
Latin ode ad eundem which afterwards appeared in the Carmina of Dolet,
addressed to Francis I. (The dedication is dated January 1536, which
would probably be 1537 new style.) Nee de la Rochelle (Vie de Dolet,
p. 33) denies that Dolet was ever employed by Gryphius as a corrector of
the press. He considers that he corrected the edition of the works of
Marot given by Gryphius in 1538, merely out of friendship for the

236 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

from the letter of Odonus (which I take to refer to the
period immediately following Dolet's return to Lyons), in
teaching. Besides the letter of Odonus we are fortunate in
having a contemporary notice of him at this time from
Hubert Sussanneau, who, like himself, was at this time
editing and correcting for Gryphius, and who at a later
period became hostile to Dolet. In the prefatory letter
which precedes his Dictionarium Ciceronianum (Paris,
Colinasus, 1536), he thus writes: 'On my way to Italy I
stayed for some time at Lyons, where Sebastian Gryphius
persuaded me to superintend the correction of some works
of Cicero, Horace, and St. Cyprian. Dolet was then living
with that printer. All that I can say of the ability and the
learning of that young man is, that in him nature surpasses
art ; and that though still very young, he is, if I may venture
to say so, borne on a triumphal car in the midst of the
applause of all. Attached from infancy to the reading of
Cicero, he was then composing his Commentaries on the Latin
Tongue, which, by the admiration they have caused me, have
almost made me abandon my own work.'

The completion of the first volume of the Commentaries

author. The passage from Sussanneau quoted in the text is relied on by
Ne'e de la Rochelle as evidence that Dolet was not so employed. He
says, ' Would Gryphius, living with Dolet, have charged Sussanneau with
the correction of the works of Cicero, whilst he had at hand a friend so
well versed in that author?' To my mind Sussanneau's words are a
strong confirmation of the statement of Scaliger in the letter to Le Ferron
(ante, p. 214). Guillaume Sceve seems to have acted at this time as the
literary manager or editor of the press of Gryphius. The language of
Dolet's letter to Boyssone (ante, p: 221), 'I, who am the slave both of the
public and of Sceve,' is at once explained, if we believe the writer to
have been at that time correcting for the press or editing under the
superintendence of Sceve. But Voulte's ode, Ad Libellum, is still more
conclusive on the point : —

I, fuge Lugdunum sine me liber, i, fuge in urbem,

Excipiet prompta Gryphius ille manu.
Te castigandum docto dabit tnde Doleto.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 237

was his first care. In transcribing and correcting this he
received considerable assistance from one of the greatest
names in the French literature of the sixteenth century, one
of the few contemporaries of Dolet whose works are still
read with pleasure — the author of the Cymbalum Mundi,
Jean Bonaventure Desperiers. Known, or at least suspected,
as a friend of intellectual progress and freedom of thought,
the influence of Marguerite de Valois, to whom he held the
office of valet de chambre^ was able to protect him so long as
he did not compromise himself by any overt act. But the
publication of the Cymbalum Mundi in 1537-8 gave the
Sorbonne and the Parliament (or rather the First President)
a weapon of attack of which they were not loth to avail
themselves. In these lively and satirical dialogues, professing
only to deal with the pagan deities, it was not difficult to
discover the undercurrent of sarcasm intended for the
Christian theology. The Sorbonne declared the book to be
filled with blasphemies and impieties. The Parliament, at
the instigation of the First President, Pierre Lizet, im-
prisoned Jean Morin the printer, and caused all the copies of
the book which could be found to be burned, an auto-da-fe
which was so successfully performed that only a single copy
of the original edition is known to exist.1

So soon as the first volume of the Commentaries was
completed and transcribed, Dolet began to print it in order
that it might be ready to appear whenever the royal
licence should be granted. A large folio volume containing
seventeen hundred and eight columns of closely -printed
matter could not be passed through the press in a few

1 This copy is now in the Public Library of Versailles. It was sold
at the Gaignat sale in 1769 (No. 2528) for 350 francs, the purchaser
being the Due de la Valliere, at whose sale in 1783 (No. 4408) it only
realised 120 francs. A second edition appeared at Lyons in 1538. It is
also excessively rare.

238 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

days or weeks, and as there were frequent rumours of an
approaching royal visit to Lyons, the author no doubt
hoped that this would prove a favourable opportunity for
obtaining the licence by means of his influential Lyonese
friends. For nearly thirty years the government of Lyons
had been successively entrusted to the members of a
Milanese family, equally distinguished as military com-
manders and as civil administrators, but yet more eminent
by their attachment to literature, and by the uniform
protection and assistance which they afforded to men
of letters. Gian Jacopo di Trivulzi, known in French
history as Le Grand Trivulce^ Marquis de Vigevano and
Marshal of France, was the first of his family who held
the important office of Governor of Lyons. It was now
held by Pompone de Trivulce, who followed the example
of his uncle and immediate predecessor Theodore in pro-
tecting and fostering literature, and especially in favouring
and encouraging the art of printing and those who exer-
cised it. I have before said that the press of Lyons was
more free than elsewhere in France ; books which would
not have been permitted to see the light in Paris, or which
would have subjected their authors and printers to condign
punishment, appeared at Lyons, though not with the direct
sanction of the Governor, yet with the certainty that he
would do all in his power to protect their authors and
printers from molestation. At the very time when the
King and the Doctors of the Sorbonne were conspiring
to destroy * this divine art ' (as Dolet justly calls it), the
printers of Lyons were combining to show their gratitude
to Pompone de Trivulce for his favour and protection.
The first of May was the fete-day of the printers at Lyons,
and it was their custom to plant a fir-tree called the May
of the Printers (le Mai des Imprimeurs} before the door
of some person of distinction to whom they especially

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 239

desired to show respect. In 1529 the May was erected
before the door of Theodore de Trivulce, inscribed with
a poetical address by no less a hand than that of Clement
Marot.1 In 1535 it was Pompone de Trivulce whom the
printers determined to honour, and it was the pen of
Etienne Dolet that supplied the inscription. The May
was planted before the house of the Governor, inscribed
with a Latin ode, of which the Pere de Colonia remarks,2
' The noble simplicity, the antique flavour, and the pure
Latinity remind us of the Augustan age.' 3

Ad Pomponium Trlvuhium Lugduni Rectorem^
Typographi Lugdunenses.

Fuerit Tityro ille Deus, ei qui permisit,
Quae vellet, agresti calamo ludere, et agnos,
Bovesque ducere libere per florentes
Campos. Eris nobis Deus, qui permittis
Solita nos frui lastitia, et libertate.
Ob id, viridem tibi pinum consecratam
Accipe vultu, atque animo, quo consecrata est.

With such a governor there was every chance that the
licence would in time be granted. By the middle of 1535
the printing had commenced, and a month later a proof-

1 Epigram 144.

2 Histoire Litteraire de Lyon, ii. 497. A less learned schoolboy than
Macaulay's will not have much difficulty in tracing the origin of the first
half of this ode.

3 According to M. Pericaud (Notes et Documents pour servir a I' Histoire
de Lyon, 1483-1546, p. 52), Louis Tolozan, Prev6t des Marchands and
Commandant of the city of Lyons, was the last magistrate in whose
honour a May was planted in 1786. M. Pericaud attributed this ode of
Dolet to the year 1529, and considers it to have been in honour of
Theodore de Trivulce. In his Carmina, however, Dolet himself addresses
it (as in the text) to Pompone de Trivulce, and it is clear that 1535 was
the only year of the latter's government in which Dolet could have been
in Lyons on or about the 1st of May. Pompone de Trivulce was
superseded at the end of that year by the Cardinal de Tournon.

24o ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

sheet was ready to be sent to Jean de Boyssone. The
latter — as well as many others — was eagerly expecting the
appearance of the Commentaries, and in a letter before
referred to l he thus speaks of them : —

' As to your Commentaries on the Latin Tongue we have
no information here (Toulouse) whether you have yet
finished them. I cannot put into words the eagerness
with which we expect their appearance, yet persons are
not wanting, even among those who wish you well, who
affirm that you purloined the Commentaries from Simon
Villanovanus, a report which, although it does not seem
to me in any way probable, will not in any respect hinder
the success of your book, for your calumniators do not bear
in mind that to the book itself it would be no small merit
to have had as its authors Villanovanus and Dolet.'

To this Dolet replied on Aug. 3 1 : 2 ' As regards my
Commentaries on the Latin Tongue, I laugh at the lies of
the envious, and I am really in that state of mind con-
cerning them which you say I ought to be. No calumnies
have as yet broken my spirit, and their attempts to crush
me in the future will be still less successful, as I become
daily more and more hardened against the absurdities of
mankind. Let these brutish Tolosans at least wait until
my book is published, and then if they have any judgment
let them judge with certainty. Are they able, do you think,
now to decide matters against me, the nature of which they
have as yet neither read nor seen ? In order that you may
judge more truly and justly, I have sent you as a specimen a
proof-sheet of the work, the printing of which has begun.'

In the meantime the political projects and mundane
ambitions of the King had brought about an interval of
respite and hope to the party of reform. Charles V. was

1 Ante, p. 218. Toulouse MS. fol. xvii.
2 Id. fol. i.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 241

engaged on his expedition against the pirates of Tunis,
and to declare war against him while occupied in this pious
and Christian work would have been to excite the horror
of civilised Europe. Francis counted on this expedition
being unsuccessful ; he expected to see his rival defeated
and weakened, and he determined to be ready to declare
war immediately on the Emperor's return ; but it was neces-
sary in the meantime to look out for allies. The Lutheran
princes of Germany had been alienated and irritated by
the persecution which followed the affair of the placards.
The ' magnificent lords of Berne ' were even more interested
than the German princes in the toleration of the Reformers.
Their influence was so widely extended over the territories
on the east of France, from Geneva to Basle, that their
alliance was far more important to Francis than the com-
paratively insignificant extent of their dominions would
lead us to expect. It was the urgent pressure of the lords
of Berne, that effected what in other similar cases even the
powerful influence of Marguerite of Navarre had been unable
to effect, and rescued the great citizen of Geneva, Baudichon
de la Maison Neuve, from the stake, after he had been con-
demned by the Inquisitor-General and the officials of the
Archbishop of Lyons as a heretic, and delivered over to the
secular arm. But the friendship of my lords of Berne for
Francis had received a rude shock from the persecutions of
the winter of 1534-5. To conciliate the German and Swiss
reformers, an edict was issued on the i6th of July 1535 by
which the King ordered the prosecutions of Protestants to
cease, and liberated those who were in prison for the cause
of religion. The severe restrictions on the press were about
the same time loosened, and although the victorious return
of Charles from Tunis had falsified the hopes of Francis,
war was commenced, and for nearly three years, that is to
say until the peace of June 1538, the Reformers were

R

242 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

allowed an interval of rest and toleration. Charles was at
this moment sincerely desirous of peace, and immediately
commenced negotiations in the hope of satisfying the King's
claims on the Duchy of Milan, but his efforts were un-
successful. The campaign began in earnest ; and in order
to be near the seat of war and personally to direct the
campaign, Francis paid his long-expected visit to Lyons,
arriving on the yth of February 1536. He remained in
the south-east of France the greater part of the year, paying
frequent visits to Lyons ; and on the 2ist of March Dolet
had the satisfaction of obtaining, or seeing obtained by
Gryphius, the long-wished-for permission to print the Com-
mentaries. It is dated at Cremieu, a small town about
eighteen miles from Lyons, where the King was then hold-
ing his court, and is addressed to the Provost of Paris, the
Bailiff of Macon, the Seneschal of Lyons, and all other
justiciaries, officers, and their lieutenants. It then continues,
' Our dear and well - beloved Master Sebastian Gryphius,
printer in ordinary to our town of Lyons, has made known
to us that he is desirous of printing at great expense, to the
profit and promotion of Latin letters, a book entitled Comment-
aries on the Latin Tongue, by Estienne Dolet.' It then grants
to him the exclusive right to print the same for a period
of four years, and forbids all other printers from doing the
like under penalty of fines and confiscation of their books.

The Commentaries on the Latin Tongue is the work on
which Dolet's reputation as a Latin scholar must principally
rest. It had been in preparation for twelve years, for, as
he tells us, it was before he went to Padua that he had
determined to compose this work, the compilation of which
seems from that time to have been the first object of his
care. The first volume appeared in 1536, in or soon after
the month of May ; and though now of no living interest
to the scholar, it is certainly one of the most important

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 243

contributions to Latin scholarship which the sixteenth
century produced. It is a work of immense labour, the
result of a profound and lengthened study of Cicero, as
well as of many other Latin authors ; and it will be admitted
by all who have examined it, that no work had up to that
time appeared, which was calculated to be so useful to the
student of Latin literature. At the same time I cannot
agree with those who have placed it above all other con-
temporary works in Latin scholarship. Neither here nor
elsewhere does Dolet show much critical power or skill,
and as between the Commentaries of Dolet and the Latin
Thesaurus of Robert Estienne, pre-eminence in scholarship
must be awarded to the latter. Yet the Commentaries were
certainly an important contribution to Latin scholarship.
The publication of the (second edition of the) Thesaurus of
Estienne is considered by Hallam to mark an epoch in the
department of Latin philology.1 He should have said the
almost simultaneous publication of the Commentaries of
Dolet and the second edition of the Thesaurus, and one of
the remarks which he makes on the latter is equally appli-
cable to the former : ' The preceding dictionaries of Calepin
and other compilers had been limited to an interpretation of
single words, sometimes with references to passages in the
authors who had employed them. This produced on the
one hand perpetual barbarisms and deviations from purity
of idiom, while it gave rise in some to a fastidious hyper-

1 Hallam speaks of the publication of his (Estienne's) Thesaurus in
1535, augmented in a subsequent edition of 1543. The first edition of
the Thesaurus was in October 1532, in a single volume, which had cost
the author two years of hard and incessant labour, and which, though a
great advance on any dictionary then extant, would not have deserved the
praise which Hallam gives to the author had not a second edition
appeared in December 1536 (there was no edition in 1535), so much
augmented as to be almost a new work. This was followed in 1 543 by
a third edition, still more enlarged, and for which the author had the
advantage of consulting the Commentaries of Dolet.

244 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

criticism, of which Valla had given an example. Stephens
first endeavoured to exhibit the proper use of words, not
only in all the anomalies of idiom, but in every delicate
variation of sense to which the pure taste and subtle discern-
ment of the best writers had given an example.' The aims
and scope of the two scholars were however as different as
the methods they employed, and while those of Robert
Estienne were more conducive to the practical utility of his
work, those of Dolet were certainly more scientific and
critical. The work of Robert Estienne was a dictionary and
nothing more, in which the alphabetical order was followed,
and in which each word was explained by itself and without
regard to its relationship to others.1 Dolet, on the contrary,

1 The alphabetical method seems to us, from habit, so natural that
we find a difficulty in conceiving the possibility of any other. Yet it
may be doubted whether that of Dolet was not the true order, and
whether, had not his misfortunes and untimely death on the charge of
atheism caused his work to drop out of the memory and use of man, his
system might not have come into general use. It was the success and
popularity of the Dictionary of R. Estienne (which has continued to be
the basis of all subsequent Latin Dictionaries) which fixed the alpha-
betical method, convenient as it is, so firmly that it is impossible to
change it ; yet J. M. Gesner, in his Dissertatio de Preecipuis Lexicis Latinis
prefixed to his Novus Lingua et Eruditionis Romance Thesaurus (Lips., 1749),
considers that the popularity of R. Estienne's alphabetical order has been
a misfortune to Latin scholarship. It will be remembered that a non-
alphabetic method analogous to, though not the same as that of Dolet,
was adopted in the first edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy
as the true and scientific one, and it was only changed to the alphabetical
method in the second edition because the latter had become too rooted in
the popular mind to be changed. ' II y a deux manieres de ranger les mots
dans un dictionnaire ; 1'une de les mettre tous, de quelque nature qu'ils
soient, dans leur ordre alphabetique ; 1'autre de les disposer par racines,
c'est a dire, de n'observer 1'ordre de 1'alphabet que pour les mots primitifs.
. . . Or, de ces deux methodes la derniere est veritablement la plus savante,
la plus propre a instruire un lecteur studieux. . . . Mais cette methode
n'accommodoit pas 1'impatience du Francois ; ainsi 1'Academie apres
1'avoir employee dans la premiere edition de son dictionnaire, a cru devoir
1'abandonner dans la seconde.' Olivet, Hist, de I' Academic Fran^aise.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 245

arranged his words according to their connection with each
other, or rather with the ideas which they expressed. The
commentary upon one word is followed by a commentary
upon the words of a like character, and then upon those
which are contrary or dissimilar. Thus to amare, with which
the Commentaries commence, follow in order adamare^ reda-
mare, amator, amabilis, diligere, observare, colere^ amplecti,
complecti, amicitia, amor, charitas, pietas, benevolentia,
animus, voluntas, and so on, until the author has completely
exhausted the words expressing or having relation to this idea.
The words are thus classed, not according to their sound
or orthography, but according to their signification. The
object of Robert Estienne was merely to explain the meaning
of words ; that of Dolet was to do this, but at the same
time to group together and show the relations between all
words capable of expressing the same or a similar or a
contrary idea. Dolet thus explains the method of his Corn-
men tar ies in a brief introduction to the first volume : —

' That the method of these my Commentaries may be
more clearly seen and more easily understood, I wish to
explain the arrangement I make use of. In the first place
I give the meaning of each word, both its primary and its
secondary or tralatitious meaning. Then I distinguish the
different uses of the words. Lastly I adduce examples, but
of each kind separately, so that instances are given of the
words used in their original signification, and again in their
secondary. But in setting forth the different uses of a word,
I have so separated the examples, that immediately after
showing as accurately as possible the primary signification of a
word and the tralatitious one (if it has a tralatitious meaning),
I adduce simple examples of the different uses. I call them
simple because they are set forth with no special grace or
elegance of construction. Having done this, I illustrate by
separate examples the various uses and forms of construction

246 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

of the word. When I have shown both in my own language
and by examples drawn from Cicero, the primary and
secondary meanings of the word in question, I then subjoin
other words of a cognate meaning, and so continue in a
connected series as long as it seems possible to do so. But
as it is not possible to connect all the words together in an
infinite series, when I have exhausted a series of congruent
words I naturally proceed to their contraries, and with them
I use as far as possible the same plan. . . . For example,
after the words conciliare, conjungere^ on the next page are
opposed the words alienare, abalienare. So to consentire^
convenire, congruere^ concordare^ coirey cons fir are ^ conjurare^
succeed dissentire, dissidere, discordare, discrepare, like op-
posing standards brought together for hostile encounter.
But I must pursue my course in my own stupid way. I
directly join opposites to opposites, so only that the series
of words is not interrupted, and thus when the forms of
similar and dissimilar words are extended somewhat more at
length, my system becomes plain. In the meantime, as to
those who are indolent, and who impudently and recklessly
devote their ill-employed leisure to calumniating the labours
of the studious, they certainly do not know the matter which
they talk about ; they morosely blame, as they do every-
thing, the multitude of examples I make use of. Once for
all let this be said to them, you may both explain the
meaning of words, and may inculcate the principles of
rhetoric, so as much more clearly to enunciate them and lay
them open, by the abundance and copiousness of examples
and expressions, than by any verbose explanation of a
grammarian, or any system of a rhetorician. Let them
cease to speak malevolently, and let them suffer the ignorant
youths, for whom I have prepared this exercise of my earlier
manhood (for why should I prepare it for the learned, whose
minds are filled with erudition of all kinds, and by whom an

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 247

abundance of examples is not needed ?), to be allured to or
prepared for the reading of Cicero by the happy abundance
of Ciceronian examples. But of what use is it to complain
of the perverse loquacity of my detractors ? I have hoped
that by the multitude of examples I might be more easily
able to explain to those who are ignorant, the use of words.
I have therefore desired to abound in examples, so that the
student may saturate himself with them, and thus be led as
far as possible to a knowledge and to a comparison of the
use of expressions. And if my work has by this accumula-
tion of examples increased to an immense size, this will be
considered as so much gain ; nor will it be treated as a
matter of regret to be able to acquire at so small an expense,
so great wealth in Latin oratory. I hope to complete the
whole of my Commentaries in three volumes. The first, in
which I treat of the use of nouns and verbs, is now finished ;
in the second I shall continue and complete the same subject,
and shall afterwards treat of indeclinable particles ; in the
third I shall set forth certain rare and specially elegant
modes of expression, culled and collected from Latin writers,
and in a brief essay shall touch upon Latin style and prose-
rhythm. Of these matters I do not wish you to be ignorant,
and I also wish you to understand the system and arrange-
ment of my Commentaries.''

It would appear, from several passages in the second
volume, that his method had not been entirely understood,
and had been unfavourably criticised, and accordingly he more
than once explains it, and claims it as his own invention, of
which he was not unreasonably proud.1 ' In these Com-
mentaries^ he says in a prefatory note, ' my first intention
was to originate a new method of compiling dictionaries
which no other Greek or Latin scholar could claim for
himself. This arrangement (as you will already have
1 See cols. 763, 913, 1034, 1085, and 1583 of vol. ii.

248 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

gathered from a perusal of my work) is, that I do not follow
the alphabetical order as is done by the common herd of
grammarians, but join things to things, and connect together
expressions of a cognate meaning.' And in a long disserta-
tion near the end of the second volume,1 after stating that
he has endeavoured to explain, not merely the meanings of
words, but the nature of the things specified, so as to have
as it were complete treatises on many matters, such as res
bellies, navales, rustics, ccelestes, he thus continues: 'I have
only sought to explain the leading and as it were distinguished
words. The Dictionary of M. Nizolius, or the Thesaurus
of Robert Estienne, or Calepin (an edition of whose work
has lately been published by certain learned men, with the
assistance and at the expense of Sebastian Gryphius), will
supply the common crowd of words.'

Passing from the method to the substance of the Com-
mentaries^ it is certainly to be regretted that Dolet confined
himself to examples taken from so few writers. Those
from Cicero are many times more numerous than the
examples from all the other Latin authors put together,
though he often cites, especially in his second volume,
Terence, Plautus, Caesar, Sallust, and Livy, and, very rarely,
Pliny, Virgil, Quintus Curtius, Columella, and Horace.
The first volume is little more than a commentary on the
Ciceronian use of the words treated of, with occasional
illustrations from Terence and Plautus. The second volume
has a much wider range, yet here also Cicero reigns supreme.
Considering however that the author was only twenty-seven
years of age when the first volume appeared, he certainly
displays a remarkably thorough knowledge of Cicero,
Terence and Plautus, and of the Latin language as used by
them, an admirable and elegant Latin style, and a great
facility in the use of it.

1 Col. 1583.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 249

But the interest and value of the work from the point of
view of Latin scholarship is, like that of the early editions of
the Dictionary of Robert Estienne, historical merely. Its
present and living interest is to be found in the numerous
parenthetical disquisitions and notes in which the author
indulges. These are often autobiographical, often relating
to contemporary scholars whom the author loved or hated,
but are always full of a lively interest. Dolet was not one
of those writers who ever forgot or allowed his readers to
forget his own individuality. Whatever he wrote, whether
history, poetry, or criticism, his self-consciousness never
deserted him, and his subject matter is a mirror in which are
displayed his vanity, his desire for literary fame, his quarrels,
his loves, his hatreds. The consequence of this is that all
his books, however imperfect as works of art, contain much
entertaining matter, and one is never sure what may be
found in them. Thus, as an example of the word tangere he
gives,1 ' Genabum prasclarum Galliae oppidum (in quo et
natus et ad duodecimum annum adolescens educatus sum)
Ligerim fluvium tangit : id est, juxta Ligerim est conditum.'
He panegyrises Longolius, Budasus, and Simon Villanovanus,
he laments the cruel death of Thomas More, and (in his
first volume) attacks Erasmus with a virulence which here,
as in his Dialogue, brings out into painfully sharp relief the
worst side of his own character. Yet in his second volume
the pen was in his hand at the word pacisci? when the news
of the death of the great scholar reached him. He at once
laid aside his hatred, for, as he says in another place, he
warred not with the dead, and stopped to pay a warm and
generous tribute to the merits of the author of the Ciceroni-
anus, in an ode which is not one of the least happy of his
productions. ' Whilst I was writing,' he says, ' the news of
the death of Erasmus reached Lyons. Why should I say

1 i Com. 938. 2 Col. 151.

250 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

anything more here respecting my quarrel with him ? I
only wish posterity to know that as when he was living, I
frequently showed myself hostile and bitter against him, so
now that he is dead, I desire to be both just and friendly to
him, and treat him with a moderation which he himself did
not show to others. The following ode is a proof of my
good feeling towards him.'

Then follows an ode in which he tells us he warred with
Erasmus when living, as an enemy of Cicero and the French ;
but now that he is dead, he feels that Germany and literature
have lost one of their greatest ornaments.1

1 Quondam bella ferocia

Cum inter se atque duces Romulidae atque Afri
Ducebant animosius :

Turn, donee validus, vivus, et integer,
Frendensque, atque minans erat

Hostis, cui, gladio cominus aggredi,
Et telo appetere undique,

Non laudabile, non egregium fuit ?
Ergo, dum fuit integer,

Et pugnae cupidus, spicula senserit
Nostra hostis Ciceronis, et

Galli (quas rabies !) nominis insolens.
Jam jam parcere mortuo

Mens est, nee tacitam carpere postea
Larvam vulnifico stylo.

Defunctum meritis sic modo laudibus,
O Musae, meritum senem

Ornemus. Rapuit mors nimium rapax
Germanae patriae decus,

Doctorumque decus, quoslibet Itala
Tellus, Gallaque proferat

(Te Budaee tamen, te quoque Longoli ?)
Germanae patriae decus,

Doctorumque decus mors rapuit rapax.

This ode has been translated into English verse neither very accurately
nor very poetically, in the 6znd volume of the Gentleman's Magazine,
p. 1037 (Nov. 1792).

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 251

In both volumes numerous dissertations are to be found,
though in the second they are both more numerous and more
interesting than in the first. In each volume the author
loses no opportunity, or rather makes numerous opportunities
of glorifying himself, his studies, his writings, and his friends,
and complaining of his enemies and detractors. In this, as
in so many of his other writings, he seems to show that he
had a presentiment and foreshadowing of his terrible fate.
In one place l he prays that his life may never depend on the
sentence of a judge ; in another 2 he confesses that he has no
desire to die before his time, yet that he accompanies his
devotion to letters with a constant meditation on and re-
collection of death. Besides the passages devoted generally
to the scholars and poets of the time, Clement Marot,
Bonaventure Des Periers, Maurice Sceve, Jean de Langeac,
Guillaume du Choul, and others are in the second volume
honoured with special paragraphs.

The form in which the Commentaries appeared was well
worthy of their merits. The two folios which contain them
are, with one exception,3 the most splendid monument of the
typographical art of Gryphius, as well as, without exception,
the most important original work which issued from his
prolific press. In the 1708 closely-printed columns which
form the text of the first volume, the author only noted
eight errata, which are corrected at the end ; and though he
does not assert, nor is it the fact, that there are no others,
yet they are certainly very few in number. The border of
the title-page of each volume is a most elaborate specimen of
wood engraving, displaying the merits and the defects of the

1 2 Com. 1328.

2 Id. 1163.

8 The exception here referred to is the magnificent Latin Bible
printed by S. Gryphius in 1550 in two volumes folio, with a larger type
than up to that time had been used for any edition of the Bible.

252 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

contemporary German school ; and if wanting in delicacy
and taste, yet it possesses the force and vigour which show
the hand of a master. At the top in the centre is King
Solomon, with Aristotle and Plato on one side, and Socrates
and Pythagoras on the other ; on each side of the page are
portraits of twenty of the poets, orators, and historians of
Greece and Rome, and at the foot, extending the width of
the whole title-page, Homer crowned by the Muses.1

The work commences with a dedication to Francis I.
Then after an ode, also addressed to the King, comes a
further prefatory letter addressed to Bude.

' Having now,' he says, ' arrived at the twenty-seventh
year of my age, I know that the works I have hitherto
published are rather copious than weighty or marked by
great abilities. It was the disgraceful insults of certain most

1 These woodcut borders were not designed specially for the Com-
mentaries. M. A. F. Didot (Essai sur I'histoire de la gravure sur bois,
p. 230) writes, 'Je remarque que le grand encadrement in-f°. du titre
des Commentaria de Dolet imprimes en 1536 par Sebastien Gryphe est le
meme que celui dont le beau et savant dessin ne saurait etre attribue qu'a
Holbein et dont Froben s'est servi pour son edition des Adagia d'firasme,
Bale, 1520. A c6te de la figure representant Aristote, on voit meme les
deux lettres I. F. (Jean Froben), marque qui se retrouve sur plusieurs
planches gravees pour lui d'apres Holbein. On ne saurait douter que ce
ne soient les memes gravures sur bois ou plutot sur cuivre en relief qui
aient servi aux editions de Bale et de Lyon. Ce meme encadrement,
compose de quatre pieces, avait d'abord paru a Bale en 1520, sur le titre
des Erasmi Adagia imprimes par Froben, puis en tete du Strabon in-f°.
chez Valentin Curio en 1523, et en 1526 chez Andre Cratander, en tete
de 1'Hippocrate, d'ou il revint a Lyon pour orner 1'edition de Dolet en
1536, puis le Lexique de Calepinus imprime par Sebastien Gryphe en
1 540.' I can supplement this note with six other volumes in which I
have found the same woodcut borders on the title. Five of these are
from the press of Gryphius, namely, editions of the Adagia of Erasmus of
1529 and 1530, the De verborum signification of Alciat, the Thesaurus of
Sanctes Pagnini, 1529, and the De perenni philosophia of Aug. Steuchus,
1 540 ; the other volume is Dim dementis recognitionum Libri X . . .
Rufino Torino interprete, printed by Bebelius at Basle in 1526.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 253

cruel men (whose names I suppress) which compelled me to
perform the task of addressing the public prematurely. But
you certainly do not doubt, and indeed all who know my
gentleness will be certain, that if I have written anything
against them too harshly, the anger which, owing to the
unbearable insults I had received, I had manifested, was
growing less sharp, when it was again excited beyond ex-
pectation. I perhaps allowed myself to seem too warm, and
showed the appearance of a somewhat too angry spirit
(which my enemies foolishly cast in my teeth), but which
really my great forbearance, wounded and violated as it was,
had inflamed.' After going on in this strain for some time,
and then proceeding to abuse of Erasmus (which he knew
would be agreeable to Bude), he thus continues :—

' I have now endeavoured to obey the rule of life which
has been afforded to us by nature, namely to devise some-
thing which would be useful, and would promote the interests
of as many as possible. But I have thought that I ought to
have regard not only to my dear countrymen, that is to say
the French, but to all those who cherish an affection for the
Latin tongue. I have not however undertaken my work
with the idea of injuring the reputation of the many learned
men who before me have commented upon the Latin language
with both ingenuity and learning. I have neither the wish
nor the power to do this. What I have endeavoured to do
is to make more complete, more copious, and to digest in a
more convenient order for the benefit of the studious youth,
that which has been rather attempted than accomplished by
others. In these my Commentaries I do not break off the
handle for others who may come after me ; I have only
thought that the way by which I have myself slowly arrived
at my own familiarity with the Latin tongue, and the
method of study by which the hope has come to me that I
might be able to attain both to copiousness of words and

254 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

clearness of expression, ought not to be concealed, but that
the opportunity ought to be afforded to all, of studying in like
manner and of applying this method to their own studies.
It is this method that I have been especially desirous of
making known. Accordingly when I was sixteen years
of age (at the time when the French King succumbed by
treachery on the field of Pavia), having mastered the
rudiments of the Latin language, I gave myself up almost
entirely to the reading of Cicero, and attentively noticing
his forms of expressions, I began to compile these Com-
mentaries, not indeed then with a view to their publication,
but merely for my own personal benefit. As my age
increased and my studies progressed, so did my Com-
mentaries. But when I began to lay the foundation of
my Latin style, and to devote myself to the study of
grammatical forms, I grew somewhat wearied of my Com-
mentaries^ and in my desire to attain a good Latin style,
they ceased for a long time to make progress. But what
I have found to be of so great service to myself, and have
hoped would not be useless to others, I have thought I
ought to endeavour to lay open to all. I have therefore
decided on publishing this work, begun indeed in my
youth, but now entirely re-written and completed with
all the care, diligence and judgment which I could bring
to bear upon it. But besides the desire which I have
had for some time of promoting the interests of youthful
students, my greatest inducement for an earlier publication
than I should otherwise have wished has been the considera-
tion that, if I postponed the matter and afterwards gave
myself up to more important matters of study, I should
be indisposed to return to more humble ones. For I am
planning a more serious undertaking ; I have for some
time contemplated, after completing the labour which
these Commentaries have imposed upon me, devoting my-

xi THE * COMMENTARIES ' 255

self to writing the history of our own time. This (if one
may venture to predict anything as to one's own work) the
youth who loves literature shall sometime receive from me.
My native country shall not complain that I have wasted
my leisure ancl the fruits of my studies in feeble or useless
writings. As then I have passed my youth and manhood
in a most honourable and praiseworthy kind of study, so
it is my wish to pass my old age, unless I should be taken
away by a premature death. I shall thus most abundantly
satisfy my great desire of contributing something to the
common weal.'

Then follow some just criticisms on the mode of writing
history (and other things) then in vogue, and Dolet con-
trasts this mode with that of Bude, of whose works he
says, * Will the time ever come when your writings will
be neglected by the learned ? Will they ever at any time
become wearisome ? They will live for all time, as will
those which like them possess that great learning which
will procure for them immortality.' He then announces
that his Commentaries are to be in three volumes, of which
this is the first.

Three pieces of Latin verse follow, addressed to his
book, one of which I shall venture to quote : —

Doleti ad Commentaries.

Prima meae monimenta artis, monimenta juventae

Prima meae, tandem auspiciis exite secundis :

Ac longae pertaesa morae, nimiumque retenta

Vos desiderium capiat jam lucis : in auras

Surgite : nee maledica hominum vel lingua, vel asper

Sermo metum injiciat : studio quin luminis ite,

Ite (imbecilles animos timor arguit) ite

Prima meae monimenta artis, monimenta juventae

Prima meae tandem auspiciis exite secundis.

256 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Of the digressions and dissertations contained in the
first volume, I pass over those which are devoted to his
own glorification, to the attacks of his enemies (real and
imaginary), to the exaltation of Villanovanus and Longolius,
and to the depreciation of Erasmus,1 and shall here quote
only the longest but certainly the most interesting digression,
in which, though in too rhetorical a style, he reviews the
state of literature from the commencement of its revival,
and enumerates those who have most contributed to it 2 : —

' Having explained the words which relate to motion and
rest, I now pass on to another thing which proceeds from
rest or leisure, namely, Liters. Certainly literary pursuits
spring from leisure, and cannot exist without it ; but yet
before I explain the words relating to this matter, and
show their uses, let me express the delight which I feel at
the dignified position of literature, which in our time
flourishes so remarkably.

' Literary studies are cultivated everywhere with so much
vigour that, in order to attain to the glory of the ancients,
nothing is wanting save the ancient intellectual freedom
and the prospect of acquiring distinction by the cultivation
of the liberal arts. What the learned miss, is the affection,
the liberality, the courtesy of the powerful ; the patronage of
a Maecenas is needed as a stimulant to their talents and an
encouragement to their labours. Further, there is wanting
to us an opportunity for the display of eloquence, a Roman
senate, a republic in which honour and a due meed of
praise would be awarded to it, so as to arouse even the
most sluggish natures, and to inflame to the highest pitch

1 In a long dissertation on eloquence and on the imitation of Cicero
(col. 1235) he compares Erasmus and Longolius. Every possible un-
favourable epithet is applied to the style of Erasmus, while that of
Longolius is lauded to the skies.

2 Col. 1156.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 257

those who are naturally well endowed with oratorical talent.
Instead of these inducements to the study of the liberal
arts, there is among many a contempt for literary culture.
Ridicule is awarded to those who are devoted to intellectual
pursuits ; literary labour has to be pursued without any
hope or prospect of reward ; the life of the student is
passed without honour ; the contempt of the multitude has
to be endured ; the tyranny and insolence of the powerful
have to be borne ; and danger to life itself is often the result
of intellectual pursuits. Yet the vices of the times have
not so completely driven intellectual excellence beyond the
boundaries of Europe, as that we do not see everywhere
some who are burning with love for it. And although
in the incessant and bitter struggle with barbarism and
ignorance, which has now continued for a century, the
victory, owing to the too great strength and power of the
barbarians, has often been doubtful, yet the result has at
length been the success of the party of progress.

' Laurentius Valla, assisted by noble contemporaries, was
one of the first to lead the way and to break the line of
battle of the enemy. Yet this seemed but a skirmish of
light-armed troops fighting at a distance, not in a close
hand-to-hand combat. For though a breach was made in
the enemies' line, the wings of the barbarian army were not
even conscious of it. But when the efforts of Valla and his
contemporaries were almost crushed by the leaders of the
barbarians, Angelus Politianus, Hermolaiis Barbarus, Picus
of Mirandola, Volaterranus, Ccelius Rhodiginus, Sabellicus,
Crinitus, Philelphus, Marsilius Ficinus, and all that illus-
trious generation came to their help, and well armed with
eloquence bore down with vigour and boldness upon the
army of the barbarians, which had collected its scattered
forces and was regaining its strength. But though their
efforts led to their own destruction, they certainly over-

s

258 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

threw the hosts of the barbarians, though unable completely
to destroy their forces. The right wing of the barbarian
army remained intact after the battle, only the left was
cut to pieces. Suddenly from Italy, Germany, Britain,
Spain, and France, the thunderbolts of letters are hurled
upon barbarism, which was still standing erect and rearing
its crest aloft ; it is made to yield itself up and is led away
in triumph.

' Italy, which has ever been the metropolis of eloquence,
and never destitute of men of genius, furnished the chief
leaders, men of the greatest reputation in the pursuit of
eloquence, and who had achieved the highest literary success,
Bembo/ Sadolet, Baptista Egnatius (whose lectures on the
Offices of Cicero and on Lucretius I myself attended at
Venice), Andreas Navagerus, Romulus Amaseus, Nicolas
Leoniceni, Lampridius, Lazarus Buonamicus. It added as
poets, Jovianus Pontanus, Hieronymus Vida, Actius Syncerus
Sannazarius. What men are these ! What praise do they
not deserve ! What glory have they not achieved ! Next
after these, and fighting vigorously against the barbaric
horde, come Cardinal Adrian, Bartholomaeus Riccius,
Marius Nizolius, Hortensius Appianus, and with them the
celebrated physician Joannes Manardus. At the same
time Andreas Alciatus, in his youth a fugitive from the
camp of the legists, but in no ordinary degree imbued with
literary culture, and ever of most high repute amongst the
most learned, attacks the barbarians ; nor is he alone, but
is accompanied and encouraged to the fight by ^Emilius
Ferret and Otho Bosio. Such is the noble cohort, and
such the illustrious leaders which Italy has sent to
the combat. As to the rank and file, the fighting
soldiers, I do not name them ; but their names, as yet
obscure, will in due time shine as brilliantly as those of
their leaders.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 259

' Germany in its turn, excited by and emulous of the
studies of Italy, gave the signal to its troops to charge the
enemy. At their country's command, Johan Reuchlin and
Rudolf Agricola take up arms, and associate with them
their disciple Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, a writer
indeed rather verbose and sarcastic than eloquent and
graceful, yet by his great pile of volumes an unwearied
assistant in promoting the interests of literature. They
are immediately followed by Philip Melanchthon, first in
eminence among the Germans. Rapidly following them
come on Ulrich Hutten, Beatus Rhenanus, Symon Grynaeus,
Henricus Glareanus, Martin Dorpius, Conrad Goclenius,
Eobanus Hesse, Jacobus Mycillus, Johannes Oporinus,
Jacobus Omphalius, Ulrich Zazius, Viglius Zuichemus,
Carolus Sucquet, Cop of Basle, and Leonard Fuchsius, all
desiring freedom from the barbaric yoke, some for eloquence,
some for poetry, some for jurisprudence, and some for
medicine.

' In Britain there have arisen against barbarism, Cuthbert
Tonstal, Thomas Linacre, and Thomas More, the latter as
happily gifted with literary talent, as he was unhappy in
his unjust and unfortunate fate. From Spain came forth
Ludovicus Vives and Antonius Nebrissensis, the latter
showing more courage than skill. Codes Ninivita l (whom
I had almost passed over) follows, and is one of the first
to attack barbarism and to provoke it to battle.

' France, which I have reserved to the last that I may
not be charged with giving undue precedence to my own
country, is not absent, and gives with her forces no slight
assistance to those of Italy, Germany, Britain, and Spain.
Bude as their chief captain heads them, a man as dis-
tinguished in Greek as in Latin literature. Closely behind

1 Jean Despautere, the grammarian, surnamed Ninivita from his
birthplace, Ninove in Brabant, and Codes as being blind of one eye.

260 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

him follows Lefevre d'Etaples, defended by the shield of
philosophy. To Christopher Longolius (it does not matter
that when a young man, owing to the injuries of his fellow-
citizens, he renounced his country, for Longolius was really
a Frenchman1) and Simon Villanovanus the duty is
assigned of extending the frontiers of the Latin tongue ;
to this they devote their energies, and having gained a
victory over barbarism, they restore eloquence to its ancient
dignity. As soon as the desire of our country to aid the
cause of letters is made known, Jean de Pins, Nicolas
Berauld (under whom when sixteen years of age I studied
rhetoric at Paris), Germain Brice, Lazarus Baif, Pierre
Danes, Jacques Toussain, Salmon Macrin, Nicolas Bourbon,
Guillaume Mayne, Jean Voulte, Oronce Fine of Dauphine,
Pierre Gilles, join themselves as companions in arms to
Bude, Lefevre, Longolius, and Villanovanus. Eminent jurists
ally themselves with these against barbarism — Pyrrhus
Angleberme of Orleans, Pierre de 1'Estoile, a native of the
same place, Gui de Breslay, Jean de Boyssone of Toulouse,
Guillaume Sceve of Lyons, Claude Chansonette, Emile
Perrot, and Michel de I'Hopital. From the medical
schools there rush to the conflict Symphorien Champier,
Jacques du Bois, Jean Ruel, Jean Cop, Francois Rabelais,
Carolus Paludanus.2

' This corps of learned men, collected from every quarter,
has made such havoc with the camp of barbarism, that there
is no place left for it on which to take up its position. It
has fled from Italy, it has left Germany, it has escaped from

1 Longolius was born at Liege, and Villanovanus was, strictly speaking,
a Fleming, yet Dolet, like other writers of the time, treated them as of
the Gallic nation.

2 Of Carolus Paludanus I know nothing except a complimentary
epigram of Gilbert Ducher, Epigrammata (Lugd. 1538), p. 148. He
seems to have been a physician of Lyons.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 261

England, it has rushed forth from Spain, it has been expelled
and cast out from France, not a city in Europe but is
free from the horrible monster. Everywhere letters are
cultivated to the highest pitch, all liberal studies flourish,
and by the aid of literary culture, men are led to the
knowledge, long neglected, of the true and the just. Men
are at length learning to know themselves ; their eyes,
formerly shut up in the darkness of a miserable blindness,
are at length opened to universal light. They are at length
seen to differ from the brutes by minds capable of culture,
and by language (the chief point of distinction between us
and the lower animals) which is now accurately studied and
brought to perfection. Have I not then reason to con-
gratulate letters on their triumph, since they have recovered
their ancient glory, and (which is their special privilege)
gladden the life of man with so many enjoyments ? Only let
that hatred of literature and of learned men, which is dis-
played by many who have been educated barbarously and
without culture, be extinguished, let those human pests be
got rid of, and what would be wanting to complete the
happiness of these our times? The authority of these
wretched men is however on the wane, and the youth of
our day will grow up rightly and liberally educated, and,
conscious of the dignity of letters, will hurl down the
enemies of culture from their seats, will discharge public
duties, will assist in the councils of kings, will preside over
and wisely administer public affairs. Moreover, that to
which they themselves have owed so much, namely literary
culture, they will wish to see spread abroad among all. It is
this which teaches us to avoid vice, which generates the love
of virtue, which commands kings to seek out those who are
lovers and cultivators of virtue justice and equity, to call
them to their side and to retain them as their counsellors,
which teaches them to avoid and drive from them as a

262 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

poison those vicious men, those flatterers, those parasites,
those ministers of their pleasures, with which kings' palaces
swarm. When all this is accomplished, what more would
Plato desire for the happiness of his Republic ? He would
have none but wise and learned princes there, or at least
such as are lovers of the wise and learned and as desire to be
guided by their counsels. No one will then have to com-
plain of the want of wisdom in princes, since it will be clear
that none are so highly esteemed or so agreeable to them as
the wise and learned. All this will be achieved by literary
culture, by the study of letters, and by that discipline, which
now with such general approval, has permeated the minds
of all.'

Between the appearance of the first and second volumes
of the Commentaries upwards of a year and a half elapsed.
The latter did not see the light until the month of February
1538. This long delay was caused by the troubles of the
author, arising from the death of Compaing, by the attack
of Charles Estienne, and Dolet's reply to it, matters which
are treated of in subsequent chapters of this book.

The second, like the first volume, has two dedications,
to Francis I. and Guillaume Bude. The former is full of
the usual commonplaces, the latter thus commences : —

' At last the second volume of my Commentaries on the
Latin Tongue appears, after long delays caused by the many
injuries which have been inflicted on me both by fortune
and by men ; yet, owing to my resolute conduct, it has been
so constantly pressed forwards, that notwithstanding all the
hostility of men and of fortune, it at length comes before the
public.'

The remainder relates chiefly to the author's misfortunes,
the malice of his enemies, and his design of writing the
history of his own times.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 263

The plan pursued in the second is the same as in the
first volume. The author completes the commentaries upon
nouns and verbs, which occupy eight hundred out of the
eight hundred and fifty-eight pages of the volume, and the
remainder is devoted to adverbs, conjunctions, preposi-
tions, and interjections. It has the advantage over the
first volume in the much wider range of Latin authors
quoted, while the increased number, variety, and interest
of the digressions, autobiographical, historical, critical, and
philosophical, render it much more entertaining to the
modern reader. The author's self-consciousness is as con-
spicuous as in the former volume, but the tone is more
moderate, and the criticisms more judicious, and though
still tinged by personal feelings of love and hatred, not
entirely based on these.

Clement Marot, Maurice Sceve, Guillaume du Choul,
and Jean de Langeac receive a due meed of praise. Charles
Estienne and Lazarus Baif, notwithstanding the attack upon
Dolet, made by the former in the interest of the latter, are
treated with the utmost fairness and their merits fully
recognised. Menapius indeed, who in his funeral oration
upon Erasmus had censured Dolet, — though not more
severely than he deserved, — is not spared, and is classed
among the obtrectatores Doleti ; and the Paris professor,
who had found fault with the explanation of conficere in the
first volume, is referred to as stultus reprehensor. The
nature of the soul, death, and immortality are discussed with
freedom and ingenuity, and even with true eloquence, so as
to make us specially regret the loss of the book De Opinione
which, Dolet tells us,1 he had composed concerning * the
mortality or immortality of the soul, the various judgments
of men concerning religion, and their different doctrines in
reference to the worship of God.'

1 Com. vol. ii. col. 414.

264 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Francis I., Marguerite of Navarre, Charles V., the
Constable de Bourbon, Odet de Foix Seigneur de Lautrec,
all come under notice. Upon the military and naval affairs
of the Romans there are complete treatises, and in no other
work is there so exhaustive a treatise upon Vinum and all
that relates to it, including an interesting enumeration of the
various French wines then in vogue. Nor in this volume is
Dolet open to the charge either of censuring or ignoring the
works of his predecessors in the field of lexicography.
Robert and Charles Estienne, Lazarus Baif, Nizolius, and
Riccius are all referred to and their merits fully admitted.

The third volume, which was to have been a complete
treatise upon Latin style both prose and verse, and to which
as he tells us he proposed to devote his utmost ability,
learning, labour, and judgment, was never written ; his
misfortunes and his varied literary labours left him no leisure
— perhaps no desire — to complete the work.

The publication of the first volume of the Commentaries^
whilst it at once placed Dolet in the first rank among the
Latin scholars of the day and gave him a very high reputation
among the French,1 yet was not received by men of letters
generally with the enthusiasm which we might have expected,
and indeed drew down upon its author charges which we
shall perhaps think more prejudicial to his memory than
those for which he was sentenced to death. He had already
offended some of the most eminent scholars and several
influential schools of thought (or want of thought) of the
day, and the dissertations in this volume only repeated his
former offences, and added new and more powerful enemies
to those who already existed. The Doctors of the Sorbonne,
who — as far at least as Latin literature was concerned —

1 The book, like the other works of Dolet, seems, for reasons which
are indicated in the text, to have circulated but little out of France.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 265

assumed and exercised some of those functions which a
century later were undertaken in reference to French literature
by the Academy, and were revered by the orthodox and the
conservative as the highest authorities in matters of learning
and taste as well as in matters of opinion and faith, could
receive with no favour, even if they were not prepared
formally to censure the work of the audacious young man
who styled them sophists and combibones? and held them up
to the scorn and hatred of the world for their attempted
suppression of the art of printing, an attempt which, since
it proved wholly ineffectual, they would gladly have seen
forgotten. The monks, the bigots, and the whole party of
reaction on whose support the Doctors of the Sorbonne
relied, had already, from the orations, letters, and poems,
seen in the person of Dolet their bitter and irreconcilable
enemy, who had thrown himself heart and soul into the ranks
of the party of progress, who had devoted himself to the two
things they utterly abhorred, letters and freedom of thought,
who had so unsparingly ridiculed the superstitions of the
Tolosans, and who, in expressing with uncalled-for emphasis
and boldness his sympathy with Jean de Boyssone and Jean
de Caturce, had already decided them not to rest till he
should meet with the latter's fate. On the other hand, his
ostentatious ridicule of Luther and his followers in the
dialogue De Imitatione Ciceroniana^ and the levity and care-
lessness with which he treated theological subjects, made the
Reformers feel that they had nothing to hope from him, that
the matters which were to them so all-important, justification
by faith, the communion in both kinds, the precise nature of
the sacrament of the altar, were to him but as idle dreams,
of less import than a sentence of Cicero or a verse of
Terence. His classical paganism, which might have obtained
for him a cardinal's hat, or made him a pontifical secretary
1 Com. vol. i. col. 266.

266 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

under Julius or Leo, was as distasteful to the Reformers as it
had now become to the Church ; l and a little later Calvin
and the Inquisitor-General Orry were in as complete agree-
ment in reference to the atheism of Dolet, as they were in
reference to the heresy of Servetus. It might at least have
been expected that among scholars and men of letters the
merits of the Commentaries would have been at once fully
recognised, and that to those learned men who were not
wholly occupied with another world, but who thought the
intellectual progress of the present not altogether unworthy
of the attention of those who dwelt in it, so important a
contribution to Latin scholarship would have been hailed
with delight. But unfortunately the violence of Dolet's
attack upon Erasmus had disgusted, as it could not fail to
do, all except the personal friends of its author or the
personal enemies of Erasmus, and as the latter were with few
exceptions the enemies of literature generally, the Dialogue
had not obtained for its author their favour, much as they
rejoiced at the attack upon the learned Dutchman. But
Dolet went out of the way to make enemies. We have seen
how fiercely in the Orations he had attacked the Gascons,
because Pinache was of that province. In the Commentaries
he sneers at the Germans and their Emperor, he heaps up
epithets of abuse on the Spaniards, and he hardly conceals
his contempt for the Italians. Even among the Ciceronians

1 It is true that Bembo was not made a cardinal until 1538, but his
concubine (Morosina) was then dead, his children grown up, and at sixty
years of age he had already renounced his mundane life and his pagan
opinions and habits, and had begun to devote himself to the study of
Hebrew and the fathers, with a view to the hat which Clement VII. had
already wished to confer upon him, and had only been deterred from
conferring by the remonstrances of those to whom [the life, the tastes,
and the opinions, of Bembo, appeared equally scandalous. It was upon
the Christian convert, not the pagan scoffer, that Paul III. conferred
the hat.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 267

themselves he had made enemies where we should have
expected him to have found friends, and though he had
done nothing to deserve the anger of Julius Cassar Scaliger,
yet, as we have seen, that learned person chose to vituperate
him with all the force which an unlimited use of the most
foul and violent language could display, and in the use of
which the pere Duchesne himself might have sat as an humble
disciple, at the feet of the descendant of the princes of
Verona.

Besides, the first volume of the Commentaries was full of
offences against good taste and sound criticism. Erasmus is
treated with hardly more decency than in the Dialogue ; and
a scholar who saw his Afrophthegmata characterised as a work
' unworthy of an old man, and more fit for a schoolboy
studying grammar than for a learned man,' his epistles styled
' a farrago,' his delightful Colloquies described in language
more suited to the correspondents of Ortuinus Gratius than
to a disciple of Longolius, might well be pardoned for
concluding (though in this case erroneously) that so unsound
and unappreciative a critic could have nothing worth saying
to the world. Nor would this conclusion be lessened by the
tone of arrogant contempt for all who differed from him,
which is here as elsewhere displayed. Hence it was that
except the few men of letters with whom Dolet came into
personal contact — and who without a single exception
recognised his great abilities and remarkable promise — the
Commentaries received less attention and excited less admira-
tion than we should have expected. That they were most
cordially received and highly appreciated by the head of
literature in France, Bude, is evident ; but Bude was seventy
years of age, in failing health, and never very enthusiastic in
promoting or cultivating the success of others. That they
would delight the hearts of the good Bishops of Rieux and
Limoges we may be sure ; but they were both elderly men

268 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

retired from the world, and wholly devoid of influence. It
was hardly a work for Jean du Bellay, or Rabelais, or Marot
to care about, and the rest of Dolet's friends were not in a
position to be of much service to him in promoting the
reputation of his book. But the work was by no means
without its admirers ; it commended itself to all scholars
who looked at it with unprejudiced eyes. Sturm, than
whom there could be no more competent judge, speaks of
the Commentaries in terms of the highest praise, and laments
that they had never been completed.1 I have already quoted
the remarks of Sussanneau and of Voulte. Omphalius was
not less emphatic in his admiration.2 Nor have modern
critics spoken of it with less favour. Facciolati,3 while
criticising with some severity Dolet's Latin style, and ex-
pressing the opinion that he showed both by his style, and
by accepting as a genuine work of Cicero the Rhetorica ad
Herennium, that he was not so thoroughly versed in the
writings of Cicero as he professed to be, yet adds, ' Nolim
tanti viri famam imminuere, quam sibi apud posteritatem
jure peperit ' ; he describes him as ' doctum et eruditum,'
and he admits that his Commentaries could only have been
composed by a man of genius and industry.

But perhaps the most signal proof of the merits of the
book and its author is to be found in the fate of a thin folio,
which Dolet printed shortly after the appearance of the

1 Preface to Sturm's edition of Dolet's Phrases et Formula, Argen-
torati, 1576.

2 ' Scripsit et in earn sententiam nuper multa Stephanus Doletus,
praecipuum laborantis eloquentiae subsidium.' Omphalius, De Elocutionis
Imitatione (Paris, Colinaeus, 1537), p. 61. Omphalius and Dolet were
now on terms of intimacy. A letter addressed to Dolet appears among
the Epistolts ad familiares of Omphalius, which his son Bernard appended
to the edition he gave of the De Elocutionis Imitatione (Coloniae, 1572,
reprinted 1602).

3 Preface to his edition of the Phrases et Formula.

xi THE 'COMMENTARIES' 269

second volume of the Commentaries ', under the title of
Formula Latinarum locutionum illustriorum?- and which has
been sometimes erroneously referred to as intended to be the
first part of the third volume of the Commentaries. It is
however a collection of phrases and idioms extracted for the
most part from the Commentaries^ but with some additions,
arranged alphabetically. Dolet tells us in his preface that he
had received numerous letters, asking him to prepare a work
such as this, taken from his Commentaries^ for the use of
young students, and he accordingly had complied with the
request.

It consists of a series of substantives (and a few adjectives
used as substantives), with brief explanations and occasional
illustrations, followed in each case by a list of the verbs
and sometimes the adjectives or other parts of speech used
(principally by Cicero) in conjunction with them. That the
book had any immediate success is not probable ; it is not
referred to by any writer, so far as I know, for a quarter of
a century after its appearance. A very small number of
copies were printed, and no new edition was called for in the
author's lifetime. In 1576 however Sturm reprinted it
under the title of Phrases et Formula Lingua Latins ele-
gantiores Stephano Doleto autore nunc denuo recognit<e (Stras-
burg, Rihel). Coming with Sturm's recommendation it had
a great success, and acquired a popularity which it retained
up to the nineteenth century. New editions appeared in
1580, 1585, 1596, and 1610. A certain Barezzi? struck

1 Folio, Lugd., apud Doletum, 1539. The title-page announces
three parts. Prima pars conflatas ex nomine et verbo locutiones habet.
Secunda significationem et constructionem verborum profert. Tertia, usum
particularism indeclinabilium demonstrat. The volume however only
contains the first part. The second and third never appeared.

2 In the e ditto Baretiana of the Lexicon Ciceronianum [or Thesaurus
Ciceronianus] of Nizolius. (Venice, 1606.)

2jo ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

with the merits of the book, in order to increase the reputa-
tion of Nizolius and his Lexicon Ciceronianum, impudently
passed off the Phrases et Formula as part of the original
work of Nizolius. It was reserved for Facciolati in his
edition of the Lexicon given in 1734 to restore the work of
Dolet to its true author. As revised and corrected by him
it is appended to his edition, and fills the same place in the
only subsequent edition which I know, that of London,

I820.1

Only a year after the publication of the first volume of
the Commentaries an epitome of it was printed at Basle (at
the press of Lasius and Platter, but without their names),
composed by a scholar under the nom de -plume of Jonas
Philomusus.2 He speaks of Dolet as 'vir nostra quidem

1 In 1753, and again in 1764., Father Alessandro Bandiera printed the
Phrases et Formula Lingua Latina of Dolet at the end of his volume,
Osservazioni su le epistole di Marco Tullio Cicerone a familiari (Venezia,
Bettinelli), which forms a supplement to his Italian translation of the
Epistola Familiares. By an error (apparently of the printer) in the
edition of 1764 (that of 1753 I have not seen) the observations of the
learned Father are also headed ' Formula Lingua Latina elegantiores
Stephani DoletiJ and this is the running title throughout. In the edition
of the same translation of 1783, the Formula of Dolet are mentioned in
the title as included, but in fact the observations of Bandiera are alone
given at the end of the third volume as the Formula Do/eti, while Dolet's
actual treatise is omitted. (According to Nee de la Rochelle, Vie de
Dolet, p. 105, the running title of the edition of 1753 attributes the
Formula of Dolet to Bandiera.)

2 Barbier (dnonymes, 20060 and 20366, and Les Supercheries Litte-
raires, 2nd edition, vol. ii. 417) comes to the conclusion that the scholar
who under the nom de plume of Jonas Philomusus composed the epitome
of the first volume of the Commentaries of Dolet was no other than J.
Gonthier of Andernach. Nee de la Rochelle had before suggested from
the similarity of the names that Jonas Philomusus was probably the same
with Jonas Philologus, who about the same time printed at Basle at the
press of Winter an epitome of Quintilian. L. T. Herissant having con-
jectured, on very slight grounds, that Jonas Philologus was Gonthier of
Andernach, Barbier then adopts the two conjectures and adds that there

xi THE « COMMENTARIES' 271

aetate citra controversiam doctissimus et de re Latina non
male meritus.' He tells us that he has undertaken the work
as an assistance to the memory of students, that he has
inserted nothing of his own, but has only taken as it were a
faggot from the forest of the author, a small coin from his
heap of wealth. The epitomist has arranged his abridgment
in alphabetical order, as more convenient for students than
that adopted by Dolet, whose arrangement however is
preserved in a second part, which simply gives the words
employed, in the order in which they appear in the Com-
mentaries.

Soon after the second volume of the Commentaries was
published, an epitome of it appeared (in 1539) at Basle, but
from the press of Westheim, and clearly the work of another
hand. It preserves strictly the arrangement and order of
Dolet, and was shortly followed by an epitome of the first

was a natural relation between the epitome of Quintilian and the epitome
of Dolet, and that a young professor as zealous as Gonthier might well
occupy himself with these two abridgments. Any one however, who is
acquainted with the life and writings of Gonthier, will consider it highly
improbable that he should have composed the epitome of the first volume
of the Commentaries of Dolet. In 1537 the 'young professor' was fifty
years old, and wholly immersed in medical studies. Of the thirty-one
printed works and two manuscripts which are enumerated in La France
Protestante as having been written by him, all with the exception of the
first, which was printed in 1527, are medical; and the single ground
upon which Herissant and Barbier conceive him to have been the
Jonas Philologus who abridged Quintilian is that to the second edition
of his translation of some writings of Galen printed at Basle in 1537
is added Dejinitiones Medicinales interprete Joanne Philologo. In 1540
there was printed at Paris at the press of Colines, Jonee Philologi
Dialogi aliquot lepidi ac festivi in studiosee juventutis informationem (of which
I possess the copy of Girardot de Prefond), and this, if the conjectures
were well founded, would probably have to be added to the works of
Gonthier. It is however difficult to see any reason why Gonthier
if he had composed these books should have printed them under a
pseudonym.

272 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xi

volume, arranged on the same principle, and by the same
author as that of the second.1

1 Not a single writer who has noticed the epitomes of the Com-
mentaries printed in 1537, 1539, and 1540 has taken the trouble to look
beyond the title-pages, or has noticed that the epitome of the first volume
printed in 1540 is an entirely different work from the epitome of the
same volume printed in 1537. The erroneous description of Gesner has
been copied by his successors, and Maittaire, Nee de la Rochelle, Barbier,
Brunet, and Boulmier have all treated the epitome of 1540 as a reprint
of the volume of 1537.

CHAPTER XII

THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM

Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,
Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta.

LUCRETIUS.

Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid hasret.

BACON.

F the Commentaries^ did
not meet with that en-
thusiastic reception which
their author expected,
and which their real
merits certainly deserved
— at least in an age
which worshipped, how-
ever ignorantly, Latin
scholarship, yet produced
so few books really cal-
culated to promote it
intelligently — they drew
upon their author a
serious charge, that of plagiarism, which has ever since clung
to him, and has tarnished, though I think unjustly, his
reputation. Scarcely any of the many critics, biographers,
and bibliographers who have noticed the Commentaries have

274 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

omitted to state that their author was reported to have
borrowed very much without acknowledgment from Robert
Estienne, Nizolius, Lazarus Baif, and others. This charge
is generally given on the authority of Thomasius, who, in
his treatise De Plagio Literario? collected the charges of
plagiarism made against Dolet. But they are not his own,
and are merely taken by him from other writers.

Even before the Commentaries had appeared, and whilst
Dolet was known to be engaged upon them, a report was,
as we have seen, circulated by his enemies that he had stolen
the papers of Simon Villanovanus and had based his Com-
mentaries upon them.2 Whether there was any foundation
for this report we do not know. It may indeed be that
some of the papers of Villanovanus, an enthusiastic Ciceronian,
had fallen into the hands of Dolet ; but the charge of theft
appears to have been mere rumour, and had certainly not
come to the ears of Charles Estienne or Floridus Sabinus,
from whom the really important charges came, and who
would not have failed to notice this report had they heard
it ; yet it was known to Rabelais, who repeated it in an
epistle written in 1542 (hereafter quoted at length). He
says, 'L' esprit de Villanovanus se indigne destre de ses
labeurs frustre.'

On the ist of November 1536, as Dolet was occupied in
superintending the publication of the second volume of
his Commentaries, he received from Christopher Richer of

1 Suobaci, 1692.

2 See ante, p. 240. One of G. Ducher's Epigrammata (Lugd., 1538)
directed against Dolet, whom he styles, as in several other bitter epigrams,
Durus, ends thus : —

Ut vero folium modo Sibyllae
Narrem, docti animam arbitrantur ilium
Nostri Villanovani habere : cujus
Defuncti sibi scripta •vendictrvit,
Fur nequam, plagiariusque summus.

xii THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM 275

Thorigny,1 the common friend of himself and Lazarus Baif,
a copy of the latter's work De re Navali, which, with other
tracts of the same author, had just issued from the press of
Robert Estienne, under the editorship of his brother Charles.
It so happened that the sheets of the Commentaries containing
the words relating to naval affairs were just then printed,
and Dolet was engaged on their correction. He sent these
sheets to Richer, at the same time thanking him for the work
of Baif. Richer forwarded them to Baif himself. Charles
Estienne, who was then or soon after became the tutor of
Lazarus Baif 's more celebrated son 2 Jean Antoine, was on
terms of the greatest intimacy with Lazarus, of whose
treatises De Vasculis and De re Vestiaria he had already
published abridgments. Whether he was already preparing
an abridgment of the work De re Navali, or whether he
was incited thereto by the sheets of the Commentaries, is
uncertain. What is certain is that very shortly afterwards,
early in the year 1537, there appeared from the press of
Francis Estienne an abridgment of Baif 's treatise written by
Charles Estienne.3 In this book he distinctly charges Dolet
with having stolen without acknowledgment considerable

1 Christopher Richer was valet-de-chambre to Francis I. and author
of a treatise De rebus Turcorum, Paris, R. Estienne, 1540. About the
same time he translated into French and printed at the same press the
second book of his treatise, under the title of Des Coustumes et Maniere de
Vivre des Turcs. See La Croix du Maine and Brunei's Manuel.

2 Nee de la Rochelle (followed as usual by Boulmier) erroneously
speaks of Lazarus Baif, the author of De re Nava/i, as the pupil of Charles
Estienne.

3 De re Navali libellus in ddolescentulorum bonorum favorem, ex Bayfii
vigiliis excerptus et in brevem summulam facilitatis gratia redactus. Addita
ubique puerorum causa vulgari vocabulorum signification. Parisiis, apud
Franciscum Stephanum, MDXXXVII. This, like the abridgments of the De
re Vestiaria and De Vasculis, immediately became very popular, and was
frequently reprinted by R. Estienne, S. Gryphius, and others, in the
following twenty years.

276 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

portions of the treatise of Baif, only altering here and there
a word so that the theft might not be so easily discovered,
and he further attempts to show that where Dolet had not
closely followed the language of Baif he had displayed great
ignorance and had fallen into absurd blunders.

No specific passages are cited by Charles Estienne in
support of the charge of plagiarism. Of the ignorance and
errors of Dolet he gives six instances, alleging that he has
taken cornua for parts of the mast, that he has ascribed to
Caesar a passage of which Hirtius is the author, that he
erroneously explains remulcus as a small boat, that he gives
a non-existing word, remeculum, as a kind of boat used by
the Lemnians, that he uses embate instead of epibate and
attributes to Pliny a passage where the word occurs, which is
really from Ulpian, and lastly, that he has quoted a line
from the /Eneid as —

4 Quot prius aeratae steterant in littore prorcej J

while, as Estienne contends, the true reading of the last word
is puppes.

The misfortunes of Dolet caused as we have seen the
second volume of the Commentaries to be long delayed, and
the book of Charles Estienne appeared while the Commentaries
were still incomplete. Dolet lost no time in replying to his
opponent. He immediately printed in a separate volume
the whole of the sheets of the Commentaries relating to
naval affairs, under the title of Stephani Doleti de re Navali
liber ad Lazarum Bayfium? This was prefaced by a letter
to Baif containing an elaborate and tolerably successful
defence, in which he complains most bitterly, and with all
that violence of language which he was accustomed to use,
of the conduct of Charles Estienne, whose ability however in
the early part of the preface he fully recognises, but upon

, ix. 121. 2 Lugduni, apud Seb. Gryphium, 1537.

xii THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM 277

whom he pours all the vials of his wrath, professing or
desiring to believe that the attack had been made without
the suggestion of Baif.

^TIENNE DOLET TO LAZARUS BAIF

' It grieves me extremely that you, to whom I have always
both shown and felt the utmost respect, should suddenly
and without any cause be so incensed against me as to wish
hostilely to set in motion (should I rather say to encourage
or impel ?) another to attack my reputation. It also grieves
me very greatly that, instead of attacking me openly in your
own name, you should have chosen as your champion one of
whom I had the highest opinion, and of whom I have been
accustomed everywhere to speak in the most respectful
terms. But yet I would not believe anything against you
rashly, and I would rather persuade myself that he of his
own accord sought an opportunity of attacking me, and that
you were neither the encourager nor the instigator of such
bitter calumnies. I have a better opinion as well of your
prudence, as of your gravity, your moderation, and your
equity, than to suspect you of any ill-will or evil disposition
towards me. I therefore exonerate you from the suspicion
of hatred or malevolence, and am willing that the matter
be left to your own decision. Do you therefore sit as judge,
and I will proceed to a statement of the facts, in order that,
when you have heard the cause, you may most clearly and
certainly, either pronounce judgment in my favour or may
decide for my opponent. The matter is so clear that it may
soon be told without any pretence of oratorical art, or any
too great nicety of language.

* In the year from the pregnancy of the Virgin, or (not
to give a handle for the calumny of the calumniator) from
the crucifixion of Christ 1536, on the ist of November, as I

278 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

was at Lyons devoting all my time and attention to the
publication of the second volume of my Commentaries, your
book De re Navali was sent to me by Christopher Richer, a
most learned man, and one full of kindness and courtesy.
It so happened that the sheets of my Commentaries containing
the words relating to naval affairs were just then being
printed. This specially induced me to read your book
through with more than ordinary diligence and care. I
made myself master of it. (I use this expression to indicate
the attention I paid to it.) In reading it attentively I did
not notice anything in which you and I either treated of or
explained the same things, except the different species of
ships and their several names. Then that I might show my
gratitude to Richer, I straightway sent him the third and
fourth folios of the sheets then being printed, which, though
I did not ask him to do, he told me he would send to you
the first opportunity. I said there was no reason why he
should not do so. The folios were as I know sent to you
not long afterwards. Here then would be the occasion for
me to fancy, first that you felt indignant that I should have
ventured to write on the same subject which you had treated,
then that your champion, who has so unworthily attacked
me with such bitter words, arose at your command (just as
one wholly devoted to your will would do), ordered by you
to find as many faults as possible in Dolet, a young man of
too great boldness (addressing you as a judge whom I hope
to find both just and favourable, I do not venture to say
also of very great hope and promise), so as to lessen his
rising reputation. Here then I say is the favourable oppor-
tunity for me to say these things with an air of probability,
but I have forbidden myself the use of such prejudicial
statements by the opinion I have before expressed of your
integrity and moderation. Wherefore I will only say what
I suspect and what I am satisfied to believe.

xii THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM 279

' This champion, who is not so powerful as he is insolent,
visited you on a certain day ; sitting in your library and
chatting familiarly with you (I cannot do the man more
honour than by representing him as being on such familiar
terms with you), he secretly lays hold of and carries off with
him the pages of my book, having previously conceived
some ill-will towards me. What follows? He is then
preparing, either by your direction or with your sanction, his
epitome of your treatise De re Navali. Burning with ill-
will towards me (for how else can I account for the wicked
attacks of the fellow, who had not been excited by any
injury done by me ?), he marked in the proof-sheet of my
work whatever seemed to him to afford an opportunity of
reviling me. Now, I pray, give me your attention, and if
you are disposed to do so, act fairly towards me as to the
matter animadverted upon by him which he puts forward
against me so angrily. Was this done courteously or
honourably ? Was it worthy of a man of probity and
culture, so inconsiderately, so insolently even, to attack what
had been courteously sent by a friend to you, and was not
even published ? Even now I am superintending the publica-
tion of the volume. Here I might as easily attack the
wickedness of your champion (but I am forgetting that you
have laid aside your suspicions ; I ought to say your
epitomist} as laugh at his folly. But must I not treat as an
imprudent fool one who, rushing headlong with a rash and
inconsiderate mind, did not see that as my book was not yet
published it would be possible for me to change all that he
blamed, and to take the benefit of his criticisms, and so
procure for him the reputation of a false and lying critic ? '

After complaining bitterly of the attack made upon his
book before it had actually appeared, he proceeds seriatim to
discuss the several charges made by Charles Estienne,
printing in full the references made to him and to his book

280 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

in that of his adversary. So far as the charge of plagiarism
goes, he denies that any similarity will be found between the
two works, except in the case of a few interpretations of the
names of ships, and their different parts. He asserts the
entire independence of his own work, but says reasonably
enough, that in writing such works as Dictionaries, it is
inevitable that the labours of those who have gone before
should be made use of, and if a charge of theft is to be made
against his Commentaries, the same charge must be made
against Bude, Erasmus, Politian, Rhodiginus, Volaterranus,
Sypontinus, and many others. He then proceeds in detail
to notice and defend himself from the several charges of
error made against him. He defends remeculum as a word
used by Aulus Gellius, and given both by Robert Estienne
in his Thesaurus, and by Sypontinus (Nicolas Perottus) in
his Cornucopia. He cites the editions of Virgil printed by
Aldus, Colines, Robert Estienne, and Sebastian Gryphius, as
reading pror<e and not puppes. He has followed Bude in
writing embatte, and the words attributed by him to Pliny
had been ascribed to this author by Robert Estienne. He
alleges the practice of referring to Cassar the writings of
Hirtius. As to remulcus, if his defence is not successful on
the merits, he at least shows that Robert Estienne gives the
same meaning.

His defence from the charge of plagiarism as made by
Charles Estienne is I think complete and satisfactory. No
one can compare Dolet's work De re Navali (or the pages
of the Commentary, of which it is merely a reprint) with the
work of Baif bearing the same title, without being satisfied
that they are two entirely independent works, with no more
similarity than would necessarily occur in two books on the
same subject, and that it is altogether unfair to charge Dolet
with pillaging or plagiarising Baif. In fact, Dolet showed
his own bona fides by printing in their entirety in the preface

xii THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM 281

to his own book every passage of that of Charles Estienne
which refers to him.1

It is pleasant to know that on this occasion Dolet did
not allow his indignation against Charles Estienne to prevent
him from doing justice to his literary merits. In the second
volume of the Commentaries, under the word * Hortus,' he
thus expresses himself : ' In treating of matters relating to
gardens and trees I shall make much use of the singular and
praiseworthy diligence and erudition of that most learned
man Charles Estienne. He has lately printed two short
treatises of which he may justly be proud, one upon gardens,
the other upon trees. In these you will easily discern, as
well the sagacious zeal of the author, as his intense desire of
contributing something to the common utility, and to the
instruction of youth.' 2

Dolet's treatise DC re Navali was printed in May 1537.
In 1540, after the publication of the second volume of the
Commentaries, a new and more formidable accuser appeared
in the person of Franciscus Floridus Sabinus. Born at
Donadeo in the Sabine territory about the year 1500, he
assumed his surname from his native district. After study-
ing at the University of Bologna, he remained there for
some years as a professor or teacher, visiting Venice occasion-
ally, where he not improbably assisted in editing or correcting
for the press of Paul Manutius. For six years, two at
Rome and four at Paris, he lived with Albertus Pius, Prince
of Carpi, as his private secretary. Strongly attached to his

1 Except a few words referring to his use of the word cornua, which
he seems to have overlooked.

2 z Com. 242. This sheet may possibly have been printed before
Dolet heard of the attack of C. Estienne ; but it was not published until
a year later, and it is to Dolet's credit that he allowed the passage to
remain, and that nowhere in the book (of which the greater part was
certainly not printed) is there a word in disparagement of Charles
Estienne.

282 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

master, he warmly resented what he considered the unjust
attack of Erasmus on the Prince. Yet his affection for his
friend did not blind him to the merits of the great scholar,
and it was with much indignation that he read Dolet's attack
upon him in the dialogue De Imitatione Ciceroniana. His
first work however was directed against the calumniators of
Plautus and the Latin tongue.1 In this book, printed it will
be observed after the publication of the first volume of the
Commentaries, and in which he enumerates most of his
contemporaries whose writings have in his judgment con-
tributed to the knowledge of the Latin tongue, the name of
Dolet is conspicuous by its absence. Whether he had any
personal acquaintance or personal quarrel with Dolet we do
not know. Certain it is, that he was on intimate terms with
Giulio Camillo, to whom he more than once refers in his
writings as ' doctissimus vir,' and whom in his Lectiones
Succisivte he warmly defends from the attacks of Dolet.

In 1540 he published his Lectiones Succisiv<e, a collection
of literary and critical remarks on a variety of subjects and
authors, after the manner of the Noctes Attics of Aulus
Gellius. It is the work of a man of extensive reading and
of considerable scholarship, both Greek and Latin, and is
full of judicious and sometimes acute criticisms. It was
thought worthy of being reprinted by Gruter in his Lampas
sive Fax Artium Liberalium (7 vols., Francfort, 1602-1634).
Nearly the whole of chapters ii. and iii. of the first book and
a part of chapter iv. of the third book (about a tenth part of
the entire work) are directed against Dolet, and are written
with a bitterness and violence of tone and an injustice which

1 Francisci Floridi Sabini Apologia in Marci Actii Plauti aliorumque
Poetarum et lingua latinte calumniator es. Ejusdem libellus de legum com-
mentatoribus. Lugduni, Seb. Gryphium, 1537, 410. This was afterwards
much enlarged and reprinted in the collected edition of the author's
works printed at Basle in 1540.

xii THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM 283

are altogether wanting in the author's censures of other
writers, and which certainly induce one to think that some
personal motive operated with Floridus. Dolet is charged with
plagiarism, ignorance, irreligion, immorality and gluttony.

The greatest part of the attack is directed against the
dialogue De Imitatione Ciceroniana, and refers to the manner
in which Dolet had treated Erasmus ; and here I do not
know that we ought to consider the censure as too severe.
In reference to the Commentaries, however, he repeats and
amplifies the charge of plagiarism which Charles Estienne
had started ; but the only specific instances which he adduces
are the explanation of the word remulcus and the erroneous
citation from Pliny (instead of Ulpian), both of which Dolet
seems to have taken from the Thesaurus of Robert Estienne,
not only without acknowledgment, but without verifying
Estienne's references. He asserts that the Commentaries are
compiled, but without any acknowledgment, from the works
of Nizolius, Robert Estienne, Riccius, and Calepinus, and he
starts the calumny — often since repeated — that those who
had seen the Commentaries in manuscript before the appear-
ance of the Thesaurus of Robert Estienne and the Observations
on Cicero of Nizolius had informed him that they would not
have made a volume larger than the Eleganti<e of Laurentius
Valla, a very thin folio. Yet Floridus adduces no proofs of
this alleged compilation ; he confines himself both for in-
stances of plagiarism and of ignorance to the passages cited
either by Charles Estienne, or by Dolet in his reply ; and
though he had certainly seen the Commentaries, as he quotes
for the purpose of generally vilifying Dolet one or two other
passages of the first volume, he had as certainly not studied
them. The charges of Charles Estienne however he amplifies
at length, and no doubt proves clearly enough that as to the
meaning of remulcus Dolet was entirely wrong, and that in
at least two instances he had borrowed quotations of Latin

284 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

authors from Baif or from Robert Estienne without ac-
knowledgment, and without verifying the references.

But a more serious charge than that of plagiarism and
ignorance was for the first time formulated in print, though
not then for the first time made against Dolet, by Floridus,
that of impiety, and disbelief in the immortality of the soul,
which in those days was called Atheism. The correspond-
ence of Jean de Boyssone leaves us in little doubt that reports
to this effect had circulated at Toulouse, and the letter of
Odonus lets us know that the same rumours were current at
Lyons, but they appeared in print for the first time in the
Lectiones Succisiv<e. ' This fellow,' says Franciscus Floridus,

* asserts the soul to be mortal, and the highest good to consist
in bodily pleasure.' But he cites no passage of any of Dolet's
writings, nor any other authority for this assertion.

More than thirty years afterwards a new charge against
Dolet of plagiarism from Navagero is reported by Sturm, on
whose authority we do not know. The utter groundlessness
of this charge I have shown : l but with the remark of Sturm
which accompanies it I think all will agree. * To me,' he says,

* it is a matter of no importance whence Dolet derived his
Commentaries ; they have been of great use to those who
cultivate Latin composition and love good literature, and I
can only wish, that either Dolet or Navagero or any one else
had been able to complete them ; in that case we should have
had a complete and exhaustive treatise on the Latin tongue
most skilfully composed and arranged.'2

Dolet was not the man to sit down quietly under an
attack such as that of Floridus. He replied to it in 1540
by his book De Imitatione Ciceroniana adversus Floridum

1 See ante, p. 45.

2 Sturm's preface to his edition of the Phrases ft Formulae Doleti,
Argentorati, 1576. A large part of this preface is quoted by Maittaire,
Annales Typ. iii. 78.

xii THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM 285

Sabinum.1 It is a quarto of fifty -six pages, dedicated to
Guillaume Bigot, and contains two distinct treatises, the
first and much the shorter being the tract De Imitatione
Ciceroniana : the second (occupying pp. 21-55) being entitled
Responsio ad convitia Floridi Sabini. The first, with the
exception of a page at the beginning and another at the end,
is simply a series of extracts from his Dialogue on the
same subject containing his argument concerning imitation.
Here, as in his De re Navali, he desired his readers to be
put fully in possession of what he had really written, in order
that they might judge how far the attack of his opponent
was justified. The second tract (the Responsio ad convitia}
cannot be better summed up than in the words of Nee de la
Rochelle : 2 * In the second treatise, which he has divided into
two parts, he discusses in the first part the style of his ad-
versary, his own, that of Erasmus, Longolius, and the Ger-
mans ; he cites Bude, Bembo, and Sadolet, and sharply repels
all the calumnies and abominable charges of Sabinus : then
he employs the second part of the same tract in defending
himself from the charge of plagiarism, and he terminates the
volume by a series of epigrams against his antagonist, char-
acterised, as Maittaire has remarked, rather by their rancour
than by their elegance.' With the exception of the abuse of
Floridus, with which of course the book is stuffed full, there
is very little original matter in it. Dolet defends himself,
and successfully, from the charges made by his opponent of
being irreligious and a gourmand, and of having discouraged
the study of Terence and Virgil. The book is however
chiefly composed of extracts from his other works. The

1 Brunet (Manuel, art. Sabinus) erroneously says that this book is an
answer to the Apologia in M. A, Plauti calumniatores of Sabinus. It is an
answer to the Lectiones Succisivx. The Apologia contains no mention of
or reference to Dolet.

2 Vie de Dolet, p. 41.

286 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

abuse is of the usual violent kind, and only deserves notice
as to one point. Endeavouring to turn the tables on his
adversary, Dolet charges him with having appropriated a
work of the Prince of Carpi, De C. Julii C<esaris -pr<estantia,
and having published it under his own name.1

Floridus lost no time in defending himself and replying
to the attack of Dolet. The book of the latter had appeared
in October or November 1540. By the first of February
1541, Floridus had finished his reply, which appeared at
Rome from the press of Bladus in the month of May in the
same year, ilts title is Francisci Floridi Sabini adversus
Stephani Doleti Aurelii calumnias?

It is dedicated to Cardinal Alexander Farnese, and consists
to a great extent of a repetition of the charges contained in
the Lectiones Succisiv<e. The unfortunate explanation of
1 remulcus ' is again held up to ridicule, and adduced as a
proof of the crass ignorance of Dolet. His Commentaries
are declared to have owed whatever slight success they had
met with to the fact of their having been printed by ' that
most respected man Sebastian Gryphius.' The charges of
impiety are repeated ; the homicide, of which I shall here-
after speak, is made out to be a murder of peculiar atrocity,
and, as was to be expected, Floridus takes considerable pains
to defend himself from the charge of having appropriated
the work of the Prince of Carpi.3

Dolet's religious opinions, and the charges made against

1 Dolet, De Imit. Cic. adv. F. Sabinum, p. 53.

2 The book is of great rarity. There is a copy however in the
Bibliotheque Nationale. Two copies were in the Sunderland sale, one
of which is now in my possession.

3 Franciscus Floridus Sabinus died in 1547. Besides being a scholar
he seems to have been a bibliophile of taste. Books from his library are
occasionally to be met with, bound in contemporary Italian morocco
tooled and stamped with the title of the book in gold on the upper side
and the name of F. Floridus on the under side. I possess five of such

xii THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM 287

him in reference to them, will form the subject of a sub-
sequent chapter, it is only with the charge of plagiarism that
we have here to do. None of those who since the days of
Floridus have repeated the charge, and none of Dolet's de-
fenders, seem to have taken the trouble to ascertain, by
comparing the Commentaries with the works from which it
is alleged they are taken, whether to any, and if so to what
extent, the charge is true. I have myself undertaken, not
indeed an exhaustive comparison, but a comparison of a large
number of pages of the Commentaries taken at random, with
the articles of R. Estienne, Nizolius, Riccius, and Calepinus,
treating of the same words, and I have arrived at the con-
clusion that the charge is not justified, and that although it
is evident that Dolet was well acquainted with the works of
these writers, yet that he has only rarely borrowed anything
from any of them, that he has not made more use of them
than (as he himself says) is inevitable for "a writer of such
books as Dictionaries and Commentaries to make of the
labours of his predecessors, that the Commentaries is a sub-
stantially independent and original work, and that the author
is no more open to the charge of borrowing from others than
are Robert Estienne, Nizolius, and Calepinus. The only
edition of the Thesaurus of Robert Estienne which had ap-
peared before the first volume of the Commentaries was that
of 1532, a thin folio containing less than half the quantity of
matter contained in Dolet's volume, and it seems probable
that Floridus or his informants believed (erroneously) that
the second edition of the Thesaurus had been published some
time before the first volume of the Commentaries. In fact
the first volume of Dolet's work appeared six months before
the second edition of the Thesaurus of Estienne.

volumes — the Greek Grammar of Theodore Gaza (In asd. Aldi, 1525),
Joseph Opera, 3 vols. (S. Gryphius, 1539), and Gelosia del Sole ot
Britonio di Sicignano (Sessa, 1531).

288 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xn

In one respect however we cannot entirely exonerate
Dolet. A considerable number of the passages cited in the
Commentaries are the same as those cited in the books of
Estienne, Riccius, and Nizolius ; a few are certainly bor-
rowed from them, without the references being verified,
leading to the belief that others may also have been so, and
certainly some of the explanations are clearly based on those
of the Thesaurus and the Observationes.1 But in the first
volume there is no word of acknowledgment of these learned
men, nor anything to intimate that Dolet had profited to any
extent by their works. Robert Estienne is only mentioned
as an accurate printer, and Riccius and Nizolius are only re-
ferred to in the passage before quoted. A single acknowledg-
ment of the benefit he had derived from a perusal of these
and other works would have sufficed ; but this his vainglorious
nature did not allow him to give, and he has thus laid him-
self open to a charge which is substantially groundless. In
his second volume, having learned wisdom by experience, he
is less grudging in his praise of other scholars, and at least
makes mention of the Dictionaries of Robert Estienne,
Nizolius, and Calepinus.

1 I have not noticed any explanation taken from Riccius. An edition
of his work Apparatus Latins locutionis was given by Gryphius in 1534,
and may possibly have been seen through the press by Dolet.

CHAPTER XIII

WORK. AND LEISURE

Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery.

SHELLEY.

O qui complexus et gaudia quanta fuerunt !
Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.

HORACE.

HE publication of the Com-
mentaries and the attacks
and quarrels to which they
gave rise have led us on
to the year 1541 ; we
must now return to 1536.
The eight months which
followed the appearance of
the first volume passed
almost without incident,
yet they were certainly
months of hard and in-
cessant work. Dolet oc-
cupied himself chiefly, as
we have seen, in completing and printing the second volume,
but it is certain that at the same time he was a diligent
student, and was then preparing some of the numerous books

u

290 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

which he was shortly afterwards to produce and print ; and
at least one book published during this period, probably
edited and certainly partly composed by Dolet, must not be
passed over in silence, especially as it has hitherto escaped
the notice of all his biographers. On the loth of August
1536 the young Dauphin died at Tournon, from the effects
as it seems of a glass of iced water, which he had imprudently
drunk at Lyons four days before. His death as was usual
was attributed to poison, and Sebastian Montecuculi was
executed for the imaginary crime. A small volume of poems
(in Latin and French), entitled Recueil de vers Latins et vul-
gaires de plusieurs po'e'tes Francoys composes sur le trespas de
feu Monsieur le Daulphin (and which includes epitaphs
by Marot, St. Gelais, and Macrin), was published three
months afterwards at Lyons by Francois Juste, under the
editorship, as I conjecture, of Dolet. The prefatory note is
written in his style, and the first ode in the book, addressed
by him to the poets of France, is in fact a poetical preface
to the entire work. The book also contains three other
pieces by him.1

It is probable indeed that Dolet at this time was work-
ing for Francois Juste, as well as for Gryphius. His duties
to the two printers would in no way clash. Juste was pre-

1 The greater part of this volume is made up of the compositions of
Dolet and his friends. Among the contributors were Voulte, the two
Sceves (Maurice and Guillaume), Marot, N. Bourbon, Jean des Gouttes
(Janus Guttanus), Pierre Duchatel, Claude Fournier, J. Canappe, and A. du
Moulin. Their compositions with those of Dolet occupy twenty-one out of
the thirty-six pages of which the book consists, the remainder being taken up
by odes of S. Macrin, Mellin de St. Gelais, Gilbert Ducher, Guillaume
Mellier, H. Appianus, P. Piochetus, J. Gagnius, Lateranus, and C.
Elvamus. The four last named are wholly unknown to me, and I know
nothing of Appianus except Dolet's reference to him in the first volume
of the Commentaries (col. 1157). Macrin was certainly a friend of Dolet
at a later period, but I am not certain whether they were at this time
personally known to each other.

xni WORK AND LEISURE 291

eminently the printer of French books, while Gryphius con-
fined himself almost entirely to Latin. That the learned
printer looked down, if not with contempt, at least as from
a lofty eminence, with a consciousness of superiority upon the
Justes, the Nourrys, and the Arnollets, who printed in the
vernacular the light and popular literature of the day, is
certain, and there could be no feeling of rivalry between him
and them. The only French book which Gryphius had as
yet condescended to print (except perhaps the first book of
Ovid's Metamorphoses translated by Clement Marot) l — the
Arrets £ Amour of Martial de Paris — was accompanied by an
elaborate Latin Commentary of Benoit Court, which probably
alone commended it to the learned printer. The Pere de
Colonia2 tells us that Benoit Court wrote three works, the
first a Latin Commentary on the Arrets d" Amour, * a frivolous
work if ever there was one, which certainly did not de-
serve to have had for its printer the celebrated Sebastian
Gryphius ' ; and Pernetti 3 speaks of it in almost the same
terms as ' a frivolous work, the greatest merit of which has
been to have for its printer the celebrated Sebastian Gryphius.'
On the other hand, both writers agree that ' the third work
of Benoit Court would alone have sufficed to immortalise its
author.' It is the natural history of trees and gardens. But
the whirligig of time brings its revenges. The Latin classics
of S. Gryphius have long since descended into the limbo of
* old books,' and will be sought for in vain in the catalogues
of Fontaine, Bachelin-Deflorenne, or Quaritch, but the few

1 An edition of the first book of the Metamorphose d'Ovide translate
en fran$ais, by Marot, was printed by Gryphius without date, and is cited
by Brunei as 'vers 1533.' But M. Guiffrey, (Euvres de C. Marot, ii. 261,
262, makes no mention of it, and states that he knows no impression of
the first book of the Metamorphose earlier than the edition given by Roffet
in 1534. That of Gryphius probably appeared soon afterwards.

2 Hist. Lit. de Lyon, ii. 475.

3 Les Lyonnais dignes de Memoire, i. 329.

292 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

French books printed by him are still eagerly sought for,
and his three editions of the Arrets d1 Amour, with the Com-
mentaries of Benoit Court, are among the few publications of
his press which always find purchasers, and not unfrequently
readers. The immortality conferred on Benoit Court by the
natural history of trees has proved but short-lived ; thea
Commentaries on the Arrets d? Amour are admired by jurists
for their learning and research, by men of letters for their
entertaining though possibly unintentional badinage, and have
been reprinted at least eight times.

Nor is the contrast less striking between the books of
Gryphius on the one hand, and those of Juste or Nourry on
the other. The learned Latin works printed by the former
can now hardly find purchasers, while a French romance or
poem with the name of Juste or Nourry on the title-page
never fails to find eager competitors for its possession at
100, 1000, or even 2000 francs.1 For Francois Juste, Dolet
in 1538 undertook to revise and edit a French translation of
one of the most popular books of the day — the Cortegiano of
Baldasar Castiglione. Few books were more to the taste of
the sixteenth century. First printed by Aldus in 1528, no
less than thirteen editions of it appeared in Italy in the next
twenty years. Shortly after its first publication it was trans-
lated into French by Jacques Colin, and printed at Paris.
But according to Dolet, this translation is full of faults which
he and Mellin de St. Gelais noted and corrected, and, so re-
vised, the translation was printed by Francois Juste in 1538,
with a preface by Dolet addressed to St. Gelais, in which he
claims for the book the benefit of the privilege which had
just been granted to him by the King. At the end there is
a dedication from Francois Juste to ' Monseigneur Monsieur
Du Peirat, Lieutenant General pour le Roy a Lyon,' written

1 The Adolescence Clementine, Juste, 1534, sold for 1800 francs, and
Ogier le Danoys, Nourry, 1525, for 2200 francs at the Yemeniz sale.

xin WORK AND LEISURE 293

in Dolet's style, and commenting on the badness of the
edition printed at Paris, * by the fault of the printer as it is
easy to see.' In this edition he says he has made use of the
labours of * Monsieur maistre Estienne Dolet pour certain en
literature, eloquence, et scavoir une des principales lumieres
de France.' I have however carefully compared this edition
of Juste with that printed by Longis and Harsy with-
out date but probably in 1537 or earlier, and I find this
latter much better printed both as to type and paper than that
of Juste, which is very slightly altered from it.1

A third printer for whom we find Dolet working at this
time was Scipio de Gabiano, for whom in 1538 he edited
Le Guydon des Practiciens^ a book of legal practice, which
soon became very popular among the notaries and advocates
of the day. A short preface addressed by him to the reader
is in his usual manner. It is * his affection and good-will
to the common weal that has induced him to give to the
world a work which he has found to be useful and profitable.'
The labour of seeing through the press a book of nearly nine
hundred closely printed pages of Gothic type must have been
considerable, but Dolet's editorial labours seem confined to
the short preface and the correction of the press.

But though Dolet * scorned delights and lived laborious
days,' he was by no means an anchorite or an ascetic. No
man more thoroughly enjoyed the society of literary men,
nor was he averse in moderation to the pleasures of the table.
He was poor, not because he saw any merit in poverty, but
because he loved learning better than wealth. He despised
all the ascetic virtues, even while to a certain extent he fol-
lowed some of them. Poverty, chastity, humility, obedience,
indolent solitude, self-inflicted pain, were in themselves no
virtues to him, any more than they were to Aristotle, Plato,

1 See as to this edition of Juste, M. Yemeniz's note in the catalogue
of his books, No. 553.

294 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

or Cicero, any more than they were to Luther or Erasmus,
to Bembo or Rabelais. But there was one thing he more
especially enjoyed, and which shows him to us in an unex-
pected light. He was devotedly fond of music. * Music
and harmony,' he tells us,1 ' are my sole enjoyments. What
is there more suited either for exciting or soothing the mind,
what more fitted for allaying or extinguishing, or even for
rousing indignation? What is there more efficacious for
refreshing the jaded spirits of men of letters ? I care nothing
for the pleasures of the table, of wine, of gaming, of love, —
at least I use them all in great moderation. But not so as
regards music, which alone of all pleasures takes me captive,
retains me, and dissolves me in ecstasy. To it I owe my life
itself ; to it I owe all the success of my literary efforts. Be
assured of this, that I could never have supported the inces-
sant, immense, endless labour of compiling these Commentaries
unless by the power of music I had sometimes been soothed,
sometimes incited to fresh efforts, sometimes recalled from
that weariness which has made me for a time lay aside my
Commentaries'

Another source of great enjoyment to him at this time
was bathing and swimming. He tells us of his proficiency
in the latter art, and that his favourite place for indulging in
it was near the church of St. Laurence, at the junction of the
Rhone and the Saone.2

But his studies and pleasures did not render him un-
mindful of the duties of friendship. He continued to corre-
spond with Jean de Boyssone, and was able to repay some of
the services which he had received from the professor of law.
Dolet's banishment from Toulouse had not had the effect of
allaying the disputes between the students (especially those
of the French nation) and the authorities of the city. The
Parliament indeed, by a prudent concession, had to some

1 z Com. 1294. 2 z Com. 170.

xin WORK AND LEISURE 295

extent calmed the excited feelings caused by the decree
against which Dolet's orations had been directed ; but the
disputes between the capitouls and the students continued,
and were aggravated by an injudicious and illegal attempt on
the part of the former to impose upon the professors and the
members of the University a heavy tax, thus not only in-
fringing on their privileges in a most important particular,
but injuriously affecting every member. The citizens gener-
ally approved the action of the magistrates ; the graduates
protested against the invasion of their privileges ; the scholars,
always ready for a disturbance, assembled with arms in their
hands ; a town and gown row of a serious character ensued,
the authorities were insulted, a capitoul was even pushed off
his mule. The city guard was ordered to seize the ringleaders,
and accompanied by a rabble penetrated into the School of
Law, where a professor, Jean de Boyssone as it would seem,
was lecturing. Blood followed : six of the French students
were arrested, and would have been executed, had they not
been saved by the intervention of Jacques de Minut. The
students fled from Toulouse ; the lecture-rooms were closed,
and the professors and regents appealed to the Parliament.

It seems that Boyssone and Voulte, if not the chief pro-
moters, took an active part in the appeal. What view was
taken by the Parliament we do not know ; ultimately the
proceedings before that tribunal were stayed, and the matter
brought before the Grand Council. Matthew Pac pleaded
the cause of the University, but as I imagine unsuccessfully,
for no decree was pronounced. But the affair did not end
here : the graduates pressed their grievance, and Gui de
Breslay, one of the leading members of the Grand Council,
was sent down to Toulouse to inquire into the matter.
Again we are left in doubt as to the result, but it seems
probable that the members of the University were successful,
as we find Boyssone again lecturing, and we are certain that

296 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Breslay would be as favourable to the cause of letters as the
nature of the case would admit.1 But Boyssone had hardly
recommenced his lectures, when we find him engaged in a
new process of more personal importance to him, yet as it
appears arising either out of the disputes between the capitouls
and the University, or out of the hatred which he had incurred
by his zealous championship of the latter, or by his general
promotion of the cause of literature and progress. All that
we know certainly of the nature of the suit is from his own
statement that his life was endangered by it, and his com-
parison of himself to Cicero pleading for his house.2 His
hopes rested on the president Minut, but the influence of the
latter could not prevail against the narrow bigotry of his
colleagues. Boyssone was condemned, and forthwith appealed
to the Grand Council.

We have already learned from his letters his anxiety to
know if the King was coming to Lyons. If he did come he
would be accompanied by the Grand Council, which would
sit at Lyons during his stay in the south of France. Francis
arrived on the i yth of February, accompanied or immediately
followed by the Grand Council. On the summons of Dolet,
Boyssone lost no time in coming to Lyons, for the purpose
of pleading his own cause.

Gui de Breslay fortunately was, if not the acting president
of the Council during the sitting at Lyons, at least one of

1 These matters are referred to by La Faille, ii. 90 ; but our chief
source of information respecting them is the MS. correspondence and
poems of Boyssone and the epigrams of Voulte. A narrative based on
these sources will be found in M. Guibal's article in the Revue de Toulouse,
1864, pp. 83-85. But here, as elsewhere, M. Guibal's chronology is a
little hazy. See also Boyssone's letter of Aug. 1535 (ante, p. 218).

2 M. Guibal suggests that this suit was in fact in reference to Boyssone's
house, which, as before mentioned, had been confiscated by the sentence
passed on him on his condemnation for heresy. De Boyssonnei Vita, p. 49,
note 2.

xin WORK AND LEISURE 297

the most influential members. Dolet, Gryphius, and Maurice
Sceve were all on terms of friendly intimacy with him, and
they were all eager to recommend the cause of Boyssone.
Breslay's sympathies had already been roused in favour of
the one professor of Toulouse who desired to promote the
scientific study of the law, and to harmonise the studies of
the University with the requirements of literature. Jean de
Boyssone personally made a most favourable impression on
him, and even on the other judges. Breslay used all his
influence, both publicly in the court and privately with his
colleagues, to save this excellent man from further persecu-
tions. He was completely successful : Boyssone had to
return to Toulouse before judgment was given, but a few
days after his arrival there, Guillaume Sceve had the satisfac-
tion of writing to him that the decision was in his favour.
' You owe much,' he wrote, * to Breslay, much to your own
literary talents ; the high opinion which the judges had
formed of them has been of great assistance to you.' l

The process detained Boyssone the whole summer at
Lyons. His law school was closed, and this, and the un-
certainty as to the result of the suit, caused him much anxiety,
yet did not prevent him from greatly enjoying his personal
intercourse with Dolet and the other old and new friends
whom he found in the city. Besides the usual and permanent
residents, the presence of the Court had brought many persons
of distinction, and had given Lyons the appearance of a
capital. To Dolet as well as to Boyssone the opportunity
was afforded of making the acquaintance of persons of in-
fluence. Marguerite of Navarre accompanied her brother.
Boyssone was already known to her, and, as we have seen,
only a year before she had urged him to settle at Bourges,
where her court was usually held. A few months later we
find her rendering a great service to Dolet, and it is probable
1 Boysson. MS. Epist. fol. xix.

298 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

that it was on the occasion of her visit to Lyons that he was
presented to her. For him the summer seems to have passed
most pleasantly ; not only was Boyssone at Lyons, but Dolet's
heart was gladdened by the presence there of a friend who
was even more devotedly attached to him, Jean Voulte.

Jean Faciot, who according to the fashion of the day
translated his name into Latin as Vulteius, which the bio-
graphers have retranslated back again into French sometimes
as Vautier, sometimes as Vouet, but more commonly as
Voulte,1 a young poet and scholar full of enthusiasm for
literature and affection for his friends, was born about the
year 1510, at Vandy-sur-Aisne, near Rheims, and on this
account styled himself in his poetry Remensis. After having
studied at Paris, at the College Sainte Barbe, we find him, on
the ryth of December 1533, engaged under the name of
Jean Visagier, Maitre-es-Arts, by Tartas, then Principal of
the College of Guyenne, as one of the regents or public
lecturers whom the jurats of Bordeaux had authorised the
Principal to appoint. His salary was forty livres tournois
per annum, a higher stipend than that of any other of the
lecturers, from which we should infer that he was possessed
of some special qualification — possibly a knowledge of Greek.2

1 Although, in accordance with the custom of modern French writers,
I have referred to him throughout as Voulte, I do not find that he called
himself by that name, or was so called by his contemporaries. The only
French name by which he called himself was Visagier.

2 Gaullieur, Hist, du Coll. de Guyenne, Paris, 1874, p. 57. Although
M. Gaullieur suggests the possibility of Jean Visagier being the same
person with Jean Voulte, he does not seem to think this probable, much
less certain, and he suggests (p. 69) that Voulte only succeeded Gentian
Hervet as a professor at Bordeaux when the latter gave up his appointment
shortly before the nth of April 1534 ; this, however, is mere conjecture.
He certainly held office under Jean de Tartas, who resigned the post of
Principal of the College on or about the lith of April 1534. Voulte was
one of those professors who had the most violent dislike to Tartas, against
whom he wrote and afterwards published several bitter epigrams ; but

xiri WORK AND LEISURE 299

We find him at Toulouse in the autumn of 1 534, and in 1535
and 1536 studying law with a view of being admitted as an
advocate, and at the same time lecturing, probably on Greek.
I believe that it was during a visit he paid to Lyons early in
October 1535 that he made the acquaintance of Dolet. In
October in that year, Robert Britannus, who had then left
Bordeaux, writes to Dolet from Toulouse a letter introducing
to him one of his late colleagues, who, he says, taught Greek
at the College of Guyenne at the same time that he (Britannus)
taught Latin.1 This I conjecture to have been Voulte, as it
was certainly about the time that his intimacy with Dolet
commenced. (It may however have been Hervet, or Charles
de Sainte Marthe.) A warm friendship sprung up between
them, as well as between Voulte and Boyssone. In the
volume of epigrams by Voulte, printed in 1536, he not only
devotes sixteen to the praises of Dolet, but in the dedication
to the Cardinal of Lorraine he speaks of him in terms of the
highest admiration. For several years Dolet, Voulte and
Boyssone continued to be united by the closest ties of friend-
ship, and if we cannot ascribe to Voulte any very high merits
as a poet, we can give him our unqualified praise as a friend
ready to do all, and more than all, that could be required of
him in the service of friendship.

Although a Master of Arts he was still at Toulouse
studying law, and at the same time lecturing or teaching,
when the disturbances of which I have lately spoken
caused the doors of the lecture -rooms to be closed, and

although the engagement and appointment of all the other lecturers during
the reign of Tartas as well as that of his successor Gouvea is formally re-
corded, that of Jean Voulte would be altogether unknown, and no mention
of it would be found in the records of the College, unless he was the Jean
Visagier appointed by Tartas in December 1533, while, unless Visagier is
the same person with Voulte, the former absolutely disappears, and no
trace of him is to be found within a very short time of his appointment.
1 Britanni Orationes, Tolosz, 1536, p. 70.

300 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

dispersed the professors as well as the students. By the
advice of Jacques de Minut and Jean de Pins he decided to
give up the law and devote himself exclusively to literature,1
which, as in the case of Dolet, had been his first mistress.
He accordingly followed Dolet to Lyons (probably accom-
panying Jean de Boyssone), and seems to have passed the
summer of 1536 there. We find from a letter of Matthew
Pac to Boyssone, written from Toulouse on the I3th of July
in that year, that they were all three then at Lyons.2
Voulte had already composed two books of epigrams,
but he tells us that he had not intended printing them,
had he not been persuaded to do so by Pierre Duchatel
and Guillaume Sceve, both of whom were then at Lyons.
They were printed by Gryphius in 1536. The first book
is dedicated to the Cardinal of Lorraine, to whom he sounds
the praises of Dolet in the letter before quoted ; the second
is preceded by a letter to Jean de Boyssone, containing the
details just stated. Both dedications are written from Lyons,
and are dated in the latter half of July 1536. Of the six
hundred and thirty-one (so-called) epigrams of which the
volume consists, and of which the major part are addressed
to or are in reference to his contemporaries, no less than
twenty-five are devoted to Dolet, — some addressed to him,
some concerning his Commentaries and his place among
poets and scholars, some addressed to others in his praise,
and some in ridicule of Maurus and others of his enemies.
All are full of affection and enthusiastic admiration for his
friend. If we cannot give a higher place to Voulte for his
criticism than for his poetry, his epigrams are yet most
valuable for the biographical details which they contain
relating to Dolet, Jean de Pins, Boyssone, and Minut.

1 Epist. to Jean de Boyssone, prefixed to the second book of the
Epigrams of Voulte, first edit. p. 98.

2 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. viii. p. 13.

xin WORK AND LEISURE 301

Duchatel, G. Sceve, Marot, Macrin, Bri^onnet, and Roussel
are also the subjects of numerous epigrams. For the dis-
turbances in the University of Toulouse the book is invalu-
able, and it is to be regretted that La Faille and other
historians of Toulouse have not made more use of it in their
histories. He returned to Toulouse about the same time as
Boyssone, apparently with a view of continuing his legal
studies and lectures, as the lecture-rooms of the University
were once more opened, and the students and professors had
returned.

It was during his stay at Lyons that the city sustained
an irreparable loss by the death of Sanctes Pagnini, which
occurred in August 1536. His funeral was celebrated with
no ordinary pomp, and his loss caused the deepest grief.
The clergy lamented the most learned theologian and the
most popular preacher of Lyons, one whose influence had been
most efficacious in preventing the progress of the Lutheran
heresy. Men of letters had to mourn the greatest Hebrew
scholar of the age. And the poor wept for one who was even
more devoted to works of charity and benevolence than to
learning and theology. It was at his instance that the
wealthy banker Thomas de Gadagne had founded a hospital
for the reception of persons suffering from the plague.1
Voulte was probably at his funeral, and wrote an epitaph
upon him in elegiacs, which is however no very favourable
specimen of his pen.

Both Boyssone and Voulte returned to Toulouse in
August or September 1 536, and towards the end of the month
the correspondence between Boyssone and Dolet recommenced.

1 Pere de Colonia has shown conclusively (Hist. Lit. de Lyort, ii. 595-
601) that the death of Sanctes Pagnini took place in August 1536, and
not in 1541, according to the inscription then in existence in the church
of the Jacobins, and as is stated by several of his biographers. See also
Pericaud, Notes et Documents pour servir a Fhistoire de Lyon, 1483-1546,
P- 57-

302 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

JEAN DE BOYSSONE TO ETIENNE DOLET

* It happened, my Dolet, that shortly after I had returned
from the Court, and whilst I was diligently occupied in
restoring my school, which had been closed the whole
summer owing to my absence, as I was wandering up and
down through the city spending my whole time seeking for
lecturers, I was attacked by a very serious illness which
caused me terrible suffering for some days. However, by
the goodness of God being not only greatly relieved, but
now completely recovered from illness, I write to you. As
to what has happened since my return here it is not
necessary for me to write, since Voulte has sent to you most
copious letters concerning all these things. I know no one
who writes to his friends more frequently and at greater length
than he does. I have had no intention in writing to you to
distract you from those studies in which you are so com-
pletely wrapped up.' [Toulouse. Sept. I536.1]

ETIENNE DOLET TO JEAN DE BOYSSONE

' I am as well as possible in health, and pursue my studies
with very great ardour. If you can give me the same good
account of yourself, with what pleasure shall I not be filled ?
I am too much occupied with my Commentaries to be able
to write more at length to you. Wherefore now farewell,
and continue to love me as you do at present. Farewell.
Lyons, Oct. 13, 1536. I beg you to salute in my name our
most learned and dear friend Mopha.'

The person referred to in the postscript of this letter was
the learned jurist Matthieu Gripaldi, lately appointed to a
professorship of law at Toulouse, who sometimes styled
1 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. xviii.

xiii WORK AND LEISURE 303

himself, for a reason unknown to us, Mopha. A native of
Chiere in Piedmont, where he was born about the commence-
ment of the century, he had applied himself to the study of
jurisprudence with much success, and had taught at Pisa,
Perugia, and Pavia before he received the appointment at
Toulouse. He soon became intimate with Boyssone and
Voulte, as well as with Dolet, to whom he was probably
introduced by the other two on the occasion of a visit to
Lyons. With Boyssone he carried on a close correspondence
for some years. Like so many other scholars and professors
of the time he never rested long in one place, but wandered
from one University to another, at once a student and a
professor. Yet wherever he went he obtained a high
reputation ; a friend of freedom of thought and freedom of
inquiry, the dogmatism of Luther and Calvin was no less dis-
tasteful to him than that of the Catholic Church. Toulouse
was certainly no place for him, but as long as Boyssone,
Minut, and Voulte were there, there he also remained.

Subsequently he became a professor at Cahors, and
shortly after at Valence. In 1 548 his reputation had become
so great that he was invited to Padua, and appointed one of
the two ordinary professors of the civil law, at a salary of
eight hundred florins. He gave so great satisfaction to the
University and the Sovereign Republic, that his salary was
twice raised; to nine hundred florins in 1550, and eleven
hundred in 1552. His popularity as a lecturer was so great
that Papadopoli tells us the great hall of the University was
insufficient to hold the crowd of students who desired to
hear him. Soon afterwards, however, fearing lest he should
have to leave Padua on account of his opinions, which were
beginning to be known or suspected,1 he determined to
provide himself with a retreat, and purchased the estate of

1 See Theological Review, xvi. pp. 302, 314. (Art. 'The Sozzini and
their School,' by the Rev. A. Gordon.)

3o4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Farges near Geneva, in the territory of Berne.1 There he
had hoped to breathe a freer air, but the process against
Servetus, which took place during one of his visits to Geneva,
showed him to his bitter disappointment that (as Grotius
has remarked) ' Antichrist had appeared not by Tiber only
but also by Lake Leman.' Gripaldi in the presence of the
stake boldly ventured to remonstrate with Calvin, and even
to protest against the sentence on Servetus ; but Calvin re-
fused him an interview which he sought. Opposition to the
will of the reformer was a crime never to be forgotten or
forgiven, and the only result of the remonstrance was that
some time afterwards Gripaldi was himself invited to confer
with Calvin and other ministers as to his own offences.
Calvin refused his hand, and Gripaldi, justly inferring from
this that his cause was already prejudged, hastily withdrew
from the conference. He was instantly summoned before
the Council, and charged by Calvin not only with sharing
the errors of Servetus, but (a greater crime) with having
refused to discuss his opinions. Calvin, Beza tells us, refuted
his errors, and he was banished from Geneva. The charge
was not altogether groundless. Whether his opinions on
the subject of the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity were
more or less intelligible than those of Servetus — or than
those of Calvin himself — I do not know. They were
certainly not orthodox. When they became known at Padua,
he was obliged to quit his professorship. Vergerio invited
him to Tubingen, where for some time he filled a chair of
law. But the arm of his persecutor was long. The Duke
of Wurtemberg was warned that his University was sheltering
a heretic, and he was expelled from Tubingen. Then he
returned to Farges, where he exercised a generous hospitality
to those who could frame their lips neither to the shibboleth

1 In the district of Gex, then subject to Berne. Beza in his Life of
Calvin calls him Me seigneur de Farges.'

xin WORK AND LEISURE 305

of Rome, nor to that of Geneva. It was in his house that
the unfortunate physician Valentine Gentilis found a refuge
after his escape from Geneva. The patience of Calvin was
exhausted ; he delivered Gripaldi to the authorities of Berne.
He was charged with heresy, and abjured his antitrinitarian
errors, but relapsing into his former opinions, ' he would,'
as Bayle remarks, ' sooner or later have suffered the penalty
of death, had not the plague, which carried him off in the
month of September 1564, guaranteed him against any
further trial for heresy.'

Whatever may have been his speculative opinions, the
little that we know of his life induces us to give him both
our respect and esteem, feelings which will be strengthened
by a perusal of his correspondence with Boyssone, and by
our knowledge of the affection which that excellent man, as
well as Dolet and Voulte, had for him. His numerous
works on jurisprudence (a list of which is given by Niceron)
were much esteemed.1

1 See for Gripaldi, Bayle (who calls him Gribaud} ; Niceron, xli.
235-241 ; Bock, Historia Antitrinitariorum, vol. ii. pp. 456-464 (the
longest and best accounts we have of him and his works) ; Papadopoli,
Hist. Gymn. Patavini, 1.252 ; Tiraboschi, Storia della Lett. vol. vii.pt. ii.;
Rossotti, Syllabus Scriptorum Pedemontii ; Sandius, Bibl. Anti-Trinitariorum,
p. 1 7 ; Beza, Vie de Calvin. There is a good notice of him in the
Biographie Universelle, where he is called Gribaldi. That of the Biog.
Generale is disfigured by several erroneous references to and misquotations
from Beza. One of his works was translated into English shortly after
its appearance. A notable and marvailous epistle of Doctor Mathew Gribald,
Professor of the Law in the University of Padua, concerning the terrible
judgment of God upon him that for fear of men denyeth Christ and the knowen
veritie ; with a Preface of Doctor Calvin; translated by E\dward] A\glionby\.
Imprinted the XX day of April 1 550, by Jhon Ostven. It was several times
reprinted.

CHAPTER XIV

A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Petit me perfidus hostis,

Ac infert ensem jugulo : hosti obsisto minanti,
Et neco, qui conabatur me absumere ferro.

DOLET.

N the 3 ist of December
1536 a new misfortune
happened to Dolet. He
was, as he tells us, at-
tacked in the streets of
Lyons by a painter named
Compaing,1 to whom he
sometimes refers as a
private enemy, at others
implies that he was a hired
bravo. It appears that
he attempted to assassin-
ate Dolet, and that the
latter in defending him-
self killed his adversary. ' It happened to him,' as it is ex-

1 In the official documents printed by M. Taillandier (Proces
/ Estienne Dolet) he is sometimes called Henry Guillot dit Compaing,
sometimes Guillaume Compaing. Dolet always refers to him as sicarius>
and in one place speaks of him as actuated by inveteratum odium.

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 307

pressed in one of the documents relating to his sentence
some years afterwards, ' to have the misfortune to commit
homicide on the person of this painter.' 1 It would seem as
though the latter was accompanied by a band of ruffians,
who on the death of Compaing attempted at once to seize
Dolet for the purpose of giving him into custody on a charge
of murder, and who excited the crowd by making this ac-
cusation against him. It is certain that he had already made
himself obnoxious to some at least of those who were in
authority at Lyons, and that had he been arrested and tried
there, however complete his innocence, he would have had
but little chance of an acquittal. By the assistance of his
friends he escaped before daylight from the city, intending to
make his way to Paris in the hope of obtaining there the
royal pardon. He has himself given us a narrative of his

1 I am not sure that Dolet's account of this affair is altogether to be
relied on. If in simply defending himself against the unprovoked attack
of an assassin he killed his assailant, we can hardly see why there should
have been any difficulty made by the Court of Lyons in registering his
letters of pardon. Voulte indeed assures Jean de Pins, in the letter pre-
fixed to the third book of his epigrams, that he had satisfied himself that
the homicide was committed by Dolet in self-defence, and we may I
think be satisfied by this testimony that Dolet was substantially in the
right in the matter ; but it seems probable that the affair was rather a
quarrel between the two men than an unprovoked attack made upon
Dolet by Compaing with the intention of murdering him. Compaing
was a member of a respectable family at Lyons, and although I do not
attach any weight to the precise charge against Dolet implied in the
words used respecting the matter by Floridus Sabinus, yet he would
hardly have so spoken had not Dolet and Compaing at one time been on
terms of intimacy. Floridus thus addresses Dolet: 'Atque inde fieri
compertum habeo ut qui nihil unquam laudabile in vita feceris quod de
deo animaque sentis caute omnibus palam non facias, ne scilicet in crucem
continuo rapiaris : a qua non admodum abfuisti dum perjurus sicarius
juvenem pictorem cum quo lenonia fide in gratiam redieras, etiam jacentem
animamque inter tuas nefarias manus exhalantem Koo-KtvrjSbv pugione
confodisti vel unico illo exemplo innatam tibi immanitatem pulchre
ostendens.' Adversus Doleti calumnias.

3o8 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

journey in a Latin poem, in which he related his adven-
tures : —

' When Janus with his double face was contemplating at
the same time two years, one hastening to its close, the other
on the point of commencing, a perfidious enemy attacked
me, and placed his sword at my throat : I resisted the would-
be murderer, and slew him who was endeavouring to take
my life.

' I was at the time wholly occupied with literary study,
and was devoting to it all my time and labour, with a view
of producing works which I hoped would be immortal and
would do credit to France. . . .

' It was in this celebrated city (Lyons) that I was passing
my life, when this cruel attack compelled me to use force in
return, and unwillingly to preserve my own life by taking
that of another. Immediately an armed band of ruffians
pursued me, in order to cast me, innocent as I was, into
prison. But it is not difficult to avoid the fury and escape
the snares of a cowardly crowd. Protected by a body of
friends, I departed from the city before daylight. I first
bent my steps towards Auvergne, notwithstanding the severe
frost and bitter winds which then prevailed. Soon I saw the
mountain ashes on the lofty hills covered with snow.
Through the narrow valley a mountain of water as it seemed
rushed headlong with a sound like that of a tempest, and
shaking the earth as with a hailstorm, inundated the fields.

' Then as I wandered through the forests of Auvergne
the surging Allier unfolded itself before me. I determined
to hasten my journey, by sailing down the stream. I em-
barked ; the boat aided by the oars flew more swiftly than
the wind. Lands and towns receded, while the swift bark
left its mark for a long distance in the water. But the
severity of the winter delayed our course : from the bed of
the river to the surface all was frozen, the ice was impervious

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 309

to the oars, and after our bounding vessel had received
severe blows from the ice, it was brought to a standstill.
Like a Parthian arrow, shot from a well-bent bow, which at
first cleaves the surrounding air by its great force, but which
if it enters the foliage of a thicket soon spends its force
among the branches and falls to the ground, so our boat,
which just before had been swift as the waves themselves,
was stopped in its course. At length the boatman, urged
on by my words, forced open a passage. The ice gave way
to the repeated blows of the oar, and all at once we glided
into the wide-spreading Loire, and were borne on its bosom
to a city celebrated in history, Orleans, in which I recognise
the cradle of my childhood, and I affectionately greet my
native shores.

4 Then, having dismissed my boat, I crossed the level
plains on horseback. To reach the King was my only
thought. I therefore directed my steps to the great and
populous city of Paris, where I was told I should find King
Francis, the King of France ; than whom is there in the
world' which you look upon, O sun, anything more august,
more excellent, or more clement ? ' 1

The news of his offence and of his flight from Lyons
aroused the sympathy and the exertions of his friends. No
sooner had his misfortune come to the knowledge of Voulte,
who was then at Toulouse, and who had already achieved a
reputation by the publication of the first two books of his
epigrams, than he instantly started for Lyons, where as it
would seem he expected to find his friend in prison. He
was desirous of placing himself, his influence, and his purse
at Dolet's disposal, willing to share his friend's prison if that
should be necessary, and if, as he seems to have expected, he
should be condemned to banishment, ready, in pursuance of
a promise formerly made, to accompany him into exile. On

1 Doleti Carmina, p. 59.

310 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

arriving at Lyons he learned to his great joy that his friend
had safely reached Paris, and that by the intervention of
powerful friends he was expected to obtain the royal pardon.

A letter written by Voulte to Jean de Pins, dated the
1 2th of March 1537, and printed in the volume of his
epigrams, tells us of the anxiety which he felt on his friend's
account, and shows him, as we have every reason to believe
he really was, a most devoted and affectionate friend, ready
to sacrifice himself in any way that would be useful to Dolet.
He seems to consider at this time that Dolet's pardon was
pretty well assured, and there can be little doubt that he had
himself used what influence he possessed in order to compass
this result, and so long as he remained at Lyons he continued
his exertions. 'Voulte,' writes Jean de Boyssone from
Toulouse, ' has now been absent from us about two months.
He has gone to Lyons for the purpose of assisting Dolet.
Oh that he may be as successful as I wish him to be ! ' l

Were we to believe the statements of Dolet himself we
should suppose that in this misfortune no assistance whatever
was given to him by his friends. Always vainglorious, and
never too desirous of acknowledging the aid he received
from others, on this occasion, knowing as we do the zeal and
energy manifested by his friends on his behalf, he portrays
himself in most unfavourable colours. In the dedication of
the second volume of his Commentaries to Bude he writes :
' After that most serious and bitter mischance which as you
are aware fell upon me in the defence of my life, with what
open and clandestine enemies have I not been attacked ?
Those who falsely persuaded themselves that they had been
somewhat injured by me were triumphant with joy that at
length the time was come for satisfying their hatred. Those
who were eaten up with envy on account of the celebrity
and literary glory I had acquired, thought the occasion at
1 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. xiv.

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 311

length arrived for pouring this forth, and, rejoicing greatly
that I was deprived of peace and safety, tore me in pieces as
it were by their maledictions. All those who before in my
prosperity had made much of me, in that my calamitous
season deserted me. So being at once in the greatest danger
from my enemies, and perfidiously deserted by my friends, I
was not only in a state of grief and wretchedness (which
might indeed be borne), but, as every one saw, I was in the
greatest danger of my life, a situation which is able to cast
down and break the spirit even of the most steadfast of men.
Yet I did not give myself up to grief, nor did I suffer myself
in an unmanly manner to be overthrown by the waves of my
cares and anxieties, but boldly using the counsel of my ready
mind I gradually emerged from my sea of troubles, and
brought it to pass that, contrary to the wicked designs of
my enemies, and without the assistance of any of those who
as far as name goes are my friends (but from whom in truth
I expected nothing), after a most raging tempest, and a
storm of a most terrible character, I at length came safely
into port without any very serious loss.'

This can hardly have been acceptable to Bude himself,
and certainly still less so to those other friends to whom
Dolet was really indebted for the king's pardon. From this
dedication and from his poems he would lead us to suppose
that immediately on his arrival in Paris, and without the
intervention of any of his friends, he obtained access to the
royal presence, told his story, and received the king's pardon.
But the letters of Voulte and Boyssone let us know of the
great exertions which were used by the accused's friends both
in Lyons and Paris, and even in the royal court, to obtain
this fortunate result.

Dolet himself in another place admits that his pardon
was specially owing to Marguerite of Navarre,1 and from

1 2 Com. 830.

3i2 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the poems which he addressed to Franciscus Pocraeus and
Antonius Arlerius (names altogether unknown to me), we
find that they also had exerted their influence in his behalf,
and had greatly contributed to the result. Nor can we
doubt that Pierre Duchatel, now in high favour with the
king, was most useful. Indeed an ode of Voulte's clearly
implies that this was so. Voulte himself, after staying a
short time at Lyons, appears to have felt that the interests
of his friend required his personal presence in Paris, and
accordingly we find him there before Dolet left the capital.
The efforts of the friends of letters had however already
been successful, and the royal pardon had actually been
granted on the 1 9th of February,1 before the date of Voulte's
letter, and Voulte could only have arrived in Paris on the
eve of his friend's departure, and just in time for the banquet
given in Dolet's honour by his literary friends, of which he
has left us a most interesting account, and which, bringing
together as it did so many men of the highest literary
distinction, is not only of interest in itself, but affords us an
important biographical fact in the lives of these celebrated
men. It is one of the best known of Dolet's writings,
having been frequently quoted by the biographers of Rabelais
and of Marot.

' Soon the time arrived for the banquet which a learned
body of friends had prepared for me. There met together
those whom we justly call the luminaries of France : Bude,
the greatest in reputation for learning of every kind ;
Berauld, equally happy in his natural genius as in his skill in
Latin composition ; Danes, distinguished in culture of all
kinds ; Toussain, who is honourably celebrated as a speaking
library ; Macrin, to whom Apollo has given a genius for
every kind of poetry ; Bourbon, also rich in poetic talent ;
Dampierre ; Voulte, who affords to the learned high ex-

1 P races d' Estienne Dolet, p. 27.

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 313

pectations of future distinctions ; 'Marot, that Gallic Virgil,
who displays a divine vigour in his verses ; Francois Rabelais,
that honour and glory of the healing art, who is able to
recall and restore to life those who have reached the very
threshold of Pluto.

' Among them there was no lack of conversation. We
passed in review the learned writers of foreign countries :
Erasmus, Melanchthon, Bembo, Sadolet, Vida, Sannazar,
were all in turn discussed and praised.

' At the early dawn of the following day I left Paris,
and proceeded as rapidly as possible to Lyons. My route
was by the plains which the Seine washes, where the armour
of Caesar so often shone upon his invincible troops. At
length I arrived where Saone divides Lyons into two
parts.' l

Besides this banquet we know of only one incident of
Dolet's visit to Paris, but that a very agreeable one. Going
one day into the shop of Robert Estienne he saw a book of
Latin poems by Salmon Macrin, just printed, and turning
over the pages he found an ode to the Gallic poets of the
day, in which he was classed with Dampierre, Brice, N.
Bourbon, and Voulte, as one of the five leading Latin poets
of France. This justly caused him no slight gratification,
for Macrin was esteemed (and rightly so) as the first Latin
poet of France, and the French Horace must be admitted to
stand on an altogether different and much higher level than
any of his contemporaries. Dolet repaid his praise by a
Latin poem which he subsequently addressed to him.2

Upon returning to Lyons with the royal pardon in his
pocket, Dolet found that it would not afford him the pro-
tection which he expected. Whether his friends or protectors
had through ignorance neglected to apply for its ratification
by the Parliament, or whether the Parliament had for some

1 Carmina, p. 62. 2 Ib. p. 70.

3H ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

reason rejected the application, we do not know. Certain it
is that it was not ratified or registered until more than six
years afterwards, and then not until after two rescripts under
the king's hand and seal ordering this to be done. Wanting
in this formality the authorities of Lyons — already hostile to
the accused — thought themselves justified in paying no atten-
tion to the pardon, and Dolet had no sooner returned than,
either at the instigation of his own enemies or of the friends
of Compaing, he was thrown into prison by the Seneschal of
Lyons. He remained there until the 2ist of April 1537,
when by the influence of Jean de Peyrat,1 the Lieutenant-
Governor of Lyons under the Cardinal de Tournon, he was
provisionally set at liberty, on giving security to appear for
judgment when called upon. He avenged himself upon the
Seneschal by a bitter ode in the volume of poems which he
published in the following year.

The vainglorious boast of Dolet that in this painful
episode of his life it was his own energy and vigour alone
that had obtained for him the royal pardon, and that he was
perfidiously deserted by his friends, cannot I think but have
been one of the causes of the estrangement which shortly
afterwards arose between himself and Voulte. We have
already seen the affectionate zeal which the latter showed in
his friend's defence. In the two additional books of epigrams
inserted in the volume which he published at Lyons about
the middle of the year 1537 Dolet is the subject of eight
epigrams, and is referred to with the highest praise (though
I could fancy with a shade less of that cordial and enthusiastic
affection which is so conspicuous in the first two books), and
equally so in the letter to Jean de Pins which forms the
preface to the third book. But in the two small volumes
which he printed at the end of 1538 at Paris at the press of

1 The constant friend and protector of men of letters. Dolet, Voulte,
Ducher, Rousselet, and Bourbon have all odes in his honour.

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 315

Simon de Colines,1 both of which are collections of short
poems, addressed to or written upon a large number of French
poets and literary men, friends and enemies of the author, the
name of Dolet nowhere appears. But though his name is
absent, it is unfortunately too clear that he is referred to in
several bitter and reproachful epigrams. In several he is
transparently hidden under the name of Ledotus ; in others,
headed ' In Ingratum^ he is no less certainly intended. The
poet complains bitterly of the ingratitude which he and
others, notably Duchatel, had experienced from a friend, to
whom when in circumstances of great peril they had rendered
assistance and had succeeded in saving from death. He
expresses surprise that Guillaume Sceve is willing still to
retain this ungrateful man among his friends. He complains
that one who had formerly spoken of him as his best, his
dearest friend, now cared nothing for his affection, and that
he had inserted in his books poems addressed to Bourbon
which he had originally addressed to Voulte ; and last,
though perhaps not least, that he had ridiculed the latter's
poems. The following is a specimen : —

In quendam Ingratum.

Debes qui propriam tuis amicis
Vitam, cur tibi neminem fuisse
Talem, qualis amicus esse amico
Debet temporibus malis, ab iisque
Dicis omnibus in tuo relictum
Casu ? die mihi per caput redemptum,
Per nuper tibi redditam salutem,
Sic amicitiae, O scelus, tuorum
Respondes ? satis esse nonne credis
Hoc factum modo singular! amori ?

1 Joan. Vulteii Rhemi Inscriptionum Libri duo, and Jo. Vulteii Rkemensis
Hendecasyllaborum Libri quatuor.

316 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Hascne est gratia, quam referre par est ?
Hocne munere munus ipse pensas
Acceptum ? tibi nemo si vaganti
Incerto pede et anxio adfuisset,
Die O die ubi nunc miser jaceres ?

Vivis ipse tamen, quid ? immo regnas,
Horum munere quos negas amicos,
Et narras tibi defuisse in ipso
Casu, qui tibi reddidere vitam.
Illos quid potes amplius rogare ?
Illos quid meliusque chariusque
Ingrato dare turn tibi salute
Optasses ? tibi quid dedisse amicos
Narro ? decipior, nihil dederunt :
Litteris etenim hanc dedere vitam.1

In another ode, headed In Ledotum, Voulte says: 'You
not only wish to injure those who have injured you, but you
even attack in your writings your very few friends, those
through whom your life has been preserved to you. You
are now trying to acquire new friends, yet these you will
shortly again lose, for you do not possess a single friend of
long standing.' 2

I fear there can be little doubt that Dolet had shown
himself ungrateful as well to Voulte as to others, and the
publication of the second volume of the Commentaries which
appeared in February 1538, containing the passage already
quoted, could not fail to give the deepest pain to those who,
like Voulte, had done everything, and more than everything,
that could have been required by their friend.

Henceforth the name of Voulte disappears from our
history. Dolet indeed addressed an ode to him in the

1 Hendecasyllabi, fol. 9.

2 fol. 96. I imagine Voulte is here referring to the passage in the
dedication of the second volume of the Commentaries (already quoted), in
which Dolet attacks his friends for their desertion of him in his misfortunes.

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 317

volume of poems which appeared in 1538, but he is not
mentioned in any of his subsequent writings. But the open
rupture between the two men did not take place until some
time after Dolet's return to Lyons. During the remainder
of 1537 the old friendly and familiar relations continued to
exist. In the latter part of that year Boyssone writes to
Gripaldi that he has heard from Sceve, who tells him of
Dolet's excellent health, and Voulte's admission as an
advocate.1

About the same time with the estrangement from Voulte,
and probably arising from the same causes, Dolet lost the
friendship of Hubert Sussanneau, whom the reader will
remember was at Lyons editing and correcting for Gryphius
in 1535. I have before spoken of the laudatory terms in
which Sussanneau wrote of Dolet, in a book printed in 1536.
In 1538 he, like Voulte, had changed his tone. In his
Ludorum libri, printed by Colines in that year, are three
epigrams In Medimnum which are clearly directed against
Dolet, and speak of him in terms similar to those used by
Voulte ; and in addition, his personal appearance is described
in language the reverse of flattering, but which does not
altogether disagree with the description given by Odonus in
the letter already quoted. His tall stooping figure, the
leaden pallor of his face, his fierce eyes, his squalid air, are

1 Voulte was assassinated on the 3Oth of December 1542, by a man
who had been unsuccessful in a law-suit against him. See Boulliot,
Biographic Ardenaise. Besides the two editions of the Epigrammata, and
the two small volumes of Hendecasyllabi and Xenia, Voulte was also the
author of Oratio funebris, a lo. Vulteio de lac. Minutio Tholosae habita.
Lugduni, apud Parmanterium, 1537. It is a tract of 1 6 pp., printed,
like the second edition of the epigrams, by Barbous for Parmentier,
and contains besides the oration a dedication addressed ' Malafantio et
Reynerio, two epitaphs by Voulte and three by G. Sceve, as well as an
ode by Gripaldi. I have nowhere found this book noticed, nor do I know
of the existence of a copy except the one I possess. It is not to be found
in the Bibliotfaque Rationale.

3i8 ETIENNE DO LET CHAP.

assumed to correspond with the qualities of his mind, nor is
his short jacket forgotten, which had excited the ridicule of
Odonus : — l

Suem buxeus vultus, macerque, et oculi truces,
: proferentis tertiata vocabula
Flagrare felle livido satis indicant.

And in another epigram : —

Extabet atra made, et exili toga
Tegitur Medimnus.

Dolet's friendship with a no less eminent, and to English-
men more interesting person, Nicolas Bourbon of Vandoeuvre,
had the same fate as that with Voulte and Sussanneau.
The accomplished tutor of Henry Carey (Lord Hunsdon),
young Henry Norreys and the Dudleys, the friend of
Bishop Latimer and Dean Boston,2 came to Lyons immedi-

1 Ludorum libri, fol. 16 and 34. On the other hand, Voulte (Epi-
grammata, lib. ii. p. 159, edit, of 1537) gives us a most favourable idea of
his personal appearance : —

Tam pulchrum est corpus, mens est tarn pulchra Doleti,
Totus ut hoc possim dicere, pulcher homo est.

And Claude Cottereau (Genethliacum], speaking of Dolet's son, says : —
Quare sive unum referat, vel utrumque parentem,
Dives erit forma, dives et ingenio.

The art. ' Sussanneau ' in the Biog. Univ. calls attention to a MS. note
in the copy of his Ludi in the public library of Lyons which states that
the epigram In Mtevium is also directed against Dolet. I certainly
hesitate to differ from the President Bouhier (who on reference to the
copy in question appears to be the writer of the note), yet I think the
epigram Ad Lausum (fol. 27) proves clearly that Dolet is not intended
by ' Masvius.' Sussanneau is, however, even more spiteful in an elegy
appended to his edition of the Quantitates of Alexander de Villedieu
(Colines, 154.2) : —

Ad Odletum, Inferni Calcographum.

Quid sine fortunis hominem, sine re, sine lege,
Expiet, et sine spe qui sit, et absque fide?

2 N. Bourbon was a protege of Queen Anne Boleyn, and was naturally
enough devoted to the men of the reform party in England. He is as

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 319

atejy on his return from England in the spring of 1536, and
seems immediately to have made the acquaintance of Dolet.
The latter, always ready to welcome a new ally on the side
of the learned against the barbarians, gave a cordial welcome
to the newcomer, and obtained for him the friendship of
many of the learned men then at Lyons. It is probable that
it was to Dolet that Bourbon was indebted for his introduc-
tion to Rabelais, to Marot, and the Sceves, and in his volume
entitled UaiBayw^eiov, printed by Rhomanus in 1536, he
showed his gratitude and esteem by three odes addressed to
him, the one, De Amicis Lugdunensibus, beginning —

Quos mihi Lugduni tua conciliavit amicos

Fides, Delete, et gratia,
Efficiam, —

the others expressing the highest esteem for his person and
respect for his learning. Six odes by him also appear among
the commendatory poems affixed to the Carmina of Dolet.

But in the second and enlarged edition of his Nug*e,
given by Gryphius at the end of 1538, though all the other
poems in the UaiSaycojelov are inserted, the odes to Dolet
are omitted, and his name nowhere appears. A careful and
repeated study of the Nug<£ of Bourbon and of the poems of
Voulte has enabled me to glean somewhat as to the cause of
the estrangement between the two men, and has led me to
some probable conclusions on the subject.

One day shortly after Bourbon's return to Lyons from
England (in 1536) he went into the shop of Gryphius, and
in answer to his inquiry what new books had just appeared,
a volume entitled E-pigrammata was handed to him. He

laudatory of Cromwell and Cranmer as he is unfair to Sir Thomas More.
But I think that the author of that interesting monograph on More's
Latin poems, Philomorus, is unduly hard upon him (znd ed., London
1878, p. 261).

320 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

eagerly turned over its leaves, and found as he thought
numerous lines and sentences taken from his Nug*e.

Invenio illic e Nugis meis
Surrepta carmina innumera, et sententias
Alio tortas, et argumenta pleraque
Adsuta ineptiis nebulonis illius.

In the IlfuSaycDyetoi/, printed before the end of the same
year, Bourbon fiercely attacks the author of this volume and
charges him with shameless plagiarism in four epigrams
headed De Seipso, In quendam carminum suppilatorem.1

Although the epigrammatist is not named, it appears
that Voulte was intended, and accordingly in his next edition
(Lyons, Parmentier, 1537) he in numerous epigrams defends
himself from the attack of Bourbon, and, though without
mentioning him by name, throws an abundance of abuse and
ridicule upon him, his Nug<e, and the two portraits which
Bourbon had prefixed and affixed to his book. But before
the end of 1538, about the time of the quarrel between
Dolet and Voulte, the two had become reconciled. In a
letter from Bourbon to his mistress Rubella, dated Nov. 29,
I538,2 he says, ' I hear by a letter of our friend Christopher
Richer that Voulte is reconciled to me. Cursed be those
tattlers (or rather, God give them a better mind) who left no
stone unturned, as the saying is, that they might estrange
Voulte from me.'

Very shortly after the date of this letter Bourbon gave
a new edition of his Nug*e, and Voulte published his In-
scriptiones and his Hendecasyllabi. In the books of each
author there are friendly odes addressed to the other. Each
expresses his gratification at friendship being established

1 pp. 39> 4°-

2 Tabellte elementarite . . . Nicolao Borbonio autore. Lugduni, apud

Frellceos Fratres, 1539.

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 321

between them, each is severe on the false friend who had
caused and kept up the estrangement, and Voulte proposes
that they shall consider him for the future as their common
enemy. These things, coupled with the fact that their
reconciliation immediately followed Voulte's quarrel with
Dolet, that the volume of Voulte which celebrates their
reconciliation is full of severe epigrams on Dolet, and that
the almost contemporaneous edition of Bourbon's Nug<e
omits the odes to Dolet,1 lead me to conclude that they
suspected the latter of being the creator and fomentor of
their estrangement, and that to this must be attributed the
cessation of Bourbon's friendship.

In the meantime Dolet's intimacy and correspondence
with Jean de Boyssone continued as before. It would seem
that a sum of money was owing to him at Toulouse, either
a debt which in the haste of his forced departure he had been
unable to get in, or, as is perhaps more probable, the value
of the property he left behind him, which had either been
illegally seized by the officers of justice or detained by some
other person. A law-suit was necessary to recover it, and
Boyssone took charge of the conduct of the affair and em-
ployed as his advocate Nicolas Le Roy.2 On the 22nd of
June he thus writes : —

s

JEAN DE BOYSSONE TO ETIENNE DOLET

' I have received your book De Re Navali, for which I
give you my best thanks. Your letter to Jean de Pins I

1 There are several epigrams of Bourbon headed In Zoilum that may
not improbably be directed against Dolet, but are not (as in the case of
those of Voulte and Sussanneau) so clearly intended for him as to justify
me in citing them as so intended.

2 Nicolas Le Roy was a friend of Calvin and Francois Daniel. In
1534 he had been professor of law at Bourges. Correspondance des Re-

formateurs dans Us pays de Langue Fran$aise, ii. 409.

Y

322 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

have caused to be delivered to him. Nicolas Le Roy, a most
learned person and the leading man in his profession, has the
greatest regard for you, and omits nothing which he thinks
can tend to promote your interests and reputation. I hope
therefore that very shortly the money will be repaid me, and
as soon as I receive it I will take care that it shall reach your
hands as speedily as possible. But Chomard has written to
you more at length on these matters. Do you then rest con-
tent with the efforts we are all making on your behalf. Fare-
well. Toulouse, 22nd of June I537-'1

But a great blow was soon to fall on Boyssone and the
other friends of learning at Toulouse, and Dolet was to lose
one of his best and most valued friends — with whom we see,
from the letter just quoted, he still continued his correspond-
ence. The death of the First President Minut had occurred
on the 6th of November 1536. Voulte pronounced his
funeral oration, and he, Boyssone, and Dolet all composed
odes in honour of his memory, and in lamentation of his
death. An inscription on his tomb in the church of St.
Bartholomew (destroyed at the Revolution) justly described
him as veritatis amantissimus et litterarum •pro-pugnator acer-
rimus. The excellent Bishop of Rieux did not survive his
friend an entire year. He died at the Carmelite convent at
Toulouse on the ist of November 1537. Jean de Boyssone
was at Lyons at the time of his death, and only learned the
sad news on his return to Toulouse. On the 2Oth of that
month he writes to Guillaume Sceve a letter containing an
interesting account of his journey to Toulouse, and thus
concludes : — 2

' I arrived very tired at Toulouse. There I was met by
tidings the least pleasant and agreeable that were possible for
me to have, namely, that Jean de Pins, Bishop of Rieux, had

1 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. xxxiv.

2 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. xxxvi.

xiv A HOMICIDE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 323

departed this life. I feel his death most bitterly, as well on
account of literature generally, as of the great loss which
Toulouse in particular has sustained by his death. For he
was indeed the great ornament to our city. I have saluted
Mansancal l and Michael Faber in your name. To-morrow
I return to my duty of lecturing, which has been for some
time interrupted. Meanwhile if you receive any news from
Italy write to me. Farewell. Toulouse, November 20,
1537. Salute in my name du Choul, Richer, Dolet, and M.
Sceve.'

A few days later he thus writes to Pierre Duchatel
(Castellanus), then Archdeacon of Avignon : — 2

* Would that the rumour which lately reached you as to
the death of Jean de Pins had been false. In that case all of
us who devote ourselves to literature at Toulouse should not
be in such deep grief. What, let me ask you, could have
happened to us which we could have felt more severely ?
Last year we lost Minut. Death seemed then to have little
power left to trouble us, except by this year depriving us of
Jean de Pins, who alone was left to us as the guardian of
letters. Toulouse, December 9, 1537.'

The three poets again celebrated in their verses the
friend they had lost, and though the epitaphs of none of
them are to be ranked amongst their happiest efforts, yet
they all certainly proceeded from the heart, and are the
words of sincere mourners.

The death of the Bishop of Rieux broke the last tie that
bound Boyssone to Toulouse. Dolet, Voulte, and Gripaldi
had all left the city. The two protectors and promoters of
letters and learned men were dead. He now sought to
obtain some legal appointment where he might pass his time

1 Jean de Mansancal was then a Councillor of the Parliament of Tou-
louse. He succeeded Bertrandi as First President in 1538.

2 Boyss. MS. Epist. fol. xxxvii.

324 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xiv

in peaceful study, unmolested by the barbarism of his native
city. After several unsuccessful applications, among others
to the Cardinals Odet de Coligny and Gabriel de Gramont,
of both of whom he afterwards writes with a little bitterness,
he was at length (in 1538), by the influence of Jean
Bertrandi, who now held the office of Third President of the
Parliament of Paris, appointed by the Chancellor Du Poyet
one of the judges of the Royal Court of Chambery, and a
member of the Council which administered the Province of
Savoy, then recently annexed to the dominions of the King
of France.

CHAPTER XV

THE PRINTER

Ilia ego quae quondam, ccelo ut delapsa, colebar,
Ilia ego quas multis numinis instar eram :

Quam comitem addiderant mundi miracula septem,
Quae decima Aonidum sum numerata soror :

Delicias humani generis vocitata per orbem,
Quas vocitabar amor deliciasque deum.

H. ESTIENNE.

Qua certe nulla in mundo dignior nulla laudabilior, aut profecto utilior
sive divinior et sanctior esse unquam potuisset. — PHILIP OF BERGAMO.

HE year 1538 was in many
ways a memorable year in
Dolet's life. There can
be little doubt that in the
early part of it his marriage
took place, yet of the cir-
cumstances attending this
event we know nothing.
His wife's name has
hitherto been unknown,
but I am now able to give
it from a notarial act pre-
served in the Archives of
Lyons, and which has for
its object an extension of the partnership subsisting in 1 542

326 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

between Dolet and one Helayn Dulin.1 The wife of Dolet
is there referred to as Louise Giraud. The name Giraud is
unfortunately too common to allow of our connecting her
with any of the families of the name, but I am disposed to
think, for reasons hereafter indicated, that she not improbably
came from Troyes, and may have been related to Nicole
Paris, the printer there. From the Genethliacum and the
Second Enfer we see that the marriage was not only one of
affection, but was also a source of great happiness to Dolet.
Some of his friends indeed disapproved of it, doubting, as it
seems, whether with his precarious means of livelihood he
was wise in taking upon himself a responsibility and expense
for which he might find it difficult adequately to provide.
Yet Claude Cottereau, always a prudent and judicious friend,
did not hesitate to express his thorough approval of it.
Writing to Dolet a year later, after the birth of a son, he
says : ' After the great labour to which I was obliged to
devote the whole of last winter (for the purpose of founding
my reputation, and acquiring some esteem among learned
men), as I was going from Lyons to Tours, as a relief from
the tedium of my journey, I set myself to compose some
dixains and huic tains on the birth of the son whom it has
pleased God to give you for the completion of the great
happiness of your marriage ; a marriage which, though many
others who little know your spirit and judgment have been
surprised at, as a destruction or at least a hindrance to your
fortune, so far as material wealth is concerned, yet I have
always approved and praised, for I know that you have no
greater anxiety than to live according to the commands of
God, and to pass your time in tranquillity of mind so as to
devote yourself more completely to literature. You have
not entered the marriage state foolishly or without judgment,
but for the purpose of obtaining from it the greatest good.' 2

1 See post, p. 338. 2 L' Avant naissance de Claude Dolet.

xv THE PRINTER 327

But it is probable that he would not have ventured on
this important step had he not seen the way open to a more
settled life and a more certain income than heretofore.
The second volume of the Commentaries was published in
February 1538, and in March the same year the author had
the honour of being introduced to the King at Moulins by
Cardinal de Tournon, and of presenting to His Majesty a
copy of his great work. To which of his friends Dolet was
indebted for his introduction to the great Cardinal, at that
time at the height of his power and the most influential of
the Ministers of Francis, we are not informed. Not im-
probably it was to Pierre Duchatel, now in great favour with
the King, and formally installed as his reader. The Cardinal
spoke most favourably of him to the King, and Francis not
only graciously accepted the volumes, but granted to Dolet
the privilege which he sought, to enable him to commence
with a good prospect of success the profession of a printer.

During the century which followed the invention of
printing, the position of those who exercised the art was
relatively much higher than it is in our own day. A printer
was then necessarily a man of education, usually and almost
necessarily a fair Latin scholar ; and the master printers
were invariably recognised as members of a learned profession,
as belonging to the fraternity of men of letters, and not as
mere tradesmen who exercised a mechanical art. The
traditions of the Aldi, the Estiennes, the Gryphii, and the
Elzevirs have indeed been worthily preserved in our own
days by more than one great family of printers and publishers,
and there have never been wanting learned printers who have
used their profession not so much as a means of profit, as for
the purpose of giving to the world books of the highest
merit printed on the choicest paper and with the most perfect
typography. But in modern times the combination of the
scholar, the author (or the editor), with the practical printer,

328 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the publisher, or the bookseller, has been comparatively rare,
nor is it likely that we shall again see printing establishments
like those of the elder Aldus or Robert Estienne, the pro-
prietor of which, though calling himself by the modest title
of printer, was rather the head of a college of learned men,
and was no less competent to direct and assist their literary
labours than to perform the most practical and mechanical
details of his art.

The Greek prefaces of Aldus will favourably compare
with those of the greatest scholars of the day, even with
those of Musurus and Lascaris, and faulty as in the eyes of
modern criticism are several Greek edition** principes which
he both printed and edited, yet none but a man of rare
abilities and learning could have edited or printed them for
the first time even in the most faulty form. Robert Estienne
was himself the author of some of the books of the greatest
permanent value which issued from his press, he was one of
the most eminent Greek, Hebrew, and Latin scholars of his
day, and if his learning and the great services he rendered
to letters are less universally recognised than those of the
elder Aldus, it is because he has been overshadowed by the
still greater learning and literary merit of his eldest son.
The elder Aldus was surrounded at Venice by the most
eminent scholars of his time, who in concert with him and
under his direction and perpetual supervision, transcribed,
edited and emended, and who did not disdain to act as the
correctors of his press and sometimes even as compositors.
Robert Estienne, in the much less learned Paris, entertained
in his house ten scholars, all learned men, some of them pre-
eminently so,1 as his assistants and correctors of the press,
and Latin was the language commonly and familiarly spoken
in the house, not only by the ten learned assistants, but by

1 'Decem hi partim literati partim literatissimi viri ' (Preface of Paul
Estienne to the Aulus Gellius of 1585).

xv THE PRINTER 329

the master, his wife and children, and even by the servants.
But Aldus Manutius and Robert Estienne were also the
ablest practical printers of their day, thorough masters of
their art, and of every detail connected with it, personally
superintending, and (in the case of Robert Estienne) even
taking part in the work of the compositors, and each de-
signing and causing to be founded types for their books
altogether different from any used before. The cursive
characters still known as Italics were invented by Aldus
(who took the handwriting of Petrarch as his model) for the
purpose of his Latin books, a type which, though now disused
except for the purpose of emphasis, will at once be seen to
be an enormous improvement on either the Roman or Gothic
types with their innumerable contractions previously in use ;
and if I hesitate to ascribe to him alone the invention of the
two forms of Greek type which he first employed, it is only
because it seems probable that the credit of the invention
ought to be shared with Marcus Musurus, whose clear and
beautiful calligraphy the type used in the earlier volumes —
of many of which he was the editor — closely resembles. To
Robert Estienne was due the Greek typi regii — engraved by
Claude Garamond under the learned printer's direction —
which for two centuries and a half continued to be recognised
as the most perfect and beautiful of all Greek types.1

To be a printer in the sixteenth century was to be a
member of a profession which was occupied with the pro-
motion and spread of literature and science. Long before
the invention of printing, the sworn bookseller clerks in

1 A duplicate set of the matrices and fount, taken by R. Estienne to
Geneva, became in the early part of the seventeenth century the subject
of diplomatic intrigues and negotiations — the ambassador of the King of
England desiring to purchase them from Paul Estienne, and the French
Government claiming to be entitled to them subject only to the payment
of the amount for which they had been pledged. See Les Estiennes et les
Types Grecs de Francois /", par Aug. Bernard, Paris, 1856.

330 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Paris could only be admitted as such after a strict examina-
tion, and an edict of Charles VIII. in 1488 reduced them to
twenty-four in number, besides four principal booksellers
(magni librarii], and declared them, together with two
illuminators, two binders, and two scribes, to be officers and
servants of the University, and as such entitled to all the
privileges thereof as true scholars.1 After the invention of
printing, the privileges of the booksellers naturally fell to the
printers, and the twenty -four — then called imprimeurs
libraires — long retained their importance. In 1513 Louis
XII., to whom, strangely enough, the welfare of his people
appears to have been sometimes a matter of interest,2 issued
an edict by which he granted to printing what M. Didot
calls lettres de noblesse, exempting it from a considerable
impost, taking off the tax previously existing on books, and
declaring that ' the printer-booksellers, as true members and
officers of the University, ought to be maintained in their
privileges, liberties, franchises, exemptions, and immunities,
in consideration of the great benefits which have been con-
ferred upon our kingdom by means of the art and science of
printing, the invention of which seems rather divine than
human, and which, thanks be to God, has been invented and
discovered in our time by the means and industry of the said
printers, by which our holy Catholic faith has been greatly
augmented and strengthened, justice better understood and

1 ' Comme vrais escholiers d'icelle.' Didot, Essai sur la Tjpographiey
p. 720.

2 Henry IV. is the only one of his successors prior to the Revolution
of whom as much can be said. Even to Louis XVI., good husband and
father as he was, worthy and prosperous citizen and locksmith as he might
have been, had fortune been more favourable to him, the welfare of his
people never on any single occasion seems to have been a matter of
thought, nor did their sufferings and wretchedness, when they were dying
of hunger by hundreds, ever induce him to consider how large a part of
their misery was due to his enormous civil list.

xv THE PRINTER 331

administered, and the divine service more fittingly and ac-
curately performed, said, and celebrated, and by means of
which so many good and salutary doctrines have been mani-
fested, communicated, and published to every one.' l

Certainly the title of father of letters is more justly due
to the author of this noble and liberal decree than to Francis
I., who, as we have seen, issued an edict prohibiting the use
of the printing press, and who permitted the burning of both
books and printers.

Etienne Dolet, as we have before seen, on his arrival in
Lyons in the summer of 1534, found employment with
Sebastian Gryphius as reader and corrector of the press ;
and though his two visits to Paris, the completion of his
Commentaries, and his other literary labours must have taken
up the larger part of his time, yet there can be little doubt
that during the following four years he continued with more
or less intermission to assist the great printer, as well as
Francois Juste and others, and to maintain himself by this
means, and that during this period he also acquired in the
workshop of his patron a practical knowledge of the art of
printing.

Amongst his most intimate friends and associates at this
time was the foreman and head under Gryphius of the
printing office, Jean de Tournes, clarum et venerabile nomen,
soon to rival and indeed to excel his master in the divine art,
and to found a family that for two centuries and a half con-
tinued to exercise their hereditary profession at Lyons and
Geneva.2 At what period Dolet decided to adopt the pro-

1 Didot, Essai sur la Typ. 750.

2 Dolet has an ode Ad Joannem Turmeum et Vincentum Piletum com-
bibones. M. A. F. Didot (Essai sur la Typ.} seems to speak with less than
his usual accuracy in saying that Jean de Tournes had served his ap-
prenticeship to Sebastian Gryphius. According to the family papers cited
by M. Revilliod in the Bulletin du Bibliophile, 1856, pp. 917-930, he had
served his apprenticeship to Melchior and Gaspard Trechsel, and he

332 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

fession of a printer we do not know ; not improbably it
was when he first contemplated marriage. The precarious
income of a man of letters, even when eked out by the wages
of a reader or corrector for the press, though sufficient for
his own simple wants, would be inadequate to maintain a
wife and children. It was on the 6th of March 1538, on
the occasion of his interview with Francis I. when he pre-
sented to him his Commentaries, that he obtained from the
King,1 who was then at Moulins, a privilege or license
authorising him to print or cause to be printed all books
composed or translated by him, and other works of ancient
and modern authors, which should be by him properly re-
viewed, emended, illustrated, or annotated, whether by way
of interpretation, scholia, or other declaration, and as well
in Latin, Greek, and Italian as in French. By this license
all other persons are forbidden, under pain of fine and con-
fiscation of their books, to print or expose for sale, either
within the kingdom of France or elsewhere, books copied
from those of Dolet, for the space of ten years from the date
of the publication of such books respectively. The docu-

probably entered the service of Gryphius soon after the latter commenced
business as a printer. He tells us in the preface prefixed to his edition
of Petrarch in 1545 that he had worked twelve years before at the edition
given by Gryphius (in 1532) of the works of Luigi Alamanni, and that
this gave him the taste for Italian literature. He was acquainted with
Latin, Greek, Italian, and Spanish. The business, which he commenced
in or about 1540, was carried on uninterruptedly by his descendants,
sometimes at Lyons, sometimes (for he and they were Protestants) at
Geneva, sometimes at both, until 1780, when the brothers de Tournes
disposed of their business, which, according to M. Revilliod, had for forty
years been the most considerable in Europe. The unmarried daughter
of one of these brothers lived far on in this century at Geneva.

1 The privilege is dated 6th March 1537. This would be 1538,
N.S. This is made clear by the words at the end (et de notre Regne le
vingt-quatrieme). Francis I. succeeded to the throne ist Jan. 1515. His
twenty-fourth year would thus commence 1st Jan. 1538.

xv THE PRINTER 333

ment concludes, ' Par le Roy. Monseigneur le Cardinal de
Tournon present.' It was signed by de la Chesnaye, and
sealed with the great seal in yellow wax.

Some time had still to elapse before Dolet was able to
avail himself of the privilege and to effect the necessary pre-
parations and arrangements for commencing business as a
printer. Before the end of the year 1538, however, his press
was set up, and at least two books printed at it. His old
friend Gryphius, instead of feeling any jealousy of his young
rival, gave him all the assistance which he required. A
careful examination of the books to which the name of Dolet
is attached as the printer induces us to suspect that more
than one of them was printed at the press of Gryphius, and
shows us plainly that several of the woodcut capital letters
used by the latter had been lent or given by him to Dolet,
since they are identical with those which ornament many of
the productions of the press of Gryphius. The resemblance
indeed is so precise that the letters seem to have been struck
from the same blocks. Moreover, the type generally used by
Dolet so much resembles that of Gryphius that it seems
probable that a great part of it was furnished by the eminent
printer.1

Following the custom of the day, Dolet adopted a mark
and motto, which are to be found on all or nearly all the
productions of his press. The mark and the motto are
equally allusive. The former is an axe, of the kind then
known as the doloire, held in a hand which is issuing out of a

1 Not impossibly there may have been at some time a sort of partner-
ship arrangement between them, as we know there was between Sebastian
Gryphius and Jean de Tournes when the latter commenced business on
his own account. Several books printed between 1540 and 1550 which
have the name of Gryphius on the title-page were really the impressions
of de Tournes, and the accounts between the printers dated and settled
in 1550 are still extant, and are cited by M. Revilliod in the article
before referred to.

334 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

cloud. Below is a portion of a trunk of a tree, already begun
to be severed, and about to be completely so by the axe.
It is usually surrounded by the following motto, ' Scabra et
impolita ad amussim dolo atque perpolio' It is often also
surrounded by an ornamental woodcut border.1 At the
end we usually though not invariably find the mark repeated,
but instead of the motto one of the two following sentences,
the first being taken from Cicero : Durior est spectat*
'uirtutis quam incognita conditio, and Preserve moy O
Seigneur des calumnies des hommes.

But although in commencing and carrying on business as
a bookseller Dolet retained the friendship of Sebastian
Gryphius, and derived much advantage from his experience
and assistance, his relations were very different with the
other master printers of Lyons. High as he placed the
' divine art of printing,' and those high priests of its altars
who were no less distinguished by their learning than by
their knowledge of the art and by the accuracy of their im-
pressions, he more than once expresses himself with perhaps
undue severity on the carelessness or ignorance of the
common herd of printers. In the Commentaries 2 he speaks
with much bitterness on this point : ' What great negligence
and carelessness is displayed by printers ! How often are
they blinded and rendered careless by drink, and given up to
intoxication ! How boldly, how rashly, how utterly without
reason, do they not make alterations in the text if (a thing
which seldom happens) they have any tincture of letters !
So that you scarcely find any book issue from the press with-
out innumerable faults. Yet no one can doubt that it was
made a matter of the very first importance by Aldus Manutius
that his books should be printed with the utmost accuracy.
Jodocus Badius and Joannes Frobenius (both lately deceased)

1 In some cases the words Scabra Dolo are printed on the axe.
2 I Com. Col. 266.

xv THE PRINTER 335

took equal pains that their books should be worthy of
the learned ; and the same anxiety to excel in accuracy is
displayed by Sebastian Gryphius, a German, and Robert
Estienne and Simon de Colines, both Frenchmen. What
reputation have they not acquired by their admirable
productions ! Yet even they are not able entirely to
accomplish what they wish, or to prevent the carelessness of
their ill-conditioned and drunken assistants from manifesting
itself, so that the learned do not benefit as much as might be
wished from this their most laudable care and supervision.
Wherefore (if you find any inaccuracies) you must not
despise the care and judgment of those learned men, but
must note and correct with diligence any error you may meet
with.'

It is not impossible that the first part of this passage
was aimed at individual printers at Lyons who would be
easily recognised by their contemporaries, and would not be
disposed to view with favour one who had spoken of them
with such contempt, and who without having served any
apprenticeship to their art was commencing its exercise
under the protection of a royal license which conferred upon
him unusual and exceptional privileges. But about this time
grave disputes arose between the master printers and the
journeymen, and Dolet, always on the side of the weak and
oppressed, and utterly regardless of prudence or expediency,
warmly took up the cause of the journeymen.

Of the origin of these disputes, all that we know is that
the workmen had banded themselves together to force the
masters to pay them higher wages and to afford them better
food than they had previously received, and also that they
wished to reduce the number of apprentices,1 the usual

1 ' Depuis trois ans en 93, aucuns serviteurs, compagnons imprimeurs
mal vivans, ont suborne et mutine la plupart des autres compagnons, et ce
sont bandez ensemble pour contraindre les maistres imprimeurs de leur

336 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

objects of a trades-union. There can be little doubt that on
the first point the complaint of the workmen was just.
During the preceding half-century the prices of commodities
had risen considerably — that is to say, the value of money
had fallen, owing partly if not principally to the quantity of
silver which had flowed into Europe from America. At the
same time France had increased in wealth, and among all
classes a style of living was growing up less simple and
* more opulent ' (to use the expression of the edict of
Francis I.) than had been usual. Hence the workmen
naturally complained of the old wages and the old ' nourish-
ment ' as insufficient. Nor was it only among the printers,
or even in France, that this state of things prevailed.
Everywhere and in all trades greater wages were claimed by
the workmen and opposed by the masters ; and wherever, as
in England, the latter were the law-makers, foolish Acts of
Parliament were passed attempting to ignore the change of
the times and to prevent the legitimate and inevitable increase
in (the nominal rate of) wages. But not everywhere have
the workmen shown themselves so strong, and it may be
so turbulent, as at Lyons. Then, as ever since, they have
shown a zeal for progress and liberty, if not always a zeal
according to knowledge. Only three years before this time,
when the people of Geneva had expelled the Prince Bishop
and were expecting the attack of the Duke of Savoy, five
hundred men from Lyons, mostly printers and other artisans,
and commanded by a printer, marched to their assistance.1
The disputes which commenced in 1538 lasted some

fournir plus gros gages, et nourriture plus opulente, que par la coustume
ancienne ils n'ont jamais eu ; davantage ils ne veulent point souffrir aucun
apprentis besongner audit art afin qu'eux se trouvans en petit nombre aux
ouvrages pressez et hastez, ils soient cherchez et requiz desdits maistres.'
Edict of Francis I. of 28th December 1541, Du reglement de r Imprimerie
pour la ville de Lyon. See Crapelet, Etudes sur la Typographic, p. 53.
1 Spon. Hist, de Geneve.

xv THE PRINTER 337

years. The journeymen printers were at first successful,
and obtained from the King an edict in their favour. But
they derived no benefit from it. The master printers
threatened to remove to Vienne in Dauphine. The citizens
of Lyons were alarmed at the prospect of losing what had
become the most important branch of the commerce of the
city, and in which so much capital had been invested. The
consuls were appealed to. They resolved that every effort
must be made to retain the master printers. The son of the
town clerk was sent to represent their case to the King and
to obtain a repeal of the edict, and in particular to obtain an
article reducing the day's wages to thirty-five sols. This
time the masters, backed up by the magistrates of the city,
were successful. On the 28th of December 1541, an edict
was issued for the regulation of printing in the town of
Lyons, which established in that city the same rules which
were in force in Paris. No book was thenceforth to be
printed without the royal license. The workmen were
forbidden to form unions or societies or to assemble together.
They were to receive the wages and food that had been
customary. They were not to leave unfinished the printing
of any book which they had commenced. The masters were
to be at liberty to engage any apprentices they might think
meet.1

This edict, which was issued on the petition of the
consuls, bailiffs, and inhabitants of the city, caused, as may
be supposed, a lively dissatisfaction among the workmen.
They appealed against it ; but without avail. On the I9th
of July 1542, a confirmatory edict was issued staying the
appeal and peremptorily forbidding the journeymen printers
from impugning or further appealing against the former
edict. But the disputes still continued, and after scenes of
violence and tumult a compromise was arrived at between

1 Crapelet, p. 53 ; Pericaud, Notes et Documents, p. 65.

z

338 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the two parties and embodied in a deed of accord dated the
ist of May I543-1

In these disputes Dolet took an active part, supporting,
though a master, the cause of the workmen, and of course
adding thereby to the number of his enemies most of the
master printers of Lyons. But it seems that their hostility
was not only owing to his support of the cause of their
servants. He had not been apprenticed to their craft and
was considered as an interloper, and they laughed at the idea
that one possessed of such small means should commence so
important a business and one requiring for its successful
conduct so large a capital.

Whence he obtained the necessary capital for purchasing
presses, and otherwise starting in so important a business,
has hitherto been a mystery which I am able for the first
time to explain. An Act of Association of July 10, 1542,
exists in the Archives of Lyons, from which it appears that
on that day Dolet and his wife entered into an agreement
with Helayn Dulin for extending for a further period of six
years the partnership then subsisting between them, and
which had been entered into originally on January 24, 1539.
We know neither the original terms of the partnership, nor
of a continuation of it which was effected in August 1 540,
but from the fact that the agreement of 1542 was intended
to secure to Dulin a sum of 1500 livres (500 already paid
and the remainder to be advanced in equal parts at All Saints
and Easter then next), there can be little doubt that he was
the moneyed partner, who had found the greater part of the
capital.2

1 Pericaud, p. 63.

2 I am indebted to the late M. Baudrier for a copy of this document.
It is so curious and interesting that I print it in full in the appendix as
far as it can be deciphered. It will be noticed that Dulin is careful to
guard himself against the consequences of the printing by Dolet of any
livres reprins ou defendus.

xv THE PRINTER 339

Dolet had however saved something, and with this and
the capital advanced by Dulin, and possibly some loans from
other friends, he commenced business both as printer and
bookseller — tenant bouticque de libraire, as he afterwards
expressed it.1

' Sire,' he wrote to the King during his imprisonment
after his condemnation to death in 1543, ' you will remember
how in the year 1538, after I had presented to you the two
volumes of my Commentaries on the Latin Tongue, and after
I had given you to understand that I wished (in addition to
my literary profession) to devote myself to the art of printing
and the business of a bookseller, so that I might make
myself still more useful to the common weal, you were
pleased (in order that I might not be deprived of the results
of my labour by a crowd of ignorant men) to give me ex-
clusive rights during ten years over all books which should
be either composed, emended, corrected, or duly revised by
me. Having obtained this of you, I gradually made all
needful preparations for properly executing my enterprise,
and I began to print good books both in Latin and French.
At this commencement of my undertaking the booksellers of
this city (Lyons), knowing that I had not such ample store
of this world's goods as they had, ridiculed me very much.
But I was not on this account induced to give up my plan,
and having by the assistance of my friends obtained some
addition to my capital, it came to pass that no printer or
bookseller in Lyons acquired a higher reputation for correct-
ness as a printer or was more successful in making profit as
a bookseller. Hence arose a great and mortal hatred on the
part of the members of my own trade, and in place of the

1 ' II auroit mis ensemble quelque peu d'argent avec lequel et 1'ayde
de ses amys, il despie<ja leve quelques presses d'imprimerye et soubz icelle
imprime et faict imprimer plusieurs beaulx livres tenant bouticque de
libraire.' Proces d1 Estienne Dolet, p. 7.

340 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

ridicule which they had been accustomed to use, they at the
end plotted my death.' x

But whilst he frankly admits more than once that he
sought at obtaining by his presses a certain income suited to
his condition as head of a family, he yet proposed only to
print books of real merit. * I shall strive/ he writes, ' to
increase by all the means in my power the treasures of
literature, and I have resolved as well to conciliate the sacred
manes of the ancients by the scrupulous accuracy of my
impressions of their works, as also to give my labour and
pains to contemporary writings. But whilst I shall cordially
and indeed eagerly welcome works of merit, I shall altogether
reject the wretched writings of the vile scribblers who are
the disgrace of our time.' 2

It was towards the end of the year 1538 that the work
of his press commenced, and in the six following years at
least sixty-seven different works issued from it, fifteen of
which were either original treatises or translations written by
the printer himself, while many of the others show marks of
his editorial care, and are preceded by a preface, a dedication,
or an ode, from his pen. Of these works several were re-
printed more than once by Dolet, making a total of upwards
of eighty impressions printed by him.

The first book which issued from his press was a short
treatise of thirty-eight pages entitled Cato Chri stianus : it is
a brief exposition of the Decalogue, the Creed, and the
Lord's Prayer, followed by the two odes to the Virgin which
had already appeared in the volume containing the orations.
It is dedicated to Cardinal Sadolet, and in the preface the

1 This letter forms the preface to his translation of the Tusculan
Disputations, printed at Lyons in 1543, but does not appear in the
subsequent editions.

2 Letter to Cardinal du Bellay prefixed to the book of Cottereau, De
Jure Militum, Lugd. 1539.

xv THE PRINTER 341

author says that he had been made the subject of reproaches
and calumnies for never speaking of religion in his books, a
subject which he knows to be perilous, and which he would
rather have abstained from touching. * I shall however,' he
adds, ' prove by this tract that not only my actions and the
example of my life, but also my words, attest my religious
faith.'

Among the pieces of verse which accompany this volume
is the following by Guillaume Durand, the first Principal of
the College of Lyons. Its motive is the same as that of the
volume : —

Cessate, crepantes, invidia obtrectatores,
Cessate dicere Doletum relligione
Vacuum : et, ut relligionis sit doctus doctor,
Hoc libro ab eo discite, iniqui obtrectatores :
Hoc discite libro Christiane vivere.

Dolet seems to have been especially desirous that the
book should make a favourable impression, and in writing
in the following year to Claude Cottereau he says, * Tell me,
I pray you, how my Cato Christianus has been received by
the courtiers.' l

In the same year three other volumes appeared with
Dolet's mark, and two of them with his name on the title-
page as printer, but of these three the two most important
were not in fact printed by him ; the one an edition of the
works of Clement Marot which I shall notice hereafter, the
other a small quarto of 1 84 pages containing the Latin poems
of Dolet in four books, which I agree with M. A. Firmin-
Didot in thinking was printed at the press of Gryphius, the
type and general appearance of the volume being identical with
that of the treatise De Re Navali printed in the same year.

It contains one hundred and ninety-five Carmina divided
into four books, and includes all those which had previously

1 Dedication of the Genethliacum.

342 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xv

appeared in the volume containing the orations. The first
book is dedicated to Claude Cottereau, the second to Cardinal
de Tournon, the third to Jean de Boyssone, and the fourth
(containing epitaphs only) to Sebastian Gryphius. The
volume is accompanied by commendatory poems of Salmon
Macrin, Nicolas Bourbon, Honoratus Veracius, and Gode-
froi Bering. It is of great interest, but need not here detain
us further ; all such of the poems as have any special bio-
graphical or literary value being elsewhere noticed in this
book.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GENETHLIACUM AND THE AVANT NAISSANCE

•$ ol HireiT' ijvT-rja-', fijtta 5' dfj.<j>lTro\os Kiev airy
iratS' twl KbXiry txov(r' a-ra\d<f>pova, vr}iriov atfratt,
v, d\lyKiov dffr^pi /ca\<(5.

HOMER.

N the beginning of the
year 1539 Dolet's heart
was gladdened by the
birth of a son, named
Claude after his god-
father Claude Cottereau
of Tours. The delight
which this event gave
him, his warm affection
for his wife and son, his
anxiety for the latter's
welfare, he lets us see
in several of his writ-
ings. On the birth of
this son he wrote and published a Genethliacum or birthday
ode ; and very shortly afterwards in the same year a trans-
lation of it into French appeared under the following title ;
U Avant Naissance de Claude Do/ef, filx de Estienne Dolet:
'premier ement composee en Latin -par le -pere : et maintenant par

344 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

ung sien amy traduicte en langue Francoyse. CEuvre tres
utile et necessaire a la vie commune : contenant comme
rhomme se doibt gouverner en ce monde. These are two of
the most interesting and admirable of our author's works,
full of the purest and noblest sentiments set forth in har-
monious and poetical language ; and when his son read them
in after life, they must have taught him how much he had
lost in being so early deprived of his father.

The Genethliacum is dedicated to his friend Claude Cot-
tereau, or Claude of Touraine. ' You are not ignorant,' he
writes, ' of the custom of kings. When a son is born to
them they send messengers to announce the happy event to
all parts of the world, anxious to receive congratulations
from every quarter. They invite foreign kings to the bap-
tismal ceremony, and make a more than ordinary display of
splendour and luxury. But with what pomp shall I receive
the son who has been born to me ? It must indeed be a
literary pomp, since I have no regal magnificence to bestow.
I will announce to the world the birth of my son in a short
poem composed of precepts calculated to guide the steps of
youth in general in the ways of discretion. This is the
pomp with which I wish to receive my son, it is worthy of
me, honourable to him, profitable to all. In this little work
I have briefly strung together the maxims which I have
thought to tend to a life of wisdom, rectitude, and happiness,
whether we look at it externally only, or also with reference
to the inner good of the mind. This work, which I have
composed as a relaxation of my leisure, I wish to dedicate
to you, both because you held my son in your arms at
the sacred font, and also because I think you will receive it
eagerly, as not being altogether foreign to that philosophy
to which you are so entirely devoted.'

Next comes an address to the Muses, and this is followed
by the principal poem addressed to his son, Pr<ecepta

xvi GENETHLIACUM, AVANT NAISSANCE 345

necessaria vit<e communi, in hexameters ; then an ode in
sapphics addressed to the gods, asking their blessing on
the child. Then follow four odes addressed to Dolet, two
of them by Claude Cottereau, one by Jean des Gouttes
(Guttanus), and one by Maurice Sceve ; then a poem of
Barthelemi Aneau, in seventy-four hexameters, addressed to
the boy. A short ode of Pierre Tolet concludes the volume.

Noscitur a sociis. Of Jean des Gouttes indeed, the
translator of Ariosto, we hardly know more than the name,
but the four others (and probably des Gouttes also) were
men of whose friendship Dolet might well be proud, men
who combined literary gifts with high moral worth, and the
three last-named of whom are justly considered as among the
most eminent men whom Lyons has produced. The name
of Maurice Sceve, poet, musician, painter, and architect, the
friend of Marot, the poetical tutor of Pernette du Guillet
and Louise Labe, the precursor of Ronsard, is one of those
which the Lyonese most love to dwell upon, and if the
nineteenth century is unable to thoroughly sympathise with
the admiration which the sixteenth gave to Delie, objet de -plus
haulte vertu, it will altogether approve of the prominent
place which in his great picture of Lyonese celebrities
M. Chatigny has given to Maurice Sceve.

The names of Barthelemi Aneau, the second Principal of
the College of Lyons, and Pierre Tolet, physician to the
Hotel-Dieu and afterwards Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
there, are probably less known. Yet the unhappy fate of
Aneau, a man of learning, virtue, and moderation, murdered
by a pious and orthodox mob for his heretical opinions, has
given him a niche in the Protestant martyrology ; while the
Pantagruelists will remember that Tolet was a fellow-student
of Rabelais at Montpellier, and played with him in la morale
comedie de celuy qui avoit espouse une femme mute. Charles
de Sainte Marthe, the common friend of Dolet and Tolet, has

346 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

celebrated their friendship in an ode in which he plays upon
their names : —

Nature desirant faire un couple d'amis,
De parfaicte amitie oeuvre en perfection,
En un mesme lien ensemble vous a mis,
Faisant de vos deux coeurs en un conjonction :
Mesme temps, mesme lieu, mesme habitation,
Mesmes mceurs, mesme esprit et mesme aage 1'empare ;
Un cas tant seulement 1'un de 1'autre separe :
L'un grand en medicine et 1'autre en eloquence.
Pour declarer en vous profession dispare,
Une lettre a vos noms a mis la difference.1

The poems of his five friends are full of affection and
admiration for Dolet, and of prophecies of a distinguished
future for his son, while the first of those of Claude Cot-
tereau makes a special mention of the boy's mother : —

Sed quid Matre ipsa laude omni plenius ? aut quid
Sanctius ? aut melius ? vel magis ingenuum ?

It has been a matter of some discussion who the amy was
who appears on the title of the Avant Naissance as having
translated the Genethliacum into French, and inasmuch as the
original poem was dedicated to Claude Cottereau, and as the
Avant Naissance contains both verse and prose by him, Nee
de la Rochelle attributed the translation to this firm friend of
Dolet and his family. The style is however clearly that of
Dolet himself. Several of the expressions there used appear
afterwards in the touching poem on his desolation and
consolation which he wrote when a prisoner in the conciergerie
shortly before his death, and it seems not improbable that
he attributed it to a friend for the purpose of avoiding the
charge of vanity which the translation into French of his own
poem might have given rise to. Certainly if the translator
1 La poesie franfoise, Lyon, Le Prince, 1540.

xvi GENETHLIACUM, AVANT NAISSANCE 347

was Claude Cottereau, it seems strange that he did not affix
his name to the principal poem as well as to the dixains
which follow. The preface addressed ' to the reader, full of
goodwill, and free from envy and detraction,' but displaying
most egregious vanity, if, as we believe, Dolet is the author
of it, is interesting from the notice which the author gives of
the great French poets of the day. * Reading some time
since a certain work of Estienne Dolet entitled Genethliacum
Claudii Doleti, son of the said Dolet, I have determined to
employ myself in translating it from the Latin into the French
tongue, and this not for the purpose of displaying my own
poetical powers, but in order that every one may derive
benefit from the translation of a work so full of the learning
and prudence necessary for common life. True it is that
the Latin compositions of Dolet merit a much more excellent
translator than I am. Such would be a Maurice Sceve
(short indeed in stature but great in composition), a Seigneur
de St. Ambroise l (chief of the French poets), a Heroet
(called La Maisonneufve), the happy illustrator of the good
sense of Plato, a Brodeau the elder, or the younger (each of
them a singular honour to our language), a St. Gelais
(a divine spirit in every kind of composition), a Salel (a poet
as excellent as he is little known among the vulgar), a
Clement Marot (remarkable for the sweetness of his poetry),
a Charles Fontaine (a young man of great hope), a little
Moyne de Vendosme2 (learned and eloquent contrary to the
nature and custom of monks), or any of those others by
whom France is adorned in several different places, abound-
ing more (by the grace of God) than any other kingdom in
learned men. These indeed ought to be the interpreters of

1 Jacques Colin was Abbe de St. Ambroise at Bourges.

2 Probably Pasquier Le Moyne, porter to Francis I., who published his
poem Le Couronnement de Roy Fratifoir I. (Paris, 1520) under the name
of Le Moyne sans froc. See Colonia, Hist. Lit. de Lyon, ii. p. 493.

348 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the present work. But if by my sincere affection I have
anticipated them, I would not on this account be the cause
that such noble spirits as those I have mentioned should be
prevented from the undertaking. Now I return to my first
remark, gentle reader, which is that the profit and utility
which pervade this work have induced me to translate it, and
for the like reason I hope you will take in good part my
labour and pains.'

After the translation of the three poems of Dolet come
some dixains and huictains of Claude Cottereau, preceded by
the letter to Dolet, part of which I have already quoted, and
which thus concludes : — * Having understood that the book
which you have composed on the birth of your son had been
translated into French, and that you are thinking of printing
it, I have wished to send you these compositions of mine, for
no other purpose than to show the friendship which I bear
to you ; and if the rhymesters of France do not find them to
their taste, I care nothing provided they please you. Adieu,
my friend.'

Both the Genethliacum and the Avant Naissance are
inspired with the purest and most elevated sentiments of
religion and morality, and it is impossible to believe that
they express anything but the genuine sentiments of the
author. It is with the Divine Author of all things that the
man who has been reputed an atheist begins and ends his
poem : —

Vive Deo fidens : stabilis fiducia Divum
Tristitia vitae immunem te reddet ab omni.
Relligionis amor verae fert commoda tanta.

Tu ne crede, animos una cum corpore lucis
Privari usura. In nobis coelestis origo
Est quasdam, post cassa manens, post cassa superstes
Corpora, et aeterno se commotura vigore.
Scilicet a summo rerum Genitore creati

xvi GENETHLIACUM, AVANT NAISSANCE 349

Sic sumus, ut rapida corpusque animusque necentur
Morte, nee in Coelum pateant ex Orbe receptus ?
Non ita. Sunt nobis reditus ad Regna paterna
Regna Dei : genus unde animi duxere perennes.

It is true, as Maittaire has remarked, that in all the Latin
poems there is no mention of Jesus Christ or His merits.
But we must remember, first, that in the Latin poems of
the most pious men of the age the aim was always to
imitate the ancients, and that Deus and Divi are usually
the only expressions made use of in reference to the Deity :
and next, as Nee de la Rochelle has remarked sensibly
enough, that the author had said in his letter which is at
the commencement of the work ' that the birth of his son
had furnished him with the opportunity of writing short
precepts for guiding youth in the ways of prudence ' ; and
that we must therefore not impute it to him as a crime
if he has not reduced them into the form of a theological
catechism, where he would not only have had to speak of
Jesus Christ and His merits, but to have defended the three
Persons of the Trinity.

But the translation, or rather paraphrase, is at least not
open to this objection. After a few introductory lines it
thus commences : —

En premier lieu, ta foy ce poinct tiendra,
Qu'il est ung Dieu tout puissant, et unicque
En ses effectz, : et si ce sans replicque
Tu crois par foy, et en luy ta fiance
Soit toute mise (o dieu quelle asseurance,
O quel repos) allors tu congnoistras,
Comme en tout bien, et honneur accroistras.

The conclusion is most emphatic as to the immortality
of the soul :—

La Mort est bonne, et nous prive de mal,
La Mort est bonne, et nous oste du val

350 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Calamiteux : et puis nous donne entree
Au Ciel (le Ciel des Ames est con tree) ;
Prens doncq en gre, quand d'icy partiras,
Et par la Mort droict au Ciel t'en iras.
En cest endroict il ne fault avoir foy
A ceulz disantz (et ne scavent pourquoy)
L'Ame, et le Corps tous deux mourir ensemble.
L'Ame est du Ciel, a son Pere resemble
(C'est Dieu) qui n'ha, et ne peult avoir fin :
Aussi n'ha il 1'Ame au Corps mise, affin

8u'avecq le Corps par la Mort soit mortelle.
roy (et est vray) que 1'Ame est immortelle,
Et que de Dieu a prins son origine,
Qui ne meurt poinct, et que Mort n'extermine
De 1'heritage aux biens vivantz promis,
De 1'heritage ou nous serons tous myz
Par le merite (o divine clemence)
De Jesu Christ : et en telle fiance
Meurs, quand plaira a Dieu d'icy t'ouster,
Ou aultresfois luy a pleu te bouter.1

1 If any reader has sufficient interest in the two poems to compare
them together in the reprint given by Techener in 1830, he will find not
only that the Avant Naissance is a paraphrase rather than a translation,
but that there are three passages in it — two of considerable length — which
are neither translated from nor based upon anything in the original Latin.
It has been my good fortune to find in the Bibliotheque Nationale an
interleaved copy of the Genethliacum, with several manuscript accessiones
autoris. These accessiones, of which the paper, the ink, and the hand-
writing are all of the sixteenth century, I believe to be in the autograph
of Dolet, and the volume has every internal appearance of having been
prepared by him for a new edition. (I say internal appearance, for the
binding is comparatively modern, and has been put on since the additions
were written. These latter have been clipped in the binding. The last
few letters and in one or two cases the last word of the additions are
wanting to several leaves.) The additions are three in number, and are
translations, or rather paraphrases, of the three passages in the Avant
Naissance, of which no traces are to be found in the Genethliacum.

The first addition comes in after the line

Re sine nullus eris : nostro sic vivitur aevo,

xvi GENETHLIACUM, AVANT NAISSANCE 351

and is as follows : —

Praeterea, quern urget vitio proclivis egestas
In scelus omne ruit, cusus projectus in omneis
Non tardante metu, non spe meliore vetante.
Tarn deforme malum ne te vehementius angat
Et vel nolentem ad crudelia crimina raptet
Frugi esto et moderate partis utere rebus.

This, the least important of the additions, and I think also the least
in poetical merit, is a translation of the passage in the Avant Naissance
beginning

Et d'avantage il te fault regarder.

The next addition has relation to the choice of a wife, and comes in
after the line

Felices liceat vitam sine lite molesta.

Its French equivalent will be found in two passages, the one of eight lines,
beginning

Saiche, mon filz que la beaulte de celle,

and the other of five lines, beginning

Ce bien, et heur, tous gracieux esbatz.

The addition is as follows : —

Forma peril : dos tandem etiam consumitur ingens
At remanent mores uxoris et ingenium trux.
Non te connubium assidua anxietate fatiget
Quod bene contractum laetos subolescit in usus
Et velut alta quies petitur non causa doloris
In quod sancitum est dabitur si forte jugalis
Duxeris uxorem dignam placidoque hymenaeo.

The longest and by far the most interesting of the additions comes in
after the passage in which the writer, with a good sense, rare in days when
the military calling took rank far above all others, had advised his son not
to adopt the profession of arms. Yet when he came to write his Avant
Naissance, he remembered that in case of an invasion it might become the
duty of every citizen to aid in the defence of his country, and he followed
his warnings against war with a long and vigorous passage, commencing —

Mais je veulx bien, que la cas advenant,
Qu'en ton pais il y eust guerre ouverte,
Tu craignes moins de la vie la perte,
Que par cruelz et felons ennemys,
En servitude a jamais tu sois mys.

In preparing his new edition he paraphrases the same idea in Latin. The
addition is intended to come in after the line of the Genethliacum,
Et dederit signum sociis, ut pressius instent

352 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xvi

He amends this line, and then proceeds with a new passage : —

Praetulerit notam sociis ut praescius instent
Sed tamen in patrias sedes si Barbara signa
Irrumpant animam pro libertate paratus
Fundere certa audax ; hoste succumbere pejus
Morte puta : quid enim dictu crudelius, hostem
Quam spectare serum patrios popularier agros.
Et (velut indomitam rabie exagitante Leonem)
In laribus saevire suis, incendere tecta,
Uxorem stuprare ; sinu privare parentum
Lactantem sobolem tibi rebus denique cunctis
Ablatis juga dura oppresso imponere collo.
His vitam postpone malis j servire ferarum est,
Non hominum. Prius aura tibi quam Candida desit
Libertas nee in hostes armis incide victus.

Dolet appears to have reprinted the Genethltacum in 1540, and it is
not improbable that the interleaved copy in the Bib. Nat. may be the
one used for the new edition, and the additions may have been inserted
therein. I have been unable to discover a copy of the edition of 1 540,
but it appears (No. 131) in the Catalogue d'une Collection de Litres rares
et precieux de M. La Roche la Carelle, Potier, Paris, 1859 (communicated
to me by M. Baudrier), which describes the edition as 'plus rare que
celle de 1539'; and in the Catalogue des Livres de M. de Boze, fol. 1745
(p. 113), and 8vo, 1753 (p. 174, No. 886), also in the Catalogue of the
Yemeniz sale, No. 1533. The Bib. Nat. has two copies of the edition ot
1539, but has not one of that of 1540.

CHAPTER XVII

GRAMMARIAN AND TRANSLATOR

L'idiome d'un peuple, c'est son verbe, son ame. — PHILARETE CHASLES.

ESIDES the other great
works which Dolet had
planned was one upon
the French tongue, the
rules of which, then un-
settled, he desired to
reduce to order, and to
treat with the fulness
and accuracy of which
up to that time Latin
and Greek had alone
been thought worthy.
The work was to be
entitled UOrateur Fran-

foys.1 It was in 1540 that he published three tracts, as
an instalment of this work, under the following title : La

1 It is referred to by Joachim du Bellay at the end of the first part ot
the Defense de la Langue Frartfoise, 1549. ' Je n'ignore point qu'Estienne
Dolet, homme de bon jugement en nostre vulgaire, a forme /'Orateur
Francois, que quelqu'un (peut estre) amy de la memoire de 1'auteur
et de la France, mettra de brief et fidelement en lumiere.'

2 A

354 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Maniere de bien traduire dune langue en aultre : D ' ad-
vantage, de la 'punctuation de la langue Franc oyse ; Plus
Des accents d'ycelle. The work is dedicated to one who was
not less distinguished as a writer than as a soldier and
statesman, Guillaume du Bellay-Langei. The address is as
follows : Estienne Dolet, a Monseigneur de Langei humble
salut et recongnoissance de sa liberalite envers luy.

' I am not ignorant,' he says, ' that many will be much
surprised at seeing this work proceeding from my pen,
since in time past I have professed and still profess myself
entirely devoted to the Latin tongue, but for what I now
do I give two reasons, the one that my regard for the
honour of my country is such that I wish to find every
possible means of illustrating it, and I cannot do so better
than by celebrating its language as the Greeks and Romans
have done theirs. The other reason is that I have not given
myself up to this exercise without abundant examples from
others. As to the ancients, as well Greeks as Romans, they
have never taken any other instrument for their eloquence
than their mother tongue. Of the Greeks there are as
witnesses, Demosthenes, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Thucy-
dides, Herodotus, and Homer, while of the Latins I produce
Cicero, Cassar, Sallust, Virgil, and Ovid, none of whom have
deserted their own language in order to obtain renown in
another, and indeed they despised any other tongue than
their own, except so far as some Romans learned Greek in
order to make themselves acquainted with the arts and
sciences treated by the Greek authors. As to the moderns,
Leonard Aretin, Sannazar, Petrarch, and Bembo among the
Italians, and in France, Bude, Bouille,1 and Master Jacques
Sylvius, have done as I am doing. It is thus not without
the example of many excellent persons that I have under-
taken this labour, which you, full as you are of good judg-

1 Charles Boville.

xvii GRAMMARIAN AND TRANSLATOR 355

ment, will receive not as anything perfect in the way of
a demonstration of our language, but only as a commence-
ment of such a work ; for I know that when it was wished
to reduce the Greek and Latin languages to a system, this
was not accomplished by one man but by many, and the
same thing will equally happen with respect to the French
language, and gradually by means of the labour of learned
men it will also be brought into the same state of perfection
that these are. For this reason I beg of you to take my
labour in good part, and if it does not completely reform
our language, I hope you will think that it is at least a
commencement of an undertaking which may ultimately
arrive at such a result that foreigners shall no longer be able
to call us barbarians.'

This letter is dated Lyons, the 3ist of May 1540, and
is followed by a dedication to the French people, in which
the author explains the plan of the work of which this is
the first instalment. ' During six years past,' he says,
' taking some hours from my principal study, which is the
Greek and Latin languages, and wishing to illustrate the
French by all means in my power, I have composed in
our language a work entitled L'Oraleur Fraftfoys, which
treats on the following subjects : Grammar, Orthography,
Accents, Pronunciation ; the origin of certain expressions ;
the manner of translating from one tongue into another :
the art of Oratory, and the art of Poetry. But since the
work is of great importance, and one which requires great
labour, knowledge, and judgment, I shall postpone the
publication of it for two or three years, so that it may not
be issued too hastily. ... If I knew that my work would
be agreeable to you, I should be more inclined to take pains
with it and to complete it. I expect however it will have
more success with posterity, than with the present age, for
the course of human affairs is such, that the excellence of

356 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the living is always envied and disparaged by detractors,
who think to increase their own reputation by despising the
labours of others. But the man of knowledge and of good
judgment will pay no attention to such people except to
laugh at them, and so doing I shall pursue my attempts,
and await the legitimate praise of posterity, and not ex-
pect that of the living, who are too full of ingratitude and
ill-will. Content yourselves for the present with this little
work, and consider the affection which I bear to my own
reputation to be a pledge that some time or other I shall
give you the present work completed.' He then proceeds
as usual with complaints of his enemies and detractors.
The tract On the manner of properly translating from one
Language to another, is marked by much ability, originality,
and soundness of judgment ; and although the five principal
rules which the author lays down have in the three centuries
which have since passed become mere commonplaces, they
were certainly not so in the sixteenth century, and even now
do not appear to be borne in mind by all or even the
majority of translators. These five rules are — First, that the
translator must perfectly understand the sense and the matter
of the author whom he translates ; Second, that the translator
must perfectly understand the language in which the author
writes, and the language in which the translation is to be
written ; Third, that the translator must not translate
literally word for word, but so that the meaning of the
author shall be expressed, due regard being paid to the
idioms of both languages. The fourth rule, and one which
is especially to be observed in translating into modern
languages (particularly from Latin or Greek into French),
is, that the translator should use as far as possible words
really belonging to the language into which he translates,
and as seldom as possible those words which are mere
modernised forms of Latin words. His fifth rule is that

xvii GRAMMARIAN AND TRANSLATOR 357

nombres oratoires, by which he means harmony and rhythm,
should be aimed at by the translator.

The other two tracts, on punctuation and accents, are
chiefly interesting in connection with the history of the
French language, and however little may be their real
value from the point of view of scientific philology, they
were certainly not unimportant contributions to French
grammar, and as such are favourably referred to in the
French Grammar of Ramus (Paris, Wechel, 1572), where
the writer places Dolet among the grammarians who had
before that time attempted the reformation of the mode
of writing French. On one point particularly (to which
M. Boulmier calls attention) Dolet first suggested a reform,
which has now after three centuries become completely
established, namely, that the plural of words ending in e long
should be formed by adding j and not z. Thus voluptes,
dignites, should be written, instead of voluptez, dignitez.
Nor on another point is his work without importance in the
history of the French tongue. He first, according to Henry
Estienne,1 introduced the expression since so commonly used
faire de bons offices, where faire de bons services had formerly
been used, and translated officium by office instead of devoir.

The volume ends with the following dixain of Charles
de Sainte Marthe : —

Au Lecteur Franfoys

Pourquoy es tu d'aultruy admirateur,
Vilipendant le tien propre langage ?
Est ce (Fran coys) que tu n'as instructeur,
Oui d'iceluy te remonstre 1'usage ?
Maintenant as en ce grand advantage,
Si vers ta langue as quelcque affection :

1 Deux Dialogues du Nouveau Langage Francois Italianize, par Henri
Estienne. Paris. Liseux, 1883, t. I. p. 105.

358 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Dolet t'y donne une introduction,
Si bonne en tout, qu'il n'y a que redire :
Car il t'enseigne fo noble invention !)
D'escrire bien, bien tourner, et bien dire.

These three tracts had the greatest immediate success of
any original * work of Dolet. A second edition was given
by the author in 1541, a third in 1542, and a fourth in
1543, and they were subsequently printed by others, the
tract upon accents and punctuation at least nine times, and
the Manure de bien tradulre at least three times before
the end of the century.

After laying down in his tract the principles on which
a good translation must be based, and the rules which
a translator ought to follow, Dolet did not shrink from in-
viting the world to judge how far he himself was qualified
for the office of a translator, and to what extent he was
able to carry his rules into practice. Two years after the
first edition of his tracts he gave to the world a translation
of the Epistol* ad Familiar es of Cicero, and a year later,
whilst an inmate of the prison of Lyons, a translation of the
first three books of the Tusculan Disputations.

' If,' he says in his preface to the E-pitres Familiaires,
' I have laboured to acquire praise and fame in the Latin
language, I wish no less to become renowned in my mother
tongue. Pursuing this aim, I do not propose to publish
only my own compositions (such as the three tracts taken
from my Orateur Fran$oys which have already appeared,
and the great dictionary of the vulgar tongue of which I
shall very soon print the commencement, and my transla-
tion of the Tusculans of Cicero which will hereafter appear),
but also all sorts of other good books, which I shall be

1 I use the word ' original ' because Dolet's translation of the Familiar
Epistles of Cicero had a still greater success, and ran through many more
editions than these tracts.

xvn GRAMMARIAN AND TRANSLATOR 359

satisfied have issued from a good workshop, whether Latin
or Italian, ancient or modern, and whether originally written
in French or translated. This present work of Cicero,
some time since translated by me, will be an evidence of
my intention. I am not ignorant that this work has already
been translated into French. But that translation was
certainly made in spite of the French and Latin Muses ;
for besides the baldness of the style, the worthy translator
has so completely corrupted the sense, that Apollo only
could discover what he intended to express, a thing
altogether contrary to the divine clearness and ease of
Cicero. I believe you will find me here a little better
accoutred. Read however, and then you shall judge more
certainly. . . .

' In the meantime I wish to warn you that the French
language is not sufficiently copious to express many things
with the same conciseness as the Latin. If then I some-
times use convenient circumlocutions, you must not be
surprised, for one cannot do otherwise. This arises from
the diversity of the two languages, for that which one
expresses in one word, the other requires several for. More-
over, he who wishes to be an eminent and accurate translator
must rightly consider the idioms and the expressions of each
language.'

The merits of Dolet's translation of the Epistol* ad
Familiares were unquestionably great ; it was no mere
adaptation of the translation of Guillaume Michel de Tours,
which is not unfairly described in Dolet's preface, and which
had been printed in 1537 and I539-1

The work of Dolet was the independent translation of
one who possessed the qualifications and followed the rules

1 Guillaume Michel dc Tours translated many Latin and Greek
authors into French, and all equally ill. His original poems were not
less wretched than his translations.

360 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

which he had himself laid down in La Maniere de bien
traduire. He perfectly understood the matter and sense
of Cicero. He perfectly understood the Latin and French
languages. He is literal where the idioms of the two
languages admit. He is careful never by too great ad-
herence to verbal accuracy to interfere with the true sense,
which is always what he aims at, and although he does not
attempt to translate such words as auspices, augur, consul,
dictator, he is careful, as far as consistent with the subject-
matter, to use words really belonging to the French language,
and not mere modernised forms of Latin words.

Dolet's book had nothing in common with those trans-
lations so popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, to which the appellation was not unhappily
given of Les Belles Infideles ; where Pomponius becomes
Monsieur de Pomponne, Trebatius Monsieur de Trebace,
and Postumia tua and Servius noster are rendered by
Madame votre femme and Monsieur votre fils, and where
the aim of the translator avowedly was to write what he
thought his author ought to have said, and would have
said, had he been a Frenchman of the seventeenth or
eighteenth century, rather than to render, as carefully as
the difference between the two languages would admit,
what he actually did say. The work of Dolet was a happy
medium between the extreme verbal literalness of some
early French translations, and the loose paraphrases which
came into vogue a century later ; and we may I think
say without hesitation, that no French translation of any
Latin author which had up to that time appeared, can
compare with it in accuracy, in scholarship, or in style.1

1 This is perhaps not saying very much for it. The style is often
confused and never elegant. Dolet certainly was not a Ciceronian in his
French compositions. Yet I am not sure whether the judgment of MM.
Haag (La France Protestante, First edition, art. Dolet) is not too severe :

xvii GRAMMARIAN AND TRANSLATOR 361

It soon became deservedly popular, and continued for
nearly a century to be the standard translation of the
Epistolte ad Familiares. It was reprinted upwards of thirty
times,1 and the translation of Simon Bernard, first printed in
1667 and several times reprinted, is rather an adaptation of
it suited to the tastes of the age, than an independent work.
Little benefit, however, in money or reputation seems to
have accrued to the unfortunate translator. The printing
of the work was completed on the 28th of April 1542 ;
only three months elapsed before Dolet was thrown into
prison, and the remainder of his life is little more than
a record of his imprisonments and trials. Few copies of
the original edition would have got into circulation, and the
remainder were no doubt confiscated, and burnt with his
other books.2 There was no one to enforce the Royal
privilege, and the twelve reprints which appeared during
the time that it existed went to enrich the printers of Paris
and Lyons.

The translation of the first three books of the Tusculan
Disputations soon followed. With much greater merit it
never attained the popularity of the Epitres Familiaires.

' Le succes qu'a obtenu cette traduction est sans doute un temoignage
incontestable de son merite, mais ne prouve rien neanmoins quant a son
elegance. La lecture en est on ne peut plus fatigante. . . . Rien de
moins familier que son style.'

1 Of these editions I have seen copies of twenty, and I have given
in the Appendix a list of thirty-four, with the authorities for their
existence. Brunei in his last edition was only able to indicate eight.
No less than fourteen editions appeared in the seven years following
the first appearance of the book. Dolet only translated the letters
written by Cicero. Francois de Belleforest in 1561 added a trans-
lation of those written to Cicero and a few complimentary letters
which Dolet had omitted. Thirteen editions include these. The
latest I have seen is that of Rouen, 1624, but Nee de la Rochelle
notices one of 1630.

2 A half-burned copy (brule dans les marges] exists in the library of
Lyons.

362 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Completed and published whilst the author was lying in
the prison of La Rouane at Lyons under sentence of death,
it bears marks, as might be expected, of haste and want of
care in its printing. It is probable that it never got into
circulation, but that the whole impression, with the exception
of very few copies, was confiscated and burnt, a fate which
the injudicious epistle to the King prefixed to it by way of
preface could hardly have failed to insure. For three
centuries the first edition of the book disappeared, and its
existence was only inferred from the editions given (with-
out the preface) by Ruelle in 1544 and Sabon in 1549. A
few years since, however, a copy of the original edition
was discovered in the public library of Dole, and the
late M. Baudrier was the fortunate possessor of another
copy.1

The epistle to the King, which has not hitherto been
noticed by any writer, is to us the most interesting part of
the book, throwing as it does much light on the cause of
Dolet's misfortunes, and on his trial.2 The translation
itself was a labour of love. Shallow and unscientific as
the philosophy of Cicero appears to us, it was certainly
accepted by Dolet, not only as true, but as a rational and
adequate theory of life and death, and the consolations in
his misfortunes which he was unable to find in Christianity
he obtained from the Tusculan Disputations. The prin-
ciple that pervades the whole of the work, i.e. that man
possesses within himself the means of securing his own
happiness, was one which specially commended itself to
Dolet, and though we may think the enthusiastic admiration
which has been given to the Tusculans — by Erasmus as

1 I have found five reprints of Dolet's translations of the Tusculans
all printed before 1550. Each contains only the first three books, showing
I think clearly that three only were printed by Dolet.

2 See ante, p. 339 and/nw/, chap. xxi. passim.

xvii GRAMMARIAN AND TRANSLATOR 363

well as by many inferior men — somewhat misplaced and
exaggerated, we can well understand their deserved popularity.
The epistle to the King is followed by the following
huictain :—

Jectez icy 1'oeil

Touts passionnes,

Et serez de dueil

Tost abandonnes.

Les biens ordonnes

Par philosophic

Icy sont donnes

A cil qui s'y fie.

Besides the translations of these two works of Cicero
and that of the Axiochus and Hipparchus (to be noticed
hereafter), Dolet has been credited with a considerable
number of others, — some perhaps rightly, but others of
which he was only the printer or editor. He was never
content to be merely a printer, but to most of the books
that issued from his press he acted as editor, adding prefaces
(epitres liminaires as his process expresses it), odes, marginal
notes, or other additions, and it is not always easy to decide
how much we owe to his pen, and of how much he was
merely the printer. Le Chevalier Chrestien, translated
from the Latin of Erasmus and printed by Dolet in 1542,
although by many authorities attributed to him, is really
a reprint of the translation of Louis de Berquin. Le vrai
moyen de bien et catholiquement se confesser, also from the
Latin of Erasmus, may possibly, though I think not prob-
ably, have been translated by Dolet. He nowhere claims it
as his, and it appears in his process as one of the livres
damnes et reprouves, contenant -propositions erronees printed
(not written) by him with epitres liminaires excitative*
a la lecture d"iceux. His edition of L? Interne lie Conso-
lation (a translation of the De Imitatione Christt] has been

364 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xvn

shown by Barbier (who had seen an imperfect copy) to be
only a reprint of the old translation. The French trans-
lation of the paraphrase by Campensis of the Psalms of
David, which Dolet printed in 1542, is attributed to him
by Du Verdier and Boulmier, but it is clear that neither
of them ever saw a copy of the work. Yet after the doubt
expressed by Nee de la Rochelle, M. Boulmier might have
hesitated before stating that it was imprime et tradu.it far
Dolet. The book is not so rare but that a copy might have
been found, and a reference to the preface would have shown
that the translation was by another hand. Du Verdier
no doubt confounded it with a translation of the Psalms
into French printed by Dolet, together with the Canticles,
and a short tract of St. Athanasius, certainly translated by
him from the Latin, in the same year as the paraphrase of
Campensis. Of all these Dolet may have been the trans-
lator ; yet so far as the Psalms and Canticles are concerned
the translation clearly is not an independent work, but only
a revision of one of the former translations, and it presents
no special merits or faults entitling it to notice. The tract
of St. Athanasius on the Psalms, Dolet states that he had
translated, not from the original Greek, but from the Latin
translation of Politian.1

1 Of the translation of the Philippics of Cicero attributed by La Croix
du Maine ro Dolet no other trace exists, and it is probable that the word
Philippics is an error for Tusculans, since no mention is made of the
latter in the Bibliotkeque Fran$oisc.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE HISTORIAN

Large desires with most uncertain issues.

LONGFELLOW.

ISTORICAL studies had
at all times attracted
Dolet, and the opus
magnum to the com-
position of which he
proposed to devote some
years of his life, and
from which he hoped to
acquire an immortality
of fame, was a history
of his own times, — a
work which we cannot
but regret that the per-
secutions and imprison-
ments which occupied so large a part of the last five years of
his life prevented him from accomplishing.

The reign of Francis I., although one of the most brilliant
as well as interesting and important in French history, is
strangely deficient in contemporary historians. Philippe
de Comines had been not merely an annalist or a chronicler,

366 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

but a philosophical historian desirous of arriving at the
truth among conflicting statements, of placing his facts
with a due regard to perspective and to their relative
importance, and not only of ascertaining the facts them-
selves, but of tracing their causes, their connection, and
their consequences, and capable of drawing just conclusions
from the facts he collected. If we admit that he wrote
with a purpose, and was not always, perhaps not generally
impartial when the acts and interests of Louis XL were
concerned, we only ascribe to him faults which are shared by
some of the most eminent of the historical writers of the
nineteenth century. But his immediate successors were as
inferior to him as his predecessors had been. From the
point where his memoirs end (1498) to 1546 where de Thou
commences the history of his own time, France is again
reduced to chroniclers and annalists. Paul Emile, Beaucaire
de Peguillon, and Arnoul Le Ferron, many as are their
merits and great as is the historical value of their works, are
as inferior to Comines in all those points which distinguish
a historian from a chronicler, as they are to his prede-
cessors Froissart and Monstrelet in picturesqueness of
style and interest of narrative, while the two du Bellays,
far superior to their Latin contemporaries both in style
and matter, confine themselves almost entirely to the
events in which they respectively took^ part. That Dolet
would not have been inferior to Paul Emile or to Arnoul
Le Ferron, the fragment or sketch which we have of his
history of Francis I. lets us see plainly ; but the lofty
conception which he had formed of the office and duty of
the historian, and of the studies, the labours, the prepara-
tion which were needed for it, joined with his judicious
criticism on the method of writing history then in vogue,
lead us to believe that had life and leisure been afforded
him he would have left us a narrative of the reign of

xvin THE HISTORIAN 367

Francis I. which would at least have placed him in the
foremost ranks of those who wrote history in France
between Philippe de Comines and Jacques Auguste de
Thou.

In the letter to Bude prefixed to the first volume of
his Commentaries^ and in the dedication of the volume to
Francis L, Dolet had spoken of his intention, when the
Commentaries were completed, of devoting himself to com-
posing the history of his own time, and had asked for the
King's and the great scholar's approval of his design.
Two years later his plan was more matured, and in the
dedication and preface to the second volume he explains
it more at length.

' Do you wish to know,' he writes to Bude, ' what literary
works I am intending in future to undertake ? For some
years to come I shall devote myself, in the first place, to
producing in as perfect a manner as possible my long-
promised third volume. Then the great object of my
studies will be the history of our own times. But this
work I shall scarcely be able to accomplish without the
assistance of the King. It will be necessary for me to
travel over the whole of Italy. I must visit Flanders,
Artois, Hainault, Bigorre, Beam, Gascony, Armagnac,
Guyenne, in order that I may carefully examine the sites
of those places which I shall have to describe when I
narrate the battles fought there. In this manner the ac-
curacy of my descriptions will be greatly promoted. But
how is the cost of these journeys to be defrayed, where
could I look to obtain it but from the King ? From him
also must be obtained the state papers, the instructions
sent to ambassadors, and the despatches from them, which
will be needed in order that I may learn the causes and
reasons of the plans which have been made, of the discords
which have arisen, of the wars which have been undertaken,

368 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

of the battles which have been fought, of the treaties which
have followed the wars, and of the matrimonial alliances
which have been contracted. If these documents are, as
I hope they will be, furnished to me in abundance, and
if an opportunity is afforded me of enjoying the leisure
necessary for such a work, I shall do all that is possible to
be done by one who is extremely diligent, and a most
fervent lover of his country ; but if by any chance those
things which I have a right to hope for are denied me, and
I find my design neglected, I shall lay aside my plan of
writing history, and shall look out for other subjects for
literary labour.'

In this volume of the Commentaries he twice refers to his
intended Histories, to which he tells us, as soon as he has
completed and published his third volume, he shall devote
the rest of his life, and if, when his great task, the history
of his own time, is completed, life and leisure are still left to
him, he proposes to write the lives of the Kings of France,
after the manner of Suetonius.1

A history such as he contemplated required abundant
leisure, abundant pecuniary means, and abundant materials,
such as could only be obtained by the assistance of the
King and his ministers. None of these were afforded him,
and he seems before long to have come to the conclusion
that he must lay aside all hope of accomplishing anything
like the complete and exhaustive work, which he so care-
fully sketches in his letter to Bude. But he determined on
a less ambitious work, and one better suited to his scanty
leisure and materials. In 1539 he wrote and printed a
history of the reign of Francis I. in Latin verse, under the
title of Francisci Valesii Gallorum Regis Fata. It has
two dedications, one to the King, the other to Pierre
Duchatel now advanced to the bishopric of Tulle. To

1 2 Com. 1385.

xvin THE HISTORIAN 369

judge from the commendatory verses of Pierre Tolet, Jean
Raynier, Guillaume Durand, Barthelemi Aneau, Antoine
du Moulin, and Jacques Bertrandi, all men of considerable
literary reputation and ability, it possesses very high merit.
It deals almost entirely with military affairs, and is certainly
a not unsuccessful imitation of Lucan, or of the poem
of Petronius on the civil wars of Rome. A few months
later the author translated or rather paraphrased it into
French prose, and printed his translation under the title
of Les Gestes de Francoys de Valois Roy de France.
The style of the translation, like that of the original, is too
rhetorical. The work is composed according to the ap-
proved classical models, the general's make speeches after
the manner of Livy or Polybius ; yet the book is a useful
compendium of the wars of Francis I., and I have found it
generally accurate as to facts, though too full of flattery of
Francis. It can hardly, however, be accepted as an adequate
specimen of its author's power of writing history in more
favourable circumstances.1

But the books were successful and popular. The prose
history was reprinted by the author in 1 543, with a con-
tinuation bringing it down to that year, and it was at least
twice reprinted by others in the next five years.

1 M. Boulmier, whom I willingly recognise as a more competent
judge than I am of such a matter, takes a much more favourable view of
the style of Les Gestes de Francoys de Valois than I am able to do. The
reader who desires to judge for himself will find Dolet's account of the
battle of Marignan extracted by M. Boulmier (pp. 183-191), who
remarks upon it, ' II y a, si je ne me trompe, du mouvement, du drame, et
de la vie, dans ce vaste tableau d'histoire nationale, dans ce recit a la Tite-
Live d'une bataille epique a laquelle nous pouvons encore songer avec
orgueil. . . . Malgre des latinismes un peu trop frequents, la prose
franchise de notre Estienne me parait presque toujours a la hauteur du
noble sujet qu'elle retrace.'

2 B

CHAPTER XIX

MAROT AND RABELAIS

Et de ses vers qui ont dompte la mort
Les sceurs luy ont sepulture bastie
Jusques au ciel. Ainsi la mort n'y mord.

JOACHIM DU BELLAV.

L'ecrivain le plus original et le plus eminent de la renaissance, la
veritable incarnation de 1'epoque. — GUIZOT.

F the French men of letters
of the first half of the
sixteenth century, only
two can be said really to
live. Bude, whose friend-
ship Dolet thought would
confer an immortality
upon him, and whose
works he prophesied
would never cease to
be the delight of the
studious, is a name and
nothing more ; his works
are relegated to the class
of * old books,' and rarely (except his treatise De asse et
partibus ejus) find a place on the shelves of collectors, or in
the catalogues of the booksellers. Salmon Macrin, the Gallic

CHAP, xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 371

Horace, is no longer either reprinted or read, but more
fortunate than his more learned contemporary, he is at least
purchased, occasionally quoted, and placed respectfully on
the shelves of the French bibliophile. Mellin de St. Gelais,
together with other poets who wrote in French, after a long
interval of repose has been galvanised into the appearance of
life in reprints, of which the paper, the printing, and the
prefaces, leave nothing to be desired. Bonaventure Des
Periers, though caviare to the multitude, has never wanted
select though fit readers. But Marot and Rabelais alone of
the writers of the period have never lost the popularity
which they acquired in their own time. There has never
been a period in which they were not both read and reprinted.
Their reputation has steadily risen, not only with the
multitude, but with men of thought and culture ; editions of,
and commentaries upon them are constantly issuing from the
press ; and though we shall be far from the ridiculous error
of placing the bright, natural, and graceful father of modern
French poetry upon the same lofty pedestal as the wise, the
witty, and the learned author of Pantagruel, we may yet
couple them together as the only two French authors of the
first half of the sixteenth century whose books are still in
every one's hands, and who have certainly many more readers
and admirers, now that three centuries have passed away,
than they had in their own days.

It is his connection with these two eminent writers, more
than anything except his death, that has preserved the
memory of Etienne Dolet from absolute oblivion, and has
made his name at least, familiar to every educated French-
man. Of both he was at one time the intimate friend ; of
the works of both he was the printer. Marot addressed to
his * cher amy Dolet ' at least two odes, besides the prefatory
letter to the first complete edition of his works. None of
the biographers of Rabelais have omitted to mention his

372 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

sending to Dolet from Rome the receipt for the mysterious
Garum, nor the ode in which Dolet celebrates the anatomical
skill of the great physician.

For some years the three men were united by a close
friendship, a friendship based on community of tastes and
community of sentiments. All agreed in an ardent love of
letters and of intellectual progress, in hatred of superstition
and bigotry ; and though Marot, by the fact that his
translation of the Psalms into metre has been ever since sung
in the temples of the Huguenots, has a place among the
apostles of the French Protestant Church, yet there is reason
to think that theological dogma was as uninteresting to him
as to his two friends, that his sympathy with Protestantism
was with its negative side only, and that to him, as to the
great master, the l grand peut etre' was a problem wholly
unsolvable, and of but slender interest.1

It is probable that Dolet's acquaintance with both these
eminent men commenced in the latter part of 1534. On
his arrival at Lyons, Rabelais, besides holding the office of
Physician to the Great Hospital, was practising there as a
doctor of medicine, with a high reputation for both learning
and skill, but certainly was not generally identified with
Alcofribas Nasier, with whom indeed only the vulgar had
then made acquaintance. And it is not improbable that it
was under his care that Dolet placed himself, or would be
placed by Gryphius, for treatment, immediately on his arrival
when sick with fever. Marot he would find in Paris when
he arrived in the following October. But we cannot be
certain whether he then made the poet's acquaintance, or
whether this was not until the end of 1536, when Marot,

1 See on the opinions of Marot and Rabelais, Sir Walter Besant's
interesting monograph on Rabelais, and — clearly by the same hand — an
article in the British Quarterly Review for July 1873 (vol. 58), on the
causes of the failure of the French Reformation.

xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 373

after nearly two years' exile on account of his heretical
opinions, was allowed to return to France, and spent several
months at Lyons. Immediately afterwards we find them on
terms of great intimacy, and Dolet addressed to Rabelais an
ode, De mutua inter se et Clementem Marotum amicitia^ and
one to Marot congratulating him on his return from exile,
which thus begins : —

Jam satis afflixit variis te casibus atrox

Fortuna : sperare incipe
Collige jamque animum : Coelum non semper inumbrant

Nubes : redit tandem prior
Lux. Nee ponto alto semper nox incubat aspris

Horrenda tempestatibus.

Marot and Rabelais were each of the party which
assembled to congratulate Dolet on receiving the royal pardon
for the slaughter of Compaing, and to take leave of him on
his departure for Lyons ; and in the same year the former
addressed to him an ' estrenne ' commencing,

Apres avoir estren£ Damoyselles,
Amy Dolet, je te veulx estrener.

In the second volume of the Commentaries * Dolet thus
speaks of the poet : — * In our days, among those who write
in the French tongue, the first place is due to Clement
Marot, a poet superior to all others, and most happy in his
poetic vein. The only thing to be desired for him is that he
might find fortune more propitious than heretofore, for
hitherto she has incessantly heaped upon one who is dis-
tinguished by all excellence, every possible injury and outrage,
and has harassed him with the most bitter persecution.'
Marot celebrated the publication of the Commentaries by the
following ode : —

1 Col. 403.

374 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Le noble esprit de Cicero Remain,

Voyant ca-bas maint cerveau foible et tendre

Trop maigrement avoir mys plume en main

Pour de ses dictz la force faire entendre,

Laissa le ciel, en terre se vint rendre,

Au corps entra de Dolet, tellement

Que luy sans autre a nous se fait comprendre

Et n'a change que de nom seulement.

In 1538 Marot prepared for the press a complete edition
of his poems, comprising not only the Adolescence Clementine
(which he had first published in 1532), but also La suite de
r adolescence^ Les epigrammes, and Le Premier Livre de la
Metamorphose d'Ovide. The printing and publication of
this edition he entrusted to Dolet, and addressed to him the
well-known letter which served as a preface, and which bears
date the last day of July 1538 : —

' The injury which has been done me, dear friend Dolet,
by those who have already printed my works is so great and
so outrageous, that it has both touched my reputation and
endangered my person. For by a greedy desire of selling
at a greater price and more rapidly that which was already
selling well enough, they have added to my works several
others which are not mine ; some of which are composed in
a frigid and inelegant manner (so throwing upon me another's
unskilfulness), and others are full of scandal and sedition.
... I have therefore omitted from this edition not only
the bad, but the good things which have been ascribed to
me, but with the composition of which I had nothing to do,
contenting myself with the genuine offspring of my own
muse. . . . And after having revised both the old and the
new, changed for the better the order of the book, and
corrected a thousand trifling errors of the press, I have de-
termined to send the whole to you, in order that under
colour of the ample privilege, which on account of your

xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 375

great merits has been granted you by the King, you may,
by reason of our friendship, reprint it not only as correctly
as I send it to you, but still more so, which it will be easy
for you to do, if only you give to it a diligence equal to
your knowledge.'

In pursuance of his friend's request, Dolet superintended
this complete edition of Marot's works through the press.
It appeared before the end of 1538. The tide-page is in-
scribed A Lyon, au Logis de Monsieur Dolet, and the same
form is repeated on the false titles to the different divisions
of the work, to each of which is prefixed a Latin ode by
Dolet.1

1 An almost identical edition appeared under the same date but with
the name of Sebastian Gryphius on the title-page as the printer. The
type is the same, and very nearly all the pages are identical. A few
however, notably those where Dolet is referred to, are different. I was
formerly disposed to think that Marot had entrusted the edition to Dolet,
who not having yet set up his press, arranged with Gryphius for a joint
edition, putting on part of the copies his own name, on the rest that of
Gryphius. But I now incline to think that the following note of M.
Georges Guiffrey in the fragment which he has published of a magnificent
edition of the works of Marot (Paris, Jules Claye, vol. ii. p. 7), affords a
more probable explanation. 'Au retour de son exil vers la fin de 1536,
Marot, en passant par Lyon, cut 1'occasion de se Her avec Gryphius. II
est vraisemblable que ce fut alors qu'il forma le projet de publier une
edition plus correcte de ses oeuvres, alterees, pendant son absence, par des
reimpressions successives livrees au public sans son aveu. Ce fut pour
cette edition que Marot composa la preface adressee a ceulx qui par cy
devant oat imprime ses ceuvres, et le livre parut chez Gryphius sans mention
de date. Vers le meme temps, Dolet, ayant obtenu de Fra^ois I" un
privilege d'imprimeur, vint 1'exploiter a Lyon. Marot retira son edition
de chez Gryphius pour la mettre chez son ami. Tel est le motif qui le
determina a changer le feuillet de litre et a y placer le nom de Dolet,
avec la date 1538 ; il lui offrit meme la dedicace de son livre, au moyen
d'un leger changement de mots. Enfin dans les Epigrammes (folios net
21 verso) trois pieces, dont deux avec cette suscription a Benest et a
Germain Colin sont remplacees par des vers adresses a Dolet.' The types,
which are small Gothic letters, are identical in the two editions.

376 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

In 1542 Dolet, with the sanction of Marot, again re-
printed his works, with the addition of the Enfer and other
poems, and with a preface in prose addressed by Dolet to
their common friend Lyon Jamet. He also gave a separate
edition of the Enfer. In 1 543 a third edition, still with the
approval of Marot, issued from Dolet' s press, with the
addition of twenty psalms, which appeared for the first time.
The edition of 1542, as well as that of 1543, contains the
epistle to Dolet, and the latter's preface, but not his Latin
odes.

But if we are to trust to the subsequent editors of Marot,
the short interval which elapsed between the publication of
the edition of 1543 and the death of Marot in 1544 saw the
friendship which had so long subsisted between the two men
changed, at least on the part of Marot, to bitter enmity.
Shortly after the death of Marot several epigrams made by
him in imitation of Martial were published which had not
appeared during his life. Among them is an imitation of
the epigram In detractor em (lib. v. lx.), commencing,

Adlatres licet usque nos, et usque
Et gannitibus improbis lacessas.

It is addressed A Estienne Dolet, and is as follows : —

Tant que vouldras, jecte feu et fumee
Mesdy de moy a tort et a travers
Si n'auras tu jamais la renommee
Que de longtemps tu cherches par mes vers,
Et non obstant tes gros tomes divers,
Sans bruict mourras, cela est arreste :
Car quel besoing est-il, homme pervers,
Que Ion te sache avoir jamais este ? l

1 I regret to be unable to state at what date or in what edition this
epigram first appeared, but I think it probable that it was in the Epi-
grammes de Clement Marot faictz a limitation de Martial ; plus, quelques
aultres ceuvres dudict Marot, non encores imprimees par ey-devant, Poictiers,

xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 377

Of the causes of the quarrel, if quarrel there was, we
know nothing. Certain it is that the last authorised edition
of the works of Marot given by the poet in his lifetime, a
very few months before his death,1 does not contain this ode,
but does contain the two before quoted ; and this seems to
show that the poet's friendly feelings towards Dolet were
still unchanged, even though he had not entrusted him,
probably for the sufficient reason that he was in prison, with
the publication of this edition.

Marot died in September 1 544, and no reference to him
is found in any subsequent work of Dolet. The epigram
which I have quoted gives all the information we have of
the matter of the quarrel. Certainly if it was directed
against Dolet, as Lenglet du Fresnoy has remarked, Marot
did not show himself a true prophet when he wrote * sans
bruict mourras* 2

Jeh. et Enguilbert de Marnef freres, 1547. No copy of this edition
appears to be in the Bibliotheque Nationale, nor have I anywhere been
able to see a copy. The earliest edition personally known to me in
which this epigram appears is that of Rouille, Lyon, 1554, which also
omits the two complimentary odes to Dolet above quoted. It is certain
that this ode did not appear in any edition given by Marot in his lifetime.

1 That of 1 544, a renseigne du Rocker.

2 The account given above contains really all that is known in refer-
ence to the alleged difference between Marot and Dolet, upon which
editors and biographers of the poet have enlarged at length, and have
indulged in conjectures altogether wanting in the smallest basis of fact,
but injuriously reflecting on the unfortunate Dolet. Among the epigrams
in imitation of Martial, printed for the first time after Marot's death, is
the following : —

Centre Pinique, a Antoine du Moulin
Mascomtais, et Claude Gallon d.

Fuyez, fuyez (ce conseil je vous donne)
Fuyez le fol qui a tout mal s'adonne,
Et dont la mere en mal jour fut enceinte ;
Fuyez 1'infame inhumaine personne
De qui le nom si mal cimbale et sonne
Qu'abhorre est de toute oreille sain etc 5
Fuyez celuy qui sans honte ne crainte

378 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Similarly unfortunate was the end of Dolet's friendship
with Rabelais, though in this case we are not so entirely in
the dark as to the causes of the rupture. Their intimacy
was certainly at one time close. It was in all probability
during Dolet's visit to Lyons in the autumn of 1534 that
the dissection of the body of a man who had been hanged
was performed by Rabelais at the great hospital in the
presence of the students, the first occasion of the kind with
which we are acquainted, being ten years before Vesalius
made his anatomical demonstrations before the students
at Padua. This dissection, at which it is not improbable
Dolet was present, certainly caused a great sensation at

Conte tout haut son vice hors d'usance,
Et en fait gloire et y prencl sa plaisance ;
Qui s'aymera ne le frequente done.
, O malheurcux de perverse naissance,

Bien heureux est qui fuit ta cognoissance,
Et plus heureux qui ne te cogneut one !

Half a century later an editor of Marot, Francois Miziere, fancying,
apparently without any grounds except the character of the epigram, that
Piniquc referred to Dolet, inserted in the edition edited by him, printed at
Niort by Thomas Portau in 1596, the following note after the ode
beginning Le noble esprit de Cicero Remain : — * Entre ces epigrammes a
1'imitation de Martial, y'en a un au dit Dolet, qui se commence " Tant
que vouldras, jecte feu et fumee " et semble que le suivant soit encores
centre lui ; ' and then follows the above-cited ode Centre rinique.

A hundred and thirty-six years afterwards (in 1731) Lenglet du
Fresnoy repeated as his own the note of Miziere, and subsequent editors
have given the epigram, on the authority apparently of du Fresnoy, as
being directed against Dolet without a shadow of ground except the
semble of Fran£ois Miziere ; and M. Boulmier, generally so anxious to
defend his hero, has not noticed upon what slight foundation the applica-
tion of this epigram to Dolet rests, but has given it without hesitation as
relating to his quarrel with Marot. But Mercier de St. Leger has gone
yet further in a manuscript note (to which my attention was called by
the kindness of M. Baudrier) to his copy of La Croix du Maine, now in
the BibliothSque Nationale, where after citing the note of Miziere he
continues, * 1'editeur s'est contente de dire et semble que le suivant (Epi-
gramme) soit encore centre lui. L'editeur n'a ose rien affirmer, d'autant

xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 379

Lyons, and Dolet wrote a long Latin ode to celebrate the
event. The corpse is supposed thus to speak : —

Spectaculo lato expositus
Secor ; medicus doctissimus planum facit
Quam pulchre, et affabre, ordineque
rabricata corpus est hominis rerum Parens.
Sectum frequens circumspicit
Corona miraturque molem corporis
Tanto artificio conditi.

Early in 1534 Cardinal Jean du Bellay — afterwards to
become the chief patron and protector of Rabelais — had
passed through Lyons on his way to Rome as ambassador
from Francis to Clement VII. He persuaded Rabelais
to accompany him as secretary, and it would no doubt be
to the secretary that Dolet was afterwards indebted for an
introduction to the Cardinal, to whom he dedicated his
edition of the work of his friend Claude Cottereau, De jure
ef privileges militum. The Cardinal was just such a patron
as Rabelais needed. ' Un jeune diable,' says M. Michelet *

plus que Marot s'etoit montre dans differentes pieces 1'ami de Dolet.
Quoi qu'il en soil, si cet inique est reellement Dolet il faut croire qu'il
passoit pour Pederaste ou Nonconformiste ; car Marot dit a ses amis de
fuir "celui qui, sans honte ni crainte conte tout haut son vice hors
d'usance." ' I think it right to cite the note of Mercier lest I should lay
myself open to the charge of omitting anything which I know to the dis-
paragement of Dolet, but it is not necessary to do more in defending him
from the insinuation of the Abbe de St. Leger than to say that I find no
ground for the charge, and no confirmation of it in any of the numerous
attacks of which Dolet was the object. If Marot did intend Dolet by
rinique, and did intend the epigram to bear the meaning attributed to it
by Mercier, he himself must only have discovered the vices of his
quondam friend after he had been in close intimacy with him for more
than seven years, and within a very few months or even weeks of his own
death. But I confess I think it needless to go into? a charge which rests
simply on the semble of Miziere, and the inference from that to the semble
of Mercier de St. Leger.

1 Hist, de France, viii. 383.

38o ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

(in 1534 however he was forty-two years of age), * plein
d'esprit, penetrant, flatteur, amusant . . . ce bon et pieux
personnage le parrain de Gargantua. . . . Eveque de Paris,
Cardinal, il ne fut pas loin, dit-on, d'etre Pape. La chose
cut ete piquante. Rabelais etait son evangile.'

It was probably in 1537, on his return from his second
journey to Rome with his patron, that Rabelais sent to
Dolet the receipt for the mysterious Garum of the ancients,
a species of sauce, of which the receipt had been up to that
time lost. It was accompanied by a short poem in elegiacs,
one of the very few pieces of Latin verse which we have of
Rabelais. It begins, —

Quod medici quondam tanti fecere priores
Ignotum nostris, en tibi mitto Garum.

Dolet's reply was as follows : —

Tuo ingenio, Rabelaese, Garum salsamentum
jEtate ab antiqua reductum est. Jam nostris,
Marote, versibus celebretur animose,
Quando palatum utrique nostrum tarn belle
Irritat, et stomachum recreat tarn odorato
Sapore. Res tarn grata non est reticenda.

Dolet's volume of poems printed in 1538 contains three
poems in honour of Rabelais, two of them being those I
have already quoted.

The second book of ' Rabelais ' (the first of Pantagruel)
had first seen the light at the end of 1532 ; it was reprinted
at least twelve times in the ten following years. Several of
the reprints were without the sanction of the author, who
was at first not known. The first book (Gargantua)^ as we
now have it, was first printed in 1535, and several successive
reprints appeared in the few following years. The books
gave, as was to be expected, dire offence to the Sorbonne,
and when the name of the author began to be bruited

xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 381

about, there can be little doubt that a prosecution for
heresy was imminent, and that Rabelais felt in danger of
his life. Cardinal du Bellay was entirely unable to stop,
or even to moderate, the persecutions which the affair of the
placards had caused to rage with increased rigour, and as
Rabelais had no desire to be ' burned alive like a red-
herring, being by nature dry enough already,' l he determined
to conduct himself in all respects as a good Catholic should
do ; he obtained the Pope's permission to enter as a canon
the abbey of St. Maur des Fosses, and resolved as far
as possible to remove the personal grounds of complaint
of the Sorbonne by printing a revised edition of his work,
omitting the passages where the doctors of that venerable
body were held up to ridicule, and omitting or modifying
other passages which savoured of heresy. As the book had
hitherto been published anonymously, it was open to him
to say that the previous editions had been unauthorised
and garbled.

Accordingly in 1542 an edition was printed at the press
of Francois Juste at Lyons, carefully revised by the author,
and with important modifications and omissions. In the
fifth chapter of the earlier editions of Gargantua^ Grand-
gosier repeats to Gargamelle, as she is beginning her illness,
a passage from the sixteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel,
to which the good queen replies, ' vous dictes bien et j'aime
beaucoup mieux ouir tels propos de 1'evangile et mieux
m'en trouve que de ouir la vie de sainte Marguarite ou
quelque autre capharderie.' Such a passage would alone
have been ample proof of the heresy of the writer. But not
content with heresy, Rabelais scoffed in numerous passages
at the Sorbonne and its doctors. In the same chapter he
has a passage ending with these words, ' Les Sorbonistes
disent que foy est argument des choses de nulle apparence.'

1 Rabelais, book ii. chap. v.

382 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

In the revised edition of 1542 both these passages are
omitted, and wherever in the earlier editions the words
Sorbonne or Sorbonistes, or theologien^ or similar words
occurred, they were either wholly omitted, or other ex-
pressions with an entirely different and perfectly inoffensive
signification substituted. Thus in chapter vii. (vi.) in place
of declare par Sorbonne scandaleuse we have simply declare
scandaleuse^ and in chapter xiii. (xii.) instead of Sorbonne^
Guaye Science. In chapter xvii. (xvi.) in place of boire
theologalement, he substitutes boire rustement. In other
places Sophiste is substituted for Sorboniste^ and also for
theologien^ and docteur sophiste for docteur en theologie, while
the still more offensive word Sorbonagres has been suppressed
altogether.

These sacrifices to prudence (continued in every subse-
quent edition printed during the life of the author, except
the one I am about to refer to, and except a surreptitious
edition printed at Valence in 1 547) appear to have satisfied
the Sorbonne, and probably, together with the influence of
Jean du Bellay, preserved the author from persecution, and
possibly from the stake. It was then with feelings of
excessive but justifiable irritation that immediately afterwards,
in the same year (1542), Rabelais found issuing from the
press of Dolet, without his sanction or knowledge, an edition
purporting to be revised and augmented by the author him-
self, in which all the obnoxious passages and expressions
reappeared. Instead of following the edition which had just
been published, Dolet had used for the Gargantua the
edition of 1537, and for the Pantagruel that of 1538, both
of which are verbally reproduced without any of the altera-
tions, omissions, or additions which Rabelais had since made.
Dolet's edition is well printed in Roman letters, and
illustrated with cleverly designed and executed woodcuts.
But nothing can justify his statement on the title-page that

xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 383

his edition was ' revue et de beaucoup augmentee -par rautheur
mesme.' We can readily pardon the indignation of Rabelais
at the appearance of this reprint. He was at the moment
superintending a further edition through the press, and to
it, when printed shortly afterwards, was prefixed the follow-
ing bitter attack upon Dolet, purporting to be by the
printer, but in which we cannot fail to recognise the hand
of Rabelais himself: —

' The printer to the reader wishes health.

* In order that you may not take false money for true,
dear reader, and the painted form for the simple and natural,
and the bastard and adulterine edition of the present work
for the legitimate and natural, take notice that a copy of this
book while still in the press has from avaricious motives
been hastily printed by one who is a plagiarist, and inclined
to all evil, and in order to anticipate my labours, and the
small profits which I have hoped for ; he being influenced
not only by avaricious greed, but also and especially, by
envious desire for the loss and injury of another. Such a
monster as he, is born for the trouble and injury of worthy
people. Nevertheless to warn you of the sign and mark
which serves to distinguish the false from the good and true,
know that the last sheets of this plagiaristic work do not
correspond with those of the true original which the author
has furnished to me. These latter, though he has taken
much pains, he has not been able to obtain for his fraudulent
piracy. This plagiarist is not only injurious to me, but also
to several others. He is a Monsieur (so he boastfully styles
himself), but prudent men who know him, know what sort
of a character he is.

* His works are nothing but a collection of extracts taken
from other men's books, and heaped together in a confused
mass, whereas they had been well arranged in the books

384 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

whence he has taken them. Thus, the spirit of Villanovanus
is indignant at being deprived of the fruit of his labours ;
Nizolius is offended at him ; Calepin finds himself robbed ;
Robert Estienne recognises the choicest passages of his
Thesaurus shamefully purloined, and still worse, disguised
and appropriated. Those compositions which have brought
him honour as a scornful mockery, never proceeded from his
mind, yet he dares to enrich and adorn them with brave and
magnificent title-pages, so that the portal far surpasses the
edifice, ennobled as it is by the Royal privilege ; whilst he
abuses both King and people, giving them to understand
that the works of good authors such as Marot and Rabelais
are in his way. Is it not well known that in certain books
on surgery and medicine, as well as on other subjects, he has
taken money from printers and booksellers to affix to books
printed by them the royal privilege ? Is not this an abuse
worthy of punishment ? But what is more, who has ever
seen this privilege ? To whom has he ever produced it ?
Certainly he has never ventured to show it any one who has
asked to see it. A likely thing it is (nay is it even possible ?)
that the King should have granted him such a privilege,
forbidding any one but himself from either selling or printing
the books which he should write. But what is the reason he
does this ? The reason is, because men of learning know
well that he has no genius, that he cannot put forth anything
of his own which would do him honour. Truly a great and
noble enterprise, and worthy of one inspired by the spirit of
Cicero, to have published in a handsome volume the little
book which the regular dealers [disdain to sell and] leave
to the pedlars who make their livelihood of such things.1

1 I have been unable to find any trace of such a book as is here
referred to. The following is the original sentence, the meaning of
which is not very clear, and which I may not have accurately rendered :
— ' O la grande et haulte entreprinse : et digne de tel homme inspire de

xix MAROT AND RABELAIS 385

Rubbish by the dozen ! Certainly he ought to be well
remunerated for it. Such important works well deserve that
bishops and prelates should by such a workman be choused
of their money. After the mountains have been in labour,
a little rat alone has been brought forth. The world cannot
help laughing at him, and saying in ridicule, How can such
a man, who calls himself so learned and so perfect a
Ciceronian, mix himself up with the production of these
fooleries in French ? Why does he not devote himself to
his works of merit without publishing these impertinences ?
grumbling, joking, protesting (this is his ordinary language),
jackanaping, abusing, and using figures of speech which are
not Ciceronian, but deserving of being delivered to the
mustard dealers to publish them through the city. Such is
this Monsieur. Adieu, reader ; read and judge.'

'This singular epistle,' remarks M. J. C. Brunet, who
first called attention to it, ' is completely in the manner of
Rabelais, especially towards the end, and if he has not written
it entirely, he has probably assisted in its composition. For
we cannot suppose the printer would have allowed himself to
publish this preface without the permission of the author.' l

We must, however, exonerate Dolet from one of the
charges made against him in this epistle. He had certainly
not abstracted the proof-sheets of the edition then in the

lesperit de Ciceron, avoir redige en beau volume le livret et gaigne pain
des petits revandeurs nomme par les Bisouars. Fatras a la douzaine.'

1 J. C. Brunet, Recherches sur les editions originates de Rabelais (Paris,
1852), p. 89, where the reader will find the epistle given at length. M.
Heulhard (Rabelais: ses voyages en Italic ; son exil a Metz, p. 192), does not
see the hand of Rabelais in this preface, which he thinks is written by
the printer in imitation of Rabelais' manner. M. Brunet thinks that
Dolet had intended to refer to Rabelais in his Maniere de bien traduire
and his Traite sur les Accents, in the latter of which he censures those
who use a ' fricassee de grec et latin' 'J'appelle fricassee une mixtion
superflue de ces deux langues : qui se faict par sottelets glorieux : et non
par gens resolus, et pleins de bon jugement.'

2 C

386 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xix

press in order to print his own. The latter was, as before
noted, an exact reprint of the editions of 1537 and 1538,
which every one equally with Dolet could procure. The
blame which he justly incurred was for printing the book
without the author's sanction, for falsely stating on the title
that it was revised and augmented by the author himself,
and for inserting in it passages which the better judgment of
Rabelais had induced him to omit.

It is quite possible that there are excuses to be made for
Dolet in this matter. It could hardly be morally (certainly
not legally) blameable to print without the author's sanction
a work which, published anonymously, had been reprinted
by a variety of other printers at their own pleasure, while
the words * revue et de beaucoup augmentee -par Fautheur
mesme1 are on the title of the edition of 1538 which Dolet
copied. It is moreover quite possible that the book did not
appear until Dolet was in prison, and that he was not really
responsible for the title-page ; and it is probable that, if he
was aware of the edition of Francois Juste, he had not
noticed the omissions or alterations which it contained, and
which he would most likely have copied had he seen.

The editions of Marot and Rabelais are those which are
most sought for of all the productions of Dolet's press.
They are all printed with great care, accuracy, and neatness,
and those of Marot had, as we have seen, the benefit of the
author's supervision. The edition of Rabelais, though
surreptitious and not free from errors of the press, yet
served as the basis of what was considered for many years
the classical edition, that edited by Le Duchat in 1711.

CHAPTER XX

FORESHADOWINGS OF THE END

Illc potens sui

Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem
Dixisse ' vixi : eras vel atra

Nube polum pater occupato,
Vel sole puro ; non tamen irritum
Quodcunque retro est, efficiet neque
Diffinget infectumque reddet
Quod fugiens semel hora vexit.'

HORACE.

O calling was more hate-
ful to the friends of
bigotry and superstition
than that of a printer.
The printer was essenti-
ally the priest of a new
cultus, that of liberty
of the soul, a cultus in
every aspect inconsistent
with, in many diametric-
ally opposed to, the
religion then called
Catholic and Christian.
The reformers, who
advocated up to a certain point the emancipation of the
soul, and who fortunately, though illogically, succeeded in

388 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

establishing in England and Germany a modus vivendi
between authority and liberty, found, not only in the press,
but in the printers, valuable allies. There was scarcely
a printer of reputation, either in France or Germany,
who was not either openly their adherent, or suspected,
and rightly so, of sympathising with their doctrines. But
it was not only the great master printers who were on
the side of reform ; correctors, readers, compositors, type-
founders, and binders, all who were concerned with the
press or its productions, felt the influence of the divine art of
which they were the ministers, and ranged themselves under
the banner of intellectual freedom. Among the martyrs
whose deaths are recorded in the Grand Martyrologe^
printers and booksellers are numerous. Among the five
hundred artisans of Lyons who in 1535 marched to the
aid of the citizens of Geneva in their contest with the
Bishop and the Duke of Savoy, the printers are especially
mentioned by the historians of Lyons. And M. Merle
d'Aubigne tells us that the trades connected with typo-
graphy— printers, booksellers, and binders — formed the
most numerous contingent in the band of fugitives whom
the persecutions which followed the affair of the Placards
drove from France in the same year.

To be a printer then, was to be open to the suspicion of
heresy or even worse ; and the rumours which, however
little they are based on any of his published writings,
certainly existed at this time, charging Dolet with irreligion
and even with atheism, were not likely to be allayed by
the setting up of his press and the opening of his shop.
His avowed opinions had undoubtedly rendered him an
object of suspicion for several years. His language we
may be certain was more violent than his published
writings, and though in the latter, as we have seen, there
was an ostentatious disavowal of any sympathy with Luther-

xx FORESHADOWINGS OF THE END 389

anism, and an equally ostentatious declaration of his
adhesion to the faith of his ancestors, yet there was not
wanting abundant evidence that his sympathies were wholly
on the side of intellectual progress and freedom, that all
his affection was for the men of that party, and all his
hatred was given to their adversaries, who were at the same
time his own.

But careless as he was both in speech and action whom he
offended, he was as it seems by no means insensible of the
prejudice under which he suffered by reason of the rumours
of irreligion and atheism, and his earliest works after setting
up his press were specially directed to relieving himself from
this prejudice. In the Cato Christianus, the Genethliacum,
and the Avant Naissance he expresses himself in a manner
which we might have thought would have freed him from
the charge of irreligion, much more from that of atheism.
But these expressions did not satisfy his enemies. Though
incompatible with atheism, these books might have eman-
ated from a heretic, and they even subjected their author
to charges of heresy. Besides, his epigrams were full of
sneers at the monk's cowl, his Commentaries bitterly at-
tacked the Sorbonne for its attempted suppression of
printing, and in his letters he had referred to the bosom
friend and trusted counsellor of the First President of the
Parliament of Paris as ' that beast Beda* But his enemies
judged him by his life and language, not only by his
published writings. ' The opinion which all have of your
impiety,' says Franciscus Floridus,1 * cannot be got rid of by
any Genethliacum* His life was not such as a Christian's
should be. That he was a good citizen, a good husband,
and a good father, were minor matters. He walked about
during the celebration of mass. He preferred the sermon
to the celebration. It was even whispered that he ate

1 Adv. Calumnias S. Doleti.

390 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

flesh in Lent.1 He was suspected before he set up his press,
and the first two books printed by him (or to which his
name was appended), the Cato Christianus and the Carmina,
were no sooner issued in 1538, than they were denounced
as heretical to the Vicar-General and Official of the Arch-
bishop of Lyons, and their author and printer forthwith
cited to appear before that functionary. The charge in.
reference to the Cato Christianus was twofold : first, the
author had interpolated as the second commandment a
precept beginning 'Thou shalt not make to thyself any
graven image,' a precept since accepted by the Reformed
Churches as the second commandment, but which the
Church of Rome has treated as a part of the first ; secondly,
the paraphrase of the Creed was made to commence Fidem
habeo instead of Credo, and the words communionem sanctorum
were omitted.2

The special charge against the Carmina was the use of
the word fatum in a Pagan and not a Christian sense ; and
although the word occurs in several parts of the book, the
ode which is specially open to the charge is one addressed to
Hugues Salel, De Fato, and which thus commences : —

Fati recognosco nimiam efficaciam,
Et sorte nos certa regi.

But there are not wanting other passages in which the author
laid himself open to attack, and which, as well as the use of
the word fatum, no doubt gave occasion to the censure.
The ode Expetendam esse Mortem, which had already ap-
peared in the volume containing the orations, thus con-
cludes : —

1 Prods, p. 1 1 .

2 Proces, 9, 10, 13. But the Sorbonne censured many other passages
of the Cato Christianus. See D'Argentre, Collectio Judieiorum, vol. ii.
pt. i. p. 229.

xx FORESHADOWINGS OF THE END 391

Ne mortis horre spicula, quae dabit
Sensu carere vel melioribus
Locis tegi, et statu esse laeto,
Elysii est nisi spes inanis.

But a poem in his Carmina addressed to Melanchthon (p. 31)
certainly laid him still more open to censure : —

Ridere quae possim, stolidorum et stultorum
Natio mihi multa suppeditat : sed nil prorsus
Magis libet ridere quam nonnullorum
Amentiam, qui, ceu deorum cognati
Jovisque coeli participes, de Diis semper
Sermonem habent : et qua ad polum efferri possis,

Sua deprimaris in nigri tenebras regni
ocent. Ineptum hominum genus, et intolerandum.
Scilicet accubuerunt Jovi, et divum mensis,
Coelestia ut nobis modo isto dispensent.1

Nor would the following epigram (p. 27) be likely to gain
for its author the favour of the Vicar-General, even though it
might not involve him in a theological censure : —

Incurvicervicum cucullatorum habet

Grex id subinde in ore, se esse mortuum

Mundo : tamen edit eximie pecus, bibit

Non pessime, stertit sepultum crapula,

Operam Veneri dat, et voluptatum assecla

Est omnium. Idne est, mortuum esse mundo ? Aliter

Interpretare. Mortui sunt hercule

Mundo cucullati, quod iners terrae sunt onus,

Ad rem utiles nullam, nisi ad scelus et vitium.

1 The race of fools and dolts supplies me with abundant matter for
laughter, but there is absolutely nothing I more enjoy laughing at than
the insanity of those who, as though they were the kindred of the gods
and sharers with them of Jove's heaven, are always discoursing concerning
the gods, and teach you how you may be able to arrive at heaven, or how
you may be sunk down into the darkness of the black realm. Foolish
and intolerable race of men ! No doubt they have sat down at the tables
of Jove and the gods, in order that they may in such wise dispense to us
the celestial decrees.

392 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Dolet was ordered to withdraw these books from sale,
and was required to enter into a written undertaking not to
again offer them or reprint them, unless he should obtain
official permission to do so. It is probable that he had
printed them — as he afterwards did several others — without
first submitting them either to the Provost of Paris or the
Seneschal of Lyons, as it appears from his process he was
expressly required to do by the Royal privilege given to him
at Moulins.1

The three years which followed the setting up of his
press (1539, 1540, 1541) were probably the happiest, and
certainly the most prosperous, of Dolet's life. A wife and
son whom he tenderly loved, a circle of literary friends which
included nearly all the men of letters at Lyons as well as
many in distant parts of France, constant and profitable
literary work, a high reputation as a scholar, and success in
his business as a printer and bookseller, were the character-
istics of these years. Of his private life indeed we get but
few glimpses. Immersed in his literary work and his
business, scorning delights and living laborious days, he found
little leisure for those elaborate letters which, though chiefly
filled with phrases and compliments, still afford us for the
early part of his life so many interesting details. Yet he is
occasionally referred to in the correspondence of Jean de
Boyssone, and one letter exists written by the latter to Dolet
during this period. Jean de Boyssone took his seat on the
judicial bench of Chambery in 1539, and Dolet was of much
assistance to his friend in receiving from Toulouse and for-
warding to Savoy the books as well as other property of the
newly -appointed magistrate. On the first of May 1539
(or 1540), Boyssone wrote to Dolet to acknowledge the

1 Proces, p. ii. But in the Extraict du Privileige, as printed by
Dolet at the commencement of several of his books, nothing of this kind
appears.

xx FORESHADOWINGS OF THE END 393

receipt of his books, and at the same time sent his friend a
packet of letters which he requested him to forward to
Toulouse, 'either by Jean Madamaxum (sic), or by some
other muleteer who may be starting for Toulouse, a class of
persons of whom you have no scarcity at Lyons, whereas we,
who are enclosed on every side by lofty mountains, seldom
have any communication with Gaul. Wherefore you would
act most kindly to me if you occasionally took thought to
write to me something of what is going on with you at
Lyons.' l At the end of 1 540 Boyssone made a journey to
Paris, and on his return we catch a glimpse of Dolet, in a
letter to Guillaume Bigot, dated Chambery, December i,
1 540. Boyssone writes, ' At Lyons Dolet supped with me.
We devoted much of our conversation to you and your
pursuits, and at last we both came to this conclusion, to
exhort and persuade you to carry on and complete your
medical studies.' 2 But, although this is the last direct
evidence of intercourse between the two men, yet that their
friendship continued up to the time of Dolet's arrest in 1 542
is proved by another letter of Boyssone to Bigot, dated the
3<Dth of June in that year, which thus concludes : ' I much
admire your verses, and will take care that an opportunity of
reading them is afforded to Dolet.' 3 With this letter the
name of Dolet vanishes from the correspondence of Boyssone.
His arrest took place shortly afterwards, and the rest of
his life, with the exception of a very few months, was spent
in prison.

We should certainly have expected some reference to and
some expression of sympathy for his subsequent misfortunes
and his tragical end in the letters of Boyssone to their
common friends, but no such reference is to be found.
Whether, as M. Guibal suggests,4 he had forsaken his friend

1 MS. Corr. fol. Hi. 2 Id. fol. Ixv. 3 Id. fol. Inii.

4 Rev. de Toulouse, 1864, p. 102.

394 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

in his misfortunes from one of those Idchetes which are dis-
guised under the name of convenances, and which are the special
peril of those who hold high official positions, or whether in
revising the correspondence for the press, all reference to
Dolet's trial, sentence, and death, and all expressions of
sympathy for him, were omitted, as fraught with danger to
the writer, we have no means of judging.

The after-life of Jean de Boyssone demands a few
sentences. At first he found the change from Toulouse to
Chambery a most agreeable one. He enjoyed his judicial
duties, he enjoyed the society of his fellow -councillors of
Savoy, several of them, including his friend Maurice Sceve,
men of culture and intelligence, and he was on the best
possible terms with the President, Pellisson. A Ciceronian
by faith if not by his Latin style, Boyssone dedicated the
villa which he inhabited, just out of Chambery, to the
memory of his master, and in a Savoyard Tusculum he
devoted his leisure to study, and correspondence with his
literary friends. Ten years passed away, he had become the
most important member of the Council of Savoy after the
President, and his services in administering the newly-annexed
province had been great. But he began to be weary of his
charge. The fall of the Chancellor Poyet deprived him of
his protector and patron ; several of his earlier and favourite
colleagues had either died or left Savoy, and he was anxious
to return to France, when a heavy blow fell upon him,
directed partly by the personal enmity of a subordinate,
partly by the cupidity of a great personage. Neither his
services nor his integrity were able to protect him from the
personal enmity of Taboet the procureur du roi, supported
by the cupidity of the Duke of Guise. Taboet had been
severely reprimanded by the President in the name of the
Council ; Pellisson and Boyssone were both men of great
wealth ; the Duke of Guise, large as were his possessions,

xx FORESHADOWINGS OF THE END 395

was in need of money, and desirous of obtaining from the
King grants of the confiscated property of wealthy criminals.

A charge of corruption was brought by Taboet against
Pellisson, Boyssone, and several other councillors. The
charge was referred to the Parliament of Dijon, the capital
of the province of which Guise was the governor, and it was
heard before a creature of Guise, the Second President Baillet
(who had purchased his office for a large sum of money),
and certain councillors submissive instruments of the Second
President's will. The result could not be doubtful. On
the 8th of August 1551, the accused were found guilty;
Jean de Boyssone was deprived of his office, and sentenced
to pay a heavy fine and to be detained in prison until it was
paid. But public opinion was in his favour. The Chancellor
Bertrandi was not satisfied with the sentence of the Parlia-
ment of Dijon, and the University of Grenoble was eager to
offer the chair of Law to the disgraced councillor. He and
the President were permitted to appeal to the Parliament of
Paris, and after a long and wearisome process occasioning
violent disputes as to the respective jurisdictions of the two
Parliaments, and as to the right of that of Paris to revise the
sentence of a supreme Court which Dijon claimed to be, a
special commission appointed by the King, consisting of an
equal number of councillors of Paris and Dijon, in 1556
finally reversed the sentence of the Parliament of Dijon,
restored Pellisson and Boyssone to their rank, condemned
Taboet in costs, and ordered him, with bare head and feet,
and a cord round his neck, to be led through the streets of
Chambery.1

From this moment Jean de Boyssone disappears from
history. His correspondence and his poems bring us up to
this date, but his biographer has not been able to discover

1 Guibal, Rev. de Toulouse, Aotit, 1864 ; De Thou, i. pp. 882 et seq. ;
MS. Epist. Boyss. passim.

396 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

any trace of him after his rehabilitation, and we may there-
fore presume that he did not long survive it.

In the meantime Dolet was preparing for a considerable
extension of his business as a printer. Where he set up his
press when he first began to print we do not know ; some
of his earlier books are described on the title as printed Au
logis de Monsieur Dolet, words which seem to have given
rise to no little ridicule. But early in 1542 he removed to
the house in the Rue Merciere, where he lived until his final
imprisonment. Several of the books printed in that year
have at the end, A Lyon ches Estienne Dolet, pour lors
demeurant en Rue Merciere a Venseigne de la dolouere d'or.

The Rue Merciere was the Paternoster Row of Lyons,
one of the most important streets of the city, full of printers
and booksellers' shops. As the griffin was placed over the
shop of Gryphius, and the entwined snakes surrounding a
book over that of Jean de Tournes, so over the shop of
Dolet in the Rue Merciere was placed as a sign a golden axe,
or dolouere, similar no doubt to that which appears on the
title-pages of his books.1

During the five years that the press of Dolet existed,
upwards of eighty volumes issued from it upon every variety
of subject, theology, history, French and Latin poetry,
grammar, criticism, Latin classics and translations, medicine,
besides several Greek books. Of these about a fourth were
the composition of the printer, and to at least another fourth
he performed the function of editor as well as printer, and
added a preface, dedication, or ode. The greater part of
these (upwards of sixty) appeared before Dolet's arrest at

1 M. Boulmier would seem not to have noticed that Dolet's shop and
house were in the Rue Merciere, and possibly not knowing Lyons he has
misunderstood a passage in the Second Enfer, and has erroneously stated
that Dolet's house was one of the lofty buildings on the quay overlooking
the Sa&ne.

xx FORESHADOWINGS OF THE END 397

the end of July or the beginning of August 1542. In the
Appendix to this book I have given a list of these volumes,
and of the authorities for the existence of those (about a
fifth) of which I have not been able to discover a copy.

For the three years which followed the publication of the
Cato Christianas, Dolet showed, for him, an unusual degree
of caution. His quarrels with the master printers indeed
continued, but in the publications which issued from his
press, whether his own compositions or those of others, there
was little that could justly give offence to the authorities.
The only original work of Dolet, besides those which have
already been noticed, was his Observations on the Andria
and Eunuchus of Terence, a book which met with a sufficient
success to induce him to give an edition of the text of the
whole of Terence revised by himself, and to reprint the
Observations in 1543. They were afterwards thought
worthy of insertion in several editions of Terence printed in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In addition to those previously mentioned a treatise in
folio by his friend Claude Cottereau on military law, a Latin
poem entitled Pandora, by Jean Olivier, Bishop of Angers,
nephew of the Chancellor, a volume of Orations and
Epigrams and a translation of the Antigone of Sophocles by
Gentian Hervet, were the more important original works
which Dolet printed during the years 1539-40-41 ; and
these were enriched, the two first mentioned by a preface,
and the latter by an ode of his own composition. Besides
these, editions of the New Testament (in Latin), Suetonius,
the Eleganti^ of Laurentius Valla, a volume consisting of
an explanation of the Lord's Prayer and a few other tracts,
and translations into French by Jean Canappe and Pierre
Tolet of several medical treatises of Galen, and Paulus
JEgineta, are the only books which have been hitherto
noticed by bibliographers or biographers as issuing from his

398 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

press during the years 1539-40-41. I am able to add eleven
others ; reprints of the De duplici copia verborum of Erasmus,
the De corrupfi emendatione Sermonis of Cordier, the Tabula
Poetics of Murmellius, the Institutiones and the Meditationes
Gr<ec<e of Clenard, an Alphabeticum Latinum, and editions
of the text of Virgil, of the Epistol* Famitiares, the De
Officiis and other minor philosophical treatises, and the
Rhetorica of Cicero, and the Disticha Catonis with the
Scholia of Erasmus.

During these three years Dolet suffered no serious mo-
lestation ; once indeed, if not oftener, he was summoned
before the official of the Archbishop in reference to the Cato
Christianus and the Epigrams, the sale of which it would
seem had not been discontinued, but it is not very clear what
was the result.

But the peaceful literary life, which he had led for some
years, was now drawing to a conclusion. Prosperous and to
all appearance happy as the last few years had been, they had
witnessed, as we have seen, the death of some, the alienation
of others of his friends, to whom in the misfortunes which
were impending he might have looked for sympathy, if not
for more substantial aid. The good bishops of Rieux and
Limoges were dead, nor while losing old friends does Dolet
appear to have acquired any new ones possessed of much
influence. Most of the master printers of Lyons still con-
tinued to be his bitter enemies, whether owing as he alleged
to their jealousy of him on account of the privilege which the
King had conferred on him and on account of the success
with which he, an interloper, had carried on his business, or
whether owing to the part he had taken and was continuing
to take in the disputes between the masters and the workmen.
In the meantime the hatred of the bigoted and superstitious
had gone on increasing. His friends were most of them
suspected of heresy, and some of them more than suspected.

xx FORESHADOWINGS OF THE END 399

He had printed the poems of Marot and the Gargantua of
Rabelais, and in his own Epigrams had ridiculed the monks
as bitterly as either of those writers.

But still more serious crimes were shortly to be laid to
his charge. In 1542, the cautious line of conduct which he
had followed for the three preceding years was altogether
abandoned, and he rushed with open eyes into the lion's
mouth. His removal to the Rue Merciere was followed by
a great extension of his business as a printer and bookseller.
In the first half of 1 542 no less than thirty books issued from
his press. To about half of them no exception could be
taken. The Epitres Familiaires and the editions of Marot
and Rabelais I have already noticed ; the treatise of Rever-
gata De Comparanda Eloquentia, an edition with a French
translation by his friend Guillaume Durand of Sulpicius
Verulanus De Moribus in Mensa Servandis, La parfaicte
Amye of Heroe't, L'Amie de Court of La Borderie, and
Allegre's translation, Du Mespris de la Court, from the
Spanish of Guevara, several medical treatises of Canappe,
Tolet, and Pierre Vernei, a funeral oration of Claude Baduel,
and a manifesto of Francis I. against Charles V., were books
which could involve the printer in no risk ; but the other
works which Dolet printed in this half year, some of them
wholly or partially his own composition, could not fail to
give offence to the rulers of the Church, and to afford to his
enemies the handle for attack for which they had long been
watching. The New Testament in French, the Epistles and
Gospels for the fifty-two Sundays, with the commentary of
Lefevre d'Estaples, the translation of the Psalms and Canticles
into French, possibly made by Dolet himself, the Exhortation
to the reading of the Holy Scriptures, the Brief discours de
la republique Francoyse desirant la lecture des livres de la
Saincte Escripture luy estre loysible en sa langue vulgaire,
and a summary of the Old and New Testaments, were books

400 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xx

which could not emanate from a pure and orthodox Christian,
and, as their very titles show, were most dangerous to the
faithful, and were all filled, as the sentence on their printer
and editor declared, with ' damnable and pernicious heresies.'
Besides these, Dolet printed translations of two religious
treatises by the hated Erasmus, Le Chevalier Chrestien, made
by Louis Berquin, who was himself burned for heresy, and
Le Vray moyen de bien et catholiquement se confesser, pos-
sibly made by Dolet himself, both full of heresies ; while
La Fontaine de Vye and the Livre de la Compaignie des
Penitens were not less open to censure.

With an extraordinary want of prudence on the part of
Dolet, all these books issued from his press in the first half
of I542.1 But he had also procured from Geneva, and had
probably sold or offered for sale, copies of the French Bible
of Olivet, Calvin's Christian Institutes, the Commonplaces of
Melanchthon, and the Unto Dissidentium 2 of Herman Bode.
The measure of his iniquities was filled up. His prosecution
on the capital charge of heresy was decided on. His accusers
were, as he tells us in his Epistle to the King prefixed to his
translation of the Tusculans, his enemies the master printers
of Lyons ; and to make his conviction and destruction more
sure, the aid of the most terrible tribunal which the world
has seen was invoked, and the Court which assembled for his
trial was presided over by the Inquisitor-General.

1 The authorities for attributing these to Dolet are stated in the
Appendix. Of several of these books no existing copy is known.

2 For an account of this very rare book and its editions, see Clement,
Bibliotbeque Curieuse, vol. iv. pp. 413-419.

CHAPTER XXI

NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS

Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret
In terris oppressa gravi sub religione
Quae caput a coeli regionibus ostendebat
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans.

LUCRETIUS.

ISTORIANS have generally
ignored the existence of
the Inquisition in France,
except for a few years
after its foundation. That
it ever subsequently existed
there is a fact unknown
to many well-informed
writers on the legal and
ecclesiastical history of
that country ; whilst some,
and these careful and in
many matters trustworthy
writers, have actually de-
nied its existence. Richard Simon, one of the ablest and
most learned among French ecclesiastical authors,1 says that
the title of Inquisitor-General of the Faith was a mere title

1 Lettres Choisies (edit, of Amsterdam, i. p. 243).
2 D

402 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

assumed by the theologian whom the King or the Parliament
entrusted with the examination of books relating to religious
matters. But, as I have already had occasion to notice, the
Inquisition did in fact exist in France for centuries, and
though in its early days it was shorn of those great powers
which had been entrusted to it by the piety of Alfonso of
Poictiers, St. Louis, Philip the Bold, and Philip the Fair, it
continued to be a living force in the south of France until
the middle of the seventeenth century.

But neither its friends nor its enemies have given to us
either sufficiently ample or sufficiently accurate details of its
history, its authority, or its procedure. The writers on the
Parliaments, the criminal law, and the administration of the
north of France are perhaps right in entirely ignoring its
existence, for though we find many cases in which the
Inquisitor-General sat as judge on the trial of heretics beyond
the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Toulouse, he seems to
have acted on such occasions only as the assessor of the
Bishop or of his Vicar-General, and not as exercising any in-
herent authority.1 We can readily understand that to lawyers
the subject would be distasteful, and we can no less readily
understand and excuse the silence of ecclesiastics, who must
feel humiliated at the thought that the eldest daughter of the
Church has shown so little appreciation of the benefits of the
Holy Office, that she only recognised its existence in Langue-
doc, and even there, where it undoubtedly did exist for more
than three centuries, placed such restrictions on its power,
that its beneficial influence was hardly able to make itself felt.
For we are not to suppose that the faithful adherents of the
Church of Rome find anything to censure in the Inquisition
of Spain or Italy, unless it may be its too great mildness.
' The Inquisition,' says M. Charles Barthelemy, ' has made

1 Carcassonne was the only place besides Toulouse where the Inquisi-
tion held regular and formal courts.

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 403

the glory of the country in which it had its birth, it has
assured the liberty of a great people : it has protected genius.
It has softened and moderated the severity of other courts of
justice.' l

Yet from the historians of Toulouse and the archives of
the City and of the Parliament we can gather some few details
which let us see the importance of the Holy Office and of the
Inquisitor-General in Languedoc. The latter was appointed
at one time by the Provincial, at another by the General of
the Dominicans, at another by the Pope himself. During
part of the sixteenth century the brethren of the Order of
St. Dominic seem to have exercised the right of election, which
afterwards was acquired by the Congregation of the Holy
Office. Yet it was always necessary that the appointment

1 Mensonges et erreurs historiques, Paris, Bleriot, 1863. This is a
favourite text-book in clerical schools and seminaries in France. Those
who desire to have precise and accurate details of the mildness and modera-
tion of the Holy Office should refer — not to protestant or infidel writers,
whose prejudices or feelings lead them into exaggeration, and who some-
times relate sensational stories on insufficient grounds — but to authorised
and official writings. The official code of the Inquisition (Sacro Arsenale
ovvere Prattica del officio delta S. Inquisitione Amplicata), of which five
editions appeared, the latest that I know in 1730, describes at length and
in detail the several kinds and refinements of torture which are to be
made use of. It is for the soul's health of the victim not only that his
feet should be burned, but that they should first be well steeped in lard.
They would thus burn better, and the burning would be more painful.
Umbertus Locatus, Inquisitor at Pavia and Piacenza, a Commissary-
General of the Roman Inquisition and confessor to Pius V., in his Praxes
judiciaria inquisitorum cum quibusdam Sancti Ojficii Decretis (Venice, 1583),
also specifies the different kinds of torture to be used in different cases.
We know the torture occasioned by tickling the feet. But this is much
refined upon ; salt is to be first well rubbed in, and then the feet are to be
licked by a goat. In no other way can so exquisite a torment be produced.
In reading these official and authoritative writings we wonder what were
the severities of the other courts, which, according to M. Barthelemy,
were softened and moderated by a court of which these were some of the
ordinary practices.

4o4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

should be confirmed by the King, and registered by the
Parliament. Even at Toulouse the Parliament was careful to
keep the power of the Inquisitor within specified and narrow
limits. It appointed ten assessors or adjoints to sit with him
and advise him on matters of law, and it was careful to allow
upon certain questions an appeal from the Inquisitor's sentence
to itself. It seems doubtful whether the Holy Office of its
own mere motion could try an accused person. In all cases
of heresy, however, brought before the Parliament, the accused
was at once remitted to the Inquisition, whilst by sitting as
the Assessor of the Vicar-General of the Archbishop, the
Inquisitor-General was able to exercise an original and inde-
pendent jurisdiction. Yet however strictly defined was his
judicial power, the rank and importance of the ' Inquisitor-
General of the whole kingdom of France ' was very great.
Neither the Governor of Languedoc nor the King himself
could enter the walls of Toulouse without first taking an oath
before him to preserve the faith and the Holy Inquisition.
Another privilege which was greatly prized by the Holy
Office was that each year, on the election of the four capitouls,
the Inquisitor-General inquired into their opinions, and if he
found any among them who had the least taint or suspicion
of heresy, the election of the suspected person was annulled.
In 1540, the power and authority of the Holy Office in
Languedoc was expressly confirmed by an edict of Francis I.,
and in 1557 his weak and contemptible successor Henry II.
actually requested and obtained from Paul IV. a bull estab-
lishing for the whole of France the Inquisition exactly as it
existed in Spain and at Rome.

A royal edict ordered the registration of the bull as the
sole means of arresting the progress of heresy. It authorised
the Inquisitor-General to select bishops and priests as judges
in all matters of faith and heresy ; it gave absolute powers
of life and death to the Inquisitors and their deputies, and

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 405

deprived the accused of their right of appeal to the Parliament.
All that was left to the secular arm was to carry out the
sentence of the Inquisition. Notwithstanding the approval
which the edict received from the First President of the
Parliament of Paris, Le Maistre, supported by the Presidents
who sat with him in the Grand Chamber, Minard and St.
Andre, the majority of the members, led by Seguier and
Harlai, the Presidents of La Tournelle, and Arnoul du
Ferrier, the President of the Court of Enquetes, refused to
register the edict. The King had recourse to a bed of justice,
and the edict was duly registered in his presence in January
1558. But though the Grand Chamber thereupon either
refused to allow appeals from heretics convicted by the ecclesi-
astical tribunals, or when it permitted the appeals, confirmed
and in some instances increased the severity of the sentence,
the Chamber of La Tournelle continued as before to receive
all appeals that came to it, and when it did not reverse the
judgment of the Inquisition, it mitigated the sentences,
changing them in some instances from death to banishment.
The King and the Cardinals (of Lorraine and Bourbon) were
indignant. The Presidents and Councillors were summoned
to the royal presence, and charged to see that the practice of
the different Chambers was made uniform, and that strict
obedience was paid to the edict establishing the Inquisition.
The King's orders were read by the Procureur-General.
Never before had a matter of such deep importance been laid
before the Councillors of the Parliament, and never had there
been so serious and weighty a deliberation. Each member
was called on for his opinion. The members of the Civil
Courts, of the Enquetes and Requetes, supported the Presi-
dents of La Tournelle. In vain Le Maistre, St. Andre, and
Minard urged the commands of the King and the sin of
tolerating heretics. The party of toleration had a complete
victory. A large majority pronounced in favour of the

406 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

practice of La Tournelle and of the President Seguier.
Banishment was deemed to be a sufficient punishment for
heresy, and a decree to this effect was ordered to be prepared.

The deliberations of the Parliament were in secret. Le
Maistre betrayed them to the King, and the seance was
ordered to be resumed in public in his Majesty's presence.
The members boldly expressed their opinions. Again the
Presidents Le Maistre, Minard, and St. Andre inveighed
against toleration, and recommended the extermination of
the Albigeois and the Vaudois as examples to be followed.
Four Presidents, Seguier, Harlai, du Ferrier, and de Thou,
and a great majority of Councillors, supported the cause of
toleration, some of them with tact and prudence, others with
more boldness than discretion. The King could hardly
restrain his indignation. He refused to allow the votes to
be collected. He ordered Arnoul du Ferrier — the most
eminent jurist, except his greater pupil Cujas, whom France
then possessed — and seven Councillors to be arrested. The
Councillors du Faure and Dubourg were seized on the judicial
bench. Du Ferrier and two others only saved themselves
by flight. Five members of the Parliament were lodged in
the Bastille. It seemed as though nothing could hinder the
establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in France, when the
fortunate death of Henry II. and the minority of his successor
enabled the Parliament, notwithstanding the opposition of the
Guises, to remain masters of the field, and the all-important
right of appeal in matters of heresy to a lay tribunal was
retained by France,1 though this right was much curtailed ten
years later by the edict of Romorantin.

But the Inquisition continued to exist in Languedoc for
nearly a century longer, and played no unimportant part
during the religious wars. Yet its decline had really com-
menced before the attempt of Henry II. to increase its
1 Henri Martin, Hist, de France, book 50.

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 407

powers and extend its jurisdiction. A century later it was
to fall, not before the attacks of heretics or of scoffers, but of
an orthodox Archbishop of Toulouse, Charles de Montchal.
Jealous of an independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he
obtained from Anne of Austria in 1645 a decree for its
suppression as a royal court of criminal jurisdiction. The
Dominicans represented him as a wolf in sheep's clothing,
the Pope again appointed an Inquisitor, but the Parliament
of Toulouse deprived him of nearly all power and jurisdiction.
Yet the title of Inquisitor-General of the Faith continued for
upwards of a century longer, and conferred much rank and
prestige, a large income, and some shadowy if not real power
upon its possessor. At its abolition, the single privilege
which remained to the Inquisitor seems to have been that of
giving certificates of orthodoxy to advocates, as well as to
others who required them. In 1772, the Marquis d'Aignan
d'Orbesson, not being able to bear the idea that in the country
which claimed to be the leader of civilisation there still existed,
in an epoch of toleration and enlightenment, a degrading relic
of barbarism and bigotry, obtained from the King a decree
suppressing the salary paid to the Inquisitor, depriving Frere
Jean Dayde, who then held the office, of the title of Inquisi-
tor, and forbidding the Dominicans from naming a successor
to him.1

1 Histoire de r Inquisition en France depuis son etablissement au XI IP siecle
a la suite de la croisade centre les Albigeois, jusqu'en 1772 epoque definitive de
sa suppression, par E. L. B. de Lamothe-Langon, Paris, 1829, 3 vols. 8vo.
(A useful summary of facts relating to the Inquisition in France, but
superficial and unsystematic. No information is given as to the procedure
of the tribunal, and the writer displays complete ignorance of many of
the commonest books, such as the Grand Martyrologe and the Histoire
Ecclesiastique attributed to Theodore de Beze, which contain important
details on the subject. The greatest value of the book is that the writer
cites the archives of the Inquisition and the registers of the Parliament of
Toulouse.) La jurisprudence du grand C onset/ examinee dans les maximes du
Royaume. Outrage precieux contenant V histoire de t Inquisition en France,

4o8 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

As the notices of the Inquisition in France are so scanty,
the reader will not be surprised if we have a difficulty in
tracing the succession of the Inquisitors. Raymond de
Gossin held the office in 1532, and would no doubt preside
at the trials of Jean de Caturce and Jean de Boyssone. It was
he who had denounced to the Parliament early in 1532 the
presence of heresy at Toulouse, and had obtained authority
for the arrest of the large number of persons of all classes
who, as we have seen,1 were arrested in that year. He was
succeeded by Louis Rochette, who shortly after his appoint-
ment was deprived of his office, tried, and burnt for heresy,
in the place where there is every probability he had witnessed
the martyrdom of Caturce and the recantation of Boyssone.
He was succeeded by Vidal de Becanis.

In 1534 we find one Jehan Gauteret, described as ljuge
et inquisiteur de rheretique fravite es cite et diocese de LyonJ
assisting in the trial of Baudichon de la Maison Neuve.2
But he does not seem to have been Inquisitor-General.

In 1536, the person referred to by Rabelais3 as Nostre
maistre Doribus was appointed by the Provincial of the
Dominicans Grand Inquisitor in succession to Valentin
Lyevin deceased, and was duly confirmed in that office by
the King, and subsequently by the Pope.4 Brother Matthieu
Ory, or Orry, a Breton by birth and a Dominican by

Avignon, 1775 [by E. L. V. de Goezmann]. M. de Goezmann says that
the Inquisition continued as a real power in Roussillon until 1762. (Rous-
sillon was only acquired by France in 1659, and retained the Inquisition
with other Spanish institutions.) l Ante, p. 80.

2 Prods de Baudichon, Geneva, Fick, 1873. He is sometimes styled
' Official des exces ' and ' Inquisiteur de la foy.'

3 Book ii. c. 22.

4 Weiss, La Chambre Ardente, xvii. In the Proces d'Estienne Dolet
his name is printed Oroy, but in the original MS. it is Orry. Merle
d'Aubigne calls him Oritz, and he is elsewhere also referred to as Oriz.
I follow however the orthography of his own works and of the Grand
Martyrologe.

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 409

profession, was then forty years of age. He had already
attained some distinction as a preacher, and in selecting him,
the rulers of the Church showed that wise appreciation and
judgment which has ever been a marked characteristic of
the Church of Rome, and in which her heretical rivals have
so constantly shown themselves deficient.

Matthieu Orry possessed all the qualifications needed for
the high office of Inquisitor-General, sufficient theological
learning, a fair knowledge of the Canon Law, and a keen
scent for heresy, whilst his persuasive manner and his Socratic
method, easily drew suspected heretics into confessions,
admissions, and contradictions, which rendered extraneous
evidence of less moment, and enabled judges to pronounce
sentence without violating the requirements of the Canon
Law. Blasphemavit : quid adhuc egemus testibus? Instant
in season and out of season, ready to spend and be spent in
the service of the Church, he found no occupation so con-
genial to his mind as that of hunting, trying, and burning
heretics.1 He was incessantly travelling through France.
Wherever a trial for heresy was imminent, even beyond the
limits of his own jurisdiction, that is to say, that of the Parlia-
ment of Toulouse, he was always ready to act as assessor to
the Bishop or his Vicar-General, and to assist in obtaining,
what it was the greatest triumph and satisfaction to obtain,

1 ' Je n'en cogneus jamais ung plus ignorant, ung plus maling, et plus
appetant la mort et destruction d'ung Chrestien.' Dolet, Epist. to the
King prefixed to his translation of the Tusculan Disputations. But on some
occasions he was open to bribes. Lamothe-Langon (vol. iii. liv. 16) says,
' Orri n'etait mechant que pour ceux qui ne financaient pas en sa bourse.
II devenait doux et facile a 1'egard de ceux qui le payaient ; dans la ville
de Sancerre par exemple il traita avec moderation les protestants qui lui
donnerent de bon vin ; et pour une somme ronde on obtint de lui
d'excellents certificats de catholicite.' (This is on the authority of Goez-
mann, La Jurisprudence du Grand Conseil examinee, vol. i. p. 22. See also
De Beze, Hist. Eccl. i. 13.)

4io ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

a confession, before the victim was delivered over, to the
secular arm. We find him sitting at Paris, Lyons, Bourges,
Orleans, Poictiers, and Vienne. It was one of his earliest
duties as Inquisitor-General to examine the Spiritual Exercises
of Ignatius Loyola, and to his report, equally laudatory of
the book and its author, the Order of Jesus owes the favour-
able reception which it met with in France. As the trusted
counsellor of Cardinal de Tournon he acquired the favour
of the King, and it was to his influence and to his suggestions
that the most stringent measures of Francis I. against heretics
and blasphemers are due. When he followed the counsels of
Matthieu Orry, the King felt that he was indeed working
out his salvation. The same confidence which Francis I.
placed in the Inquisitor was shown by his successor, and when
tidings reached the Court that Renee of France, Duchess
of Ferrara, had fallen under the influence of ( cursed and
reprobate errors,' it was Matthieu Orry that was sent by
Henry II. to effect his aunt's conversion, by persuasion
if possible, but if not, and if the Duke her husband would
allow it, by shutting her up in seclusion, and separating
her children from her. The Duke was entreated to allow
Orry, who had much experience in such matters, to try,
and bring to severe punishment all those of the Duchess's
attendants who were tainted with heretical opinions.1 That
the Inquisitor's persuasions were unsuccessful, and that the
Duchess had to be imprisoned and her children taken away
from her before she would confess and receive the communion
from a priest, showed only the depravity of the heretic, and
not any want of ability or zeal in the Inquisitor ; for on
proceeding to Rome he was received with high favour by the
Pope, who confirmed him in his office of Inquisitor-General
of France, and appointed him Apostolical Penitentiary. In

1 Le Laboureur, Additions aux Memoires de Castelnau, i. p. 718. See
also Frizzi, Memorie per la storia di Ferrara, iv. p. 328.

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 411

the Grand Martyrologe his name frequently occurs as pre-
siding at the trial of heretics, examining them, passing
sentence, and presiding at the executions. * Miserable Orry ! '
the martyrologist on one occasion thus apostrophises him,
' qui as toujours aguise a cruaute ceux qui brulent de rage.' x
But of all the trials for heresy at which he took the chief
part there are two which specially interest us. It had been
the letters of Calvin, letters full of noble and Christian
exhortations and sentiments, that had enabled Renee of
France to resist the persuasions of Matthieu Orry. In these
letters, as in many others of a similar character, we see the
Reformer at his best, such as we would fain hope and believe
he really was. In the letters, certainly inspired, and probably
dictated by him, in which he denounced to the authorities of
Vienne the blasphemies, and betrayed the person, of Michael
de Villeneuve, alias Reves, alias Servetus, we see the lowest
depths of degradation and infamy to which religious bigotry
(perhaps combined with personal dislike) can bring down a
naturally great and noble nature. It was to Matthieu Orry
that the letters written in the name of Guillaume Trie to his
cousin Antoine Arneys were carried. It was Matthieu Orry
who caused the replies of Arneys to be prepared, and who,
when all the necessary information had been received from
Calvin, took the leading part, though he did not actually
preside, at the trial of Servetus at Vienne.

Of no part of his life have we so many details, and
nowhere do we get so true a picture of the man, as in refer-
ence to the trial of Servetus. We see him acting, now as
a detective, now as the prosecuting attorney, now as counsel,
now as judge ; now chuckling over the letters of Guillaume
Trie, and then dictating the answers to them, asking for
information and documentary evidence from Calvin ; almost
daily spurring his mule between Lyons and Vienne ; closeted
1 Edit, of 1597, p. 1 80.

4i2 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

with Cardinal de Tournon at Lyons one day, and dining with
Archbishop Paumier at Vienne the next, leaving no stone
unturned to procure evidence of heresy against the accused,
and to obtain his conviction and sentence. It was through
no fault of his that Servetus was not burned at Vienne. The
Archbishop, the Vicar-General, and the Vibailly of Vienne,
lukewarm as they were in the good work, yet when re-
proached by Calvin for allowing a heretic who ought to be
burned alive to live unnoticed among them, could do no other
than bring him to trial and sentence him to death. But it
was to Cardinal de Tournon that Orry first communicated
the matter, it was after conference with him and acting under
his directions that all the preliminaries were prepared. It
was not until the correspondence with Calvin was complete,
and the inculpatory documents procured from Geneva, that
the matter was first mentioned to Pierre Paumier, Arch-
bishop of Vienne, who thereupon, acting under the directions
of the Cardinal and the advice of Orry, ordered the arrest
and trial of the accused.

Servetus was permitted to escape from prison. The
Vibailly was commonly reported to have been the active
party in the matter, and as nobody was punished or
blamed we may believe with tolerable certainty that the
' primate of primates,' Archbishop Paumier, was not ex-
cessively grieved at the escape, and that the Vibailly pro-
ceeded with the trial, and pronounced sentence of death on
his friend and physician with much greater satisfaction than
he would have done had Servetus been safe in the prison of
Vienne.

It was ten years before these events that Orry presided
at a trial that is of more immediate interest to us — that of
Etienne Dolet.1

1 The only notices of the life of Orry which I know are those in
Moreri, Grand Diet. Hist., and Echard, Scriptores ordinum pradicatorum,

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 413

The records of the trial of Etienne Dolet (technically
called the -proces]^ as well as those of every person who was
burned for heresy in France, have perished. They were in
general burned with the condemned,1 in order that the
members of the Reformed Church might be unable to collect
the acts of their martyrs. Not a single official record of a
trial for heresy exists in France. Such, if any, as were not so
burned probably perished with so many other records at the
time of the great Revolution. Nor, except in the few cases
where the accused had (unsuccessfully of course) appealed to
the Parliament, is there even any existing record of the con-
viction or sentence. All that we know of the trials for
heresy are the brief notices of them, with hardly any details,
contained in the Grand Martyr ologe of Crespin, in the corre-
spondence of the Reformers, and in the contemporary journal
of a Bourgeois de Paris, who made a point of attending and
recording every execution for heresy that took place in the
capital.

A single official record of a trial for heresy in France
was however discovered a few years since, not indeed in
France, but in the library of Berne ; 2 it is that of the
eminent citizen of Geneva, Baudichon de la Maison Neuve,
one of the very few who, after being convicted and handed
over to the secular arm, escaped punishment. Tried and
convicted at Lyons in 1535, by a flagrant violation of inter-
national law, for offences — if they were offences — committed
out of France, he was saved from the stake, as we have
before seen, by the intervention of the Lords of Berne, an

vol. ii. p. 162, where a list of his works will be found. See, however, for
the details in the text, D'Artigny, Memoires d'histoire, de critique et de
litterature, ii. p. 68 et seq. ; Willis, Servetus and Calvin, pp. 239-277;
Grand Martjrologe, passim.

1 Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris sous le regne de Francois l'r (Paris,
1854), pp. 441-451.

2 See ante, p. 408.

4i4 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

intervention, however, which would have been useless had not
Jean de Peyrat, the Lieutenant-Go ver nor of Lyons, by delaying
the execution (though much urged by the priestly party to
sanction it), given time for the Bernese messengers to reach
the court of the King of France.

All that we know of the trial of Dolet is from the
epistle to the King, prefixed by way of dedication to his
translation of the Tusculans, and from the letters of remission
and pardon subsequently granted to him, and discovered in
the Criminal Archives of the Parliament of Paris by M. A.
Taillandier, and printed by him in I836.1 Fortunately
for us these letters of remission are prefaced by recitals of
the trial, conviction, and sentence of an unusually detailed
character, and which have thrown a flood of light upon
one of the most interesting and important events of Dolet's
life.

It was at the end of July, or the beginning of August,
1542, that, by the order of the Inquisitor-General, but at
the instigation of the master printers and booksellers of
Lyons, Dolet was arrested and thrown into the archiepiscopal
prison.2 His arrest was, it seems, merely on suspicion of
heresy, and without any formal charge made or information

1 Prods d* Estienne Dolet, imprimeur et libraire a Lyon, 1543-154.6.
Paris, Techener, 1836.

2 Although there is no distinct authority for the date of Dolet's
arrest, yet from all the facts of the case and especially from the dates
of the books and their prefaces which issued from his press in 1 542 (see
ante, pp. 399, 400) it seems clear that the arrest must have taken place
at the end of July or the beginning of August. I do not forget that
Dolet's press continued at work during his imprisonment, and that several
books are expressly stated to be issued while Dolet was in the prison of
La Rouane, especially U Internelle Consolation and the translation of the
Tusculans, but it is clear that the books referred to on pp. 399, 400 must
have appeared before his arrest. There is, however, a reference to some
serious trouble into which Dolet had fallen shortly before the 6th of
April, probably i 542, but possibly one or two years earlier, in a letter from

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 415

laid against him as the law required, and a month elapsed
before this was done. In the meantime the * procureur and
promoter of causes of the Inquisition,' the public prosecutor
in cases of heresy, with the aid of those who had denounced
Dolet, was preparing his indictment and collecting matter
for the prosecution ; and after his house and shop had been
ransacked and his books seized,1 the prisoner was formally
charged with heresy before Matthieu Orry, Inquisitor-
General, and Estienne Faye, the official of the primacy
and Vicar- General in spiritualibus of the Archbishop of
Lyons. The substitute of the Procureur-General, Nicole
Baconval, was present, and the following persons probably
on this occasion sat as assessors, as they certainly did
afterwards, — Matthieu Bellievre, official and judge of the
ordinary court for the delinquent clergy of the city and
faubourgs of Lyons, Jean de Bourg, reader to the friars
preachers of the convent of Lyons and professor of
theology, and two doctors of Jaw, Guillaume Vandel and
Annemond Chalan.

The charges upon which he was arraigned were these :
that in his Cato Christianas 2 he had interpolated as the

Britannus to Boyssone printed in Rob. Britanni Epistolarum Libri Duo,
(Parisiis, 1542) which is as follows : —

' De ipso Doleto audivi raodo moesta, horribilia, inexpectata quaedam.
Doleo sane ilium in eum locum adductum, ex quo si emergere cupiat,
multum illi sit et cum plurimorum invidia laborandum : sed tamen sitne
verum nescio. Ego quidem cum illius caussa, turn multorum, et
honestissimorum caussa virorum, qui illi favent, haec omnia falsa esse
cuperem. . . . Vale. Burdig. viii. Id. April.'

The year is not given, but the letter, like most of the others in the
volume, appears to have been written in 1542. I am unable to explain
this passage, for I know of no misfortune that happened to Dolet early in
1 542, or indeed anything to which such words as those of Britannus
could apply since the homicide of Compaing.

1 Dolet, Preface to the translation of the Tusculans.

2 The Cato Christianus seems to have been submitted to the Sorbonne
immediately on Dolet's arrest, and a condemnation of it obtained on

416 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

second commandment a precept beginning ' Thou shalt not
make to thyself any graven image,' and in his paraphrase
of the Creed in verse had substituted the words Habeo fidem
for CredO) and had omitted the words Communionem Sanc-
torum ; that he had used the word Fa turn (in his Epigrams
and in his Fata Regis Francisci}, not in the sense which
the word ought to be used by a Christian, but in the
signification in which the ancient heathen philosophers used
it, intending thereby to express approval of the doctrine
of predestination ; that several books which had been
condemned and censured as containing erroneous proposi-
tions had been printed by him with prefatory epistles of
his own composition recommending the perusal of them,
namely, L* Exhortation a la lecture de la Saincte Escripture,
La Fontaine de Vye^ Les Cinquante et deux Dimenches
composed by Lefevre d'Etaples, Les Heures de la
compaignye des Penitens, Le Chevalier Chretien, and La
Manure de se Confesser of Erasmus ; that he had printed
other books in the vulgar tongue without any prefatory
epistles, namely, Le Sommaire de Viel et Nouveau Testament
and Le Nouveau Testament; that there were found in his
house and in his printing office other books full of errors,
among which were the Loci Communes of Melanchthon
(which some thought, having regard to the form and
appearance of the letters, had been printed by him), the
Unio Dissidentium, the Bible of Geneva in the vulgar
tongue, and the Institutio religionis Christian* of Calvin ;
that, notwithstanding that he had been ordered to withdraw
the Cato Christianus and the Epigrams from sale, he had
continued to sell them ; that he had not (as required by
the royal privilege) submitted each book before printing
it to the Provost of Paris or the Seneschal of Lyons ; that

Sept. 23, 1542. See the judgment in D'Argentre, Coll. Jud. vol. ii.
part i. p. 229.

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 417

he had eaten flesh in Lent and at other prohibited times ;
that he had walked about during the mass, and said that
he preferred the sermon to the mass; and lastly, that in
his writings he seemed to doubt the immortality of the
soul.1

His trial lasted until the beginning of October. Brought
from time to time before his judges, formal evidence of
most of the facts charged against him would no doubt
be easily procured, nor indeed would they (except the
last) admit of denial. The only question was, did the
facts if proved justify or require a conviction for heresy ?
But much evidence of a hearsay character tending to the
aggravation of the charges and to the prejudice of the
accused was offered, at the instance, as he tells us, of his
enemies the master printers, and greedily accepted by
the Inquisitor. Witnesses were found to swear that they
had heard that he had said that he had as much right
to eat flesh as the Pope had to compel him to eat fish.
Some testified that he was the reputed author of certain
songs (profane or heretical) which were current at Lyons.
Others had stories to tell to his discredit which they had
heard from third persons, some of whom were dead, and
the others not called as witnesses. No direct evidence
against him, however, except the facts as to which there
was no dispute, seems to have been given. The greater
part of the trial, as was usual in such cases, was occupied
by the examination of the prisoner. The harshness, as it
seems to English ideas, which French judges in our own
days occasionally display in the examination of prisoners,
the insidious and ensnaring questions frequently put to
them to lead them to admissions of guilt, give a faint but
only a faint idea of a trial for heresy in the sixteenth
century, where the judges were in all but name the
1 Proces, pp. 8- 1 1 .
2 E

4i8 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

prosecutors, where the verdict and the sentence were
decided before the trial, and where the chief object of the
trial was to draw out admissions from the unfortunate
accused which would formally justify the sentence, and
perhaps enable the court to increase its severity.

Dolet underwent the usual examinations. He was
interrogated not only on the charges specifically made against
him, but generally on his life, his habits, and his opinions.
Cunningly -devised propositions and questions of theology
were put to him with that air of candour and gentleness
which the judges of the Holy Office in the early stages of
a trial knew so well how to assume. He defended himself
by saying, ' with all humility and sincerity of heart,' that
he had never wished and did not wish to maintain any
error ; that he had always declared himself to be an
obedient son of the Church, desiring to live and die as a
true Catholic Christian ought to do, following the faith
of his ancestors, and neither adhering to any new sect, nor
contravening any of the decrees of the Church. As to the
immortality of the soul, he always maintained that doctrine,
and still did so, as would be seen from various passages of
his writings, and if anywhere he seemed to express himself
otherwise, it would be found to be by way of argument or
hypothesis merely.

The word fatum he had used to express the providence
and certain will of God only, by which He casts us down
and again raises us up, and not in any other sense. As to
the books composed and printed by him, he was not aware
of any doubt or error in them concerning the faith, or
anything contrary to the commands of God, or of our holy
mother the Church ; but, as well in reference to them as to
his opinions and language generally, he was desirous of
correcting and amending whatever he had written or said
erroneously, and he prayed that he might be taken to have

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 419

so expressed himself either through ignorance and want of
skill, or through the exigencies of the Latin tongue, and
the licence which was allowed in using it. As to the pro-
hibited books which were found in his house, but which
were not composed or printed by him, he had not obtained
them with any intention of either imitating them or follow-
ing their doctrine, but only from that curiosity which is
natural to literary men, so that reading them he might
more clearly know and discern the good and true, and
might better refute and reprove false and erroneous opinions.

The fact of eating flesh in Lent and at other prohibited
seasons he admitted, but alleged that he had done so under
the advice of his physician, and with the express permission
of the official and other ministers of the Church, because of
a malady of long duration from which he suffered, and that
he had not intended by that to disparage or condemn any
of the laws of the Church, which he entirely approved and
wished to conform to, as an obedient son. The truth of
the hearsay evidence he absolutely denied, alleging besides
that it was both irrelevant and inadmissible.

Although interrogated and reinterrogated during the two
months over which his trial extended, he could not be
drawn into any admission, or induced to answer any
questions as to points of doctrine except as before stated.
' He submitted in all respects to the authority of the
Church, and desired only to believe as she directed. If he
had fallen into any errors, it was from ignorance, and he
was ready and desirous to retract them/ Then he pleaded
to the jurisdiction of the court, and denied the competency
of the judges. But it can hardly be possible (knowing
what we do of Dolet's temper and the character of Matthieu
Orry) that the trial would pass without altercations between
the prisoner and the judges, and we may be sure that from
Dolet's bitter tongue remarks would fall which, however true

420 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

or apposite, could not fail to irritate the ignorant fanatic who
presided. In Dolet's opinion — an opinion which was shared
by the most learned and pious among the reformed — Orry
was the most ignorant and malicious of men, eager only to
compass the death and destruction of every true Christian.
It is hardly probable that he would entirely conceal this
opinion throughout the trial, but the following epigram
might have been rather supposed to indicate the character
of the sneers at his judges in which he indulged, than to
represent an actual incident of his trial, were it not that it
is related as a fact in a contemporary letter : — l

Dolet enquis sur le poinct de la foy,

Diet a Orris qui faisoit ceste enqueste :

4 Ce que tu crois, certe point je ne croy,

Ce que je croy ne fut oncq en ta teste.'

Orris pensant 1'avoir pris en fit feste

Luy demanda, ' Qu'est ce que tu crois doncq ? '

cje croy,' dit il, cque tu n'es qu'une beste

Et si croy bien que tu ne le creus oncq.' 2

The prisoner's defence, however complete and conclusive,
was of no avail. It was the business of Matthieu Orry
to convict, not to acquit. On the 2nd of October Dolet

1 Lugduni conjectus est in vincula Doletus ille qui nobis latin* linguee
Commentaries scripsit, qui, nuper eductus ut causam diceret coram
Synagoga Pharisasorum rogatusque ab Inquisitore fidei (ut vocant) an
crederet in Deum, respondit 'se melius illo credere, et aliquid se
praeterea credere ac scire, quod ille non crederet.' Roganteque Inquisi-
tore quidnam illud esset ' Ego, inquit, credo ac scio te asinum esse et
hypocritam, id quod tu non credis.' Letter of Pierre Toussain to
Matthias Erb. dated 4 March 1543. Herminjard, Correspondance des
Reformateurs, viii. p. 292.

2 This epigram is found written (in a contemporary hand) on the
reverse of the title-page of a copy of Dolet's Carmina in the library of
the Academy of Lyons. It was first printed, though not quite accurately,
by P. L. Joly in his Remarques Critiques sur le Dictionnaire de Bayle.
Paris (Dijon) 1748.

xxi NOSTRE MAISTRE DORIBUS 421

was brought before the judges for the last time to hear that
sentence, so terrible in its operation, so vague in its wording,
by which the Inquisition and the Church hypocritically
pretended that the Canon Law, which forbade spiritual
judges to cause the shedding of blood, was duly observed,
and by which the accused was sentenced to be burnt at the
stake. The Inquisitor-General pronounced Etienne Dolet
guilty of heretical pravity ; he was declared to be wicked,
scandalous, a schismatic, a heretic, a favourer and defender
of heretics and heretical opinions, and as such was delivered
over to the secular arm. He was then removed to the
royal prison of La Routine, and forthwith appealed, on the
ground of the incompetence of the judges, to the Parliament
of Paris.

CHAPTER XXII

THE FIRST PRESIDENT

Un viel homme enchaisne, demy ignorant et demy savant, comme un
Androgyne de diable qui estoit de lunettes caparassonne comme une
tortue d'escailles, et ne vivait que d'une viande qu'ils appellent en leur
patois Appellations. — RABELAIS.

REAT as was the position
of First President of the
Parliament of Paris, and
head of the civil and
criminal judicature of
France, it will be ad-
mitted that it was in
general worthily filled,
and that France can
look back with just
pride to a long list of
able and upright magis-
trates who have held the
office. This great place,
which early in the century had been filled by the un-
scrupulous and ambitious, but vigorous and able du Prat,
which had just been vacated by the virtuous and excellent
Jean de Selve, which was soon to fall to the learned and
prudent Jean Bertrandi, and upon which in the two

CHAP, xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 423

following centuries the Harlais, the de Thous, the Moles,
and the Bellievres were to confer so much lustre, was
occupied from 1529 to 1550 by Pierre Lizet, one of the
smallest persons who ever held that great office, and who
is known to posterity — if known in any way — neither as
a judge, nor as a jurist, nor as a theologian, in all which
capacities he hoped to go down with lustre to future ages,
but as the hero of Beza's merciless satire the Epistola
Passavanti. As we seldom think of his predecessor the
great du Prat without remembering the epithet which
Beaucaire not unfairly applied to him, ' the worst of
bipeds,' J to Lizet we might with justice apply the ex-
pression, the most stupid of bipeds ! He outrivalled
Hercules, says the author of the Epitaphe de Monsieur
Pierre Lizet: —

Car il fait mourir en mourant

La plus grand beste qui fut onques.

Well skilled in the forms and practice of the law, and
free from all suspicion of taking pecuniary bribes 2 — for we
must not deprive him of the single good quality which he
actually possessed — there seems little else to be said in his
favour. Obstinate, narrow-minded, and bigoted in the
extreme, arrogant in asserting his dignity in trifles as well as
in matters of importance, he was as ready to cringe when his
interests required it, as to bully when he thought he could do
it with impunity.3 Eager to stretch beyond what was just

1 ' Bipedum omnium (ut quidam ait) nequissimus.' Belcarius, Hist.
Gallica, lib. xv. c. I.

2 He was so poor when he resigned his office that it was necessary to
give him the abbey of St. Victor to provide him" with the means of sub-
sistence. But if free from the suspicion of pecuniary bribes, he was, accord-
ing to Henri Estienne, ready to betray the cause of justice if a temptation
of another kind presented itself. Introd. au Trait'e de la Conformit'e, c. xvii.

3 ' Ex viro, congressu primo, mulier posteriore factus,' says de Thou
of him on one occasion. Book vi.

424 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the rights of the treasury and the crown and the epices of
the judges, he was equally ready when Advocate-General to
betray the royal rights in favour of his own private clients.
He detested the ancient French customary law, the palladium
of the liberties of the north of France, and used all his efforts
to substitute the laws of imperial Rome for the old droit
commun des Fran fats. With the manners, the accent, and
the language of a peasant of his native Auvergne, his
loquacity, his ostentatious display of ignorance of everything
except the matters of his profession, his vanity in thinking
himself a great theologian and scholar, were no less sources
of amusement and ridicule to his enemies than his personal
appearance and figure.

Fancying himself a profound Latin scholar, he delighted
when on the bench to display his familiarity with it. His
knowledge of the language was about equal to that of
Bragmardus, whom Rabelais puts before us saying Ego habet
bonum vino. When, as sometimes happened, he had to
pronounce sentence in Latin, he committed the most
ridiculous blunders, and it is said to have been one of his
wonderful macaronic sentences which, coming to the ears of
Francis I., caused him, in 1539, to issue the edict putting
an end to the use of Latin on the judicial bench. The
First President having to dismiss an action, he expressed
the formula Deboutons et avons deboute by Debotamus et
debotavimus ! l

Inordinately addicted to wine and women, the extra-
ordinary redness of his face and nose, and his complete
baldness, could not fail to afford marks for the shafts of his
satirists, and when the unfortunate man's nose finally dropped
off it excited no pity, but only ridicule.2

1 Waddington, Vie de Ramus, 88 ; Gaillard, Hist, de Francois /., vol.
vii. p. 381.

2 See La Complainte de Messire Pierre Lizet sur le trespas de son feu nez,

xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 425

But the worst part of his character has yet to be noted.
There was one thing which he loved better than the pleasures
of either Bacchus or Venus ; it was the persecution of
heretics. He was nothing, if not pious and orthodox. If
it is doubtful whether that terrible chamber, where the lurid
light of the infrequent torches made darkness more hideous,
the Chambre Ardente^ owed its origin to him, yet it is
certain that over its sittings for the trial of heretics he
almost always presided in person.1 His tenure of office
coincided with the latter half of the reign of Francis I., when
the fair promises of the King's youth which had given rise to
hopes and expectations that he would prove a true father of
letters and a reformer of the Church had been falsified, and
when France was cursed with a King who allowed himself to
be the tool of his priestly counsellors, arid to attempt the
destruction of that intellectual progress of which he had once
aspired to be the leader. Pierre Lizet was appointed First
President in 1529, he filled that office until his compulsory
resignation in 1550, and though it would be unjust to
attribute exclusively to him the long series of punishments
which characterised this period (commencing with the martyr-
dom of Berquin in 1529), and of which the King himself
who sanctioned them must bear the chief reproach, yet it is

appended to the Epistola Passavanti, and to many editions of the Epistoltf
Qbscurorum Virorum. Also H. Estienne, Introd, au Traite de la Conformite,
chap, xvii., * le nez fut enchasse en plusieurs beaux epitaphes, en attendant
que le Pape eust loisir de le canonizer.' In the last chapter of the same
book H. Estienne quotes the following as part of an epigram made upon
Lizet by * un scavant personnage' : —

4 Viel pourri au rouge museau,
Deshonneur du siecle ou nous sommes."

1 Beza, Hist. Eccl. book ii. See on the Chambre Ardente M. Weiss's
work La Chambre Ardente. Etude sur la libert'e de conscience en France.
Paris, 1889. M. Weiss is unable to give the exact date of the formal
establishment of the Chambre Ardente, but he places it between 1 1
December 1547 and ^ May 1548.

426 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

certain that the severity of the persecution was increased and
its bitterness aggravated by the brutal bigotry of the First
President, who was never so happy as when sitting in the
Chambre Ardente trying and condemning (for when he
presided the words were synonymous) the so-called
Lutherans. Fortunate were the accused who were tried by
the Chambre de la Tournelle, where the Third President
Bertrandi or the President a mortier St. Andre usually
presided, for in the Grand Chambre (of which the Chambre
Ardente was a branch) there was no hope either of acquittal
or of any but the most severe sentence.1

It was as a theologian that Pierre Lizet especially hoped
to descend to posterity. On his compulsory resignation of
office in 1550, he took holy orders and received the abbey
of St. Victor, and then occupied himself in giving to the
world the theological lucubrations which he had been for
some years preparing. In 1551 and 1552 he published, in
a language which he supposed to be Latin, nine elaborate
controversial treatises which he fondly hoped would confound
the reformers, support the tottering cause of orthodoxy, and
(as they were dedicated to the Pope) might possibly entitle
him to the hat which du Prat, though a widower and fifty-
three years of age when he took holy orders, had obtained,
and which Bertrandi was soon afterwards to receive. Harsh
and repulsive in style,2 the matter was even worse. A single

1 The two courts seem to have carried on their traditions for some
time after Lizet's resignation. I have already noticed (p. 405) the
difference between the two chambers in 1558, and we find complaints made
that the Chambre de la Tournelle (presided over by the Presidents a mortier
Harlai and Seguier) was more favourable to heretics than the Grand
Chambre where the First President Le Maistre presided (Life of Dubourg
in La France Protestante).

2 ' Son style se trouva si dur, que le Pape en ayant, par cas fortuit,
porte un feuillet a ses affaires, s'en escorcha tout le sainct siege
Apostolique.' H. Estienne, Introd. au Trait'e de la Conformite, chap. xvii.
The story is told at length by Beza in the Epist. Passavanti : — ' Dicitur

xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 427

specimen of his arguments will suffice. In his treatise
against the translation of the Scripture into the vulgar
tongue, he pretends that in the early ages of the Church
there were two sorts of Latin, one only understood by the
learned, that it was into this learned language that St.
Jerome translated the Bible, and that this translation, though
called the Vulgate, was wholly incomprehensible to the
common people at the time it was made !

While these treatises brought the ex-president neither
praises nor rewards from his own side, they gave rise to
one of the most entertaining and witty satires which the
sixteenth century, so rich in pieces of this kind, produced.
Beza, who had not yet learned that an air of sanctimonious
severity was a necessary mark of Christian piety, aided
perhaps by Viret, who to the end of his days was dis-
tinguished by his lively and satirical humour, printed in 1553
his 'Epistle of Master Benedict Passavant in performance
of the commission entrusted to him by the Venerable Pierre
Lizet, late President of the Parliament of Paris, and now
Abbot of St. Victor, prope muros.' Passavant is supposed
to have been sent by Lizet to Geneva to learn what was
said there of these wonderful treatises, which were expected
by their author to be found unanswerable and to work the
ruin of the heretical commonwealth, and in this letter,
written in the style of the Epistol<e Obscurorum Virorum,

quod Papa Julius modernus quamvis non plus sciat de Latino quam unus
miles et sit melior canonista quam theologista quum audivisset unam
partem vestri libri, tenuit tarn parvum numerum, ut jusserit portari ad
suam 'latrinam id est ad sedem foraminatam quam dicunt trufatores esse
beati Petri : ubi ipse Papa cacat, non in qualitate dei super terram sed in
qualitate humanitatis suas cacaturientis : et ibi cum voluisset semel suas
nates abstergere cum illo, reperit vestrum stilum tarn durum quod sibi
decorticavit totam sedem Apostolicam : et dixit fricando sibi nates : In
veritate erat montigena, tarn erat durus et asper.' The Epistola Passavanti
is intended as a caricature of Lizet's Latin style.

428 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

the messenger renders an account to his master of the
result of his expedition, and omits none of the uncompli-
mentary criticisms on the book, and the still more un-
complimentary stories to the personal discredit of the
author which he purported to have heard at Geneva. The
most merciless and caustic ridicule is thrown on the ex-
president. His person, his habits, his disappointed ambition,
his style, and his arguments, are none of them spared.
The book had an immense success. While the treatises
of the ex -president fell into such utter oblivion, that
neither La Croix du Maine nor Duverdier, though writing
less than half a century after their first appearance, could
give the titles accurately, and that Bayle was never able
to see any of them, and could only refer to the Bodleian
Catalogue as an authority even for their titles, the Epistola
Passavanti had at least six editions in the sixteenth century,
was frequently reprinted in the eighteenth,1 and has within
the last few years had the honour of a new edition and a
French translation.2

The Abbot of St. Victor did not long survive the failure
of his hopes to achieve that distinction as a theologian
which he had missed as a magistrate. He died on the yth
of June I554-3

Lyons was within the jurisdiction of the Parliament of
Paris, and it was to this tribunal presided over by Lizet
that Dolet now appealed. It will readily be guessed what
chance he had of escaping condemnation. Not only had

1 It is appended to the editions of the Epistola Obscurorum Virorum
of 1710, 1742, and 1757, and was printed with the notes of Le Duchat
in the Memoires de Litterature of Sallengre in 1717.

2 Le Pas savant de Theodore de Beze traduit pour la premiere fois par
Isidore Liseux. Avec le Texte en regard. Paris, Liseux, 1875.

3 See Bayle, Diet., art. 'Lizet' ; Dupin, Auteurs Eccl. du XPF" Siecle;
Larfeul, Etude sur Pierre Lizet, Clermont Ferrand, 1856 ; Blanchard,
Eloge des Presidents du Parlement de Paris ; Crespin, Grand Martyrologe.

xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 429

he been charged with heresy and atheism, but he was one
of a class of men that were the especial aversion of the
First President. If there were any class of persons he hated
worse than heretics it was that of printers and booksellers.
The friend and ally of Beda (who had great influence over
him1), there can be little doubt that he was one of those
who had instigated the King to issue the edict of 1535 for
the suppression of printing. In 1538 we find him busily
engaged in the prosecution of Jean Morin the printer of
the first edition of the Cymbalum Mundi, and there exists
a letter from the * pauvre jeune gar f on libraire ' from prison
to the Chancellor Dubourg, appealing to him against the
First President, and praying for letters of remission setting
him at liberty.2 About the same time we find Lizet
writing3 in great glee to the Chancellor, how that shortly
before he had caused a bookseller named Jehan de la
Garde, with his books, together with ' certain other persons,'
to be burned,4 and showing great anxiety to proceed
against Morin. He even kept a bookseller in his pay, one
Andre, to discover and betray sellers and buyers of heretical
books.5

Fortunately for the prisoner, the sentence was pro-
nounced at Lyons and not at Paris. In cases of heresy
it was seldom that more than a few hours intervened
between the sentence and its execution, and an appeal to
the Parliament, when it could be lodged and heard imme-
diately, only resulted in expediting the execution, and some-

1 Bayle, Diet., art. « Beda,' Note E.

2 Notice sur Des Periers, prefixed to Lacour's edition of the Nouvelles
Recreations et Joyeux Devis, Paris, 1874.

3 Correspondance des Reformatturs, vol. iv. p. 4.18.

4 One of the ' other persons ' was a youth of twenty. Sleidan gives
an account of his execution. ' Tolosanus adolescens nobilis et literarum
studiosus? (Comment, lib. xii.)

5 Crespin, Grand Martyrologe (edit, of 1597), p. 177.

430 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

times increasing the severity of the penalty. The sentence
of perpetual imprisonment was pronounced on Berquin on
the 1 6th of April 1529. He straightway appealed to the
Parliament. His appeal was heard and rejected on the
morning of the iyth. The Parliament reformed the
judgment and condemned him to be burnt alive, and the
sentence was carried out the same afternoon.

With Pierre Lizet as its head, it was probable that an
appeal to the Parliament would not be allowed ; it was
certain that if allowed the sentence would be confirmed,
but at least time would be gained, during which the King
might personally be applied to. An appeal from Lyons
could not be disposed of with the same indecent haste that
was shown in the case of Berquin. The appeal had to be
lodged, the prisoner and the proces brought up from Lyons.
Jean de Peyrat was, fortunately, still Lieutenant-Governor,
and would take care that there was as much delay as
possible before the flames were lighted. It was he who, as
before mentioned, caused the execution of the sentence on
Baudichon de la Maison Neuve to be delayed so as to
allow of the intervention of the Lords of Berne, and who
had thus saved the life of the great citizen of Geneva.
But there was no time to be lost. Unless the King would
evoke the cause before himself, a very few weeks must see
the confirmation of the sentence and the lighting of the
flames. The first step was successful. By letters patent
of the 7th of October the King withdrew the appeal from
the Parliament and remitted the case to the Grand Council.
The effect of this was, that in any case, considerable delay
must ensue before the sentence could be confirmed or
carried out.

In the meantime Dolet was left in the prison at Lyons,
where he remained more than three months after his
sentence. He was allowed pens and paper, and at least

xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 431

a few books, and occupied himself in preparing, with a view
to publication, elaborate defences of himself in Latin and
French 1 from the charges on which he had been condemned,
and in revising and preparing for the press his translation
of the first three books of the Tusculan Disputations, which
in his translation of the Familiar Epistles he tells us he had
already composed. It appeared whilst he was still in prison,
prefaced by an epistle to the King, dated from the prison of
Lyons, the I5th of January I543.2

In this epistle he narrates his trials and convictions, he
alleges his innocence, and denies the charge of heresy. He
appeals to the protection of the King, and more vigorously
than prudently denounces the ignorant monk (Monsieur Le
Moyne as he sometimes calls him) before whom he was
tried, and whose legal right to try him and to style himself
Inquisitor of Faith he injudiciously calls in question.3

The royal letters patent withdrawing the appeal from
the Parliament, and directing it to be heard by the Grand
Council, had no other effect than that of causing delay, for
either the Council itself rejected the appeal and remitted
the case again to the Parliament, or the enemies of Dolet
obtained the revocation of the letters patent. All that we

1 These are lost. Dolet refers to them in the preface to the transla-
tion of the Tusculans.

2 Until shortly before the publication of the last edition of Brunei's
Manuel no copy of this first edition of Dolet's translation of the Tusculans
was known ; and that it had been printed by Dolet himself was only
inferred from an edition printed at Paris by Ruelle in 1544. A copy
was, however, at length discovered in the public library at Dole, and on
consulting it I found it prefaced by the interesting epistle to the King to
which I have several times referred in the text, and which does not
appear in the subsequent editions. The late M. Baudrier was the
possessor of a second copy of the original edition.

3 ' Matthieu Orry soy-disant Inquisiteur de la Foy ; je ne scais si
plutost se deburait appeller inquietateur d'ycelle.' Preface to the
Tusculans.

432 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

know certainly is that some time before the month of June
(1543) the appeal was remitted to the Parliament of Paris,
and the prisoner brought up from Lyons and imprisoned in
the Conciergerie pending the hearing.

- Up to this time the efforts of Dolet's friends to obtain
the royal pardon had been unsuccessful. It was a difficult
task they had undertaken. A single friend of literature and
men of letters remained in attendance on the King. Pierre
Duchatel, now Bishop of Tulle and reader to the King, had
become an absolute necessity of life to his master. He was
the King's dictionary and encyclopaedia. Francis I., who
had seen and known many learned men, used to say that
Duchatel was the only one whose knowledge he had not
exhausted after two years' intimacy. Lively, intelligent,
well-informed, in his early manhood alternately a professor,
a corrector of the press, an adventurous traveller, the King
found him a most entertaining and instructive companion.
He had made the acquaintance of Francis in 1536, and
rapidly rose in the royal favour, which he retained until
the King's death. At first a sympathiser with the reformed
doctrines, he subsequently professed the strictest orthodoxy,1
and sometimes expressed himself concerning heretics and

1 Yet he did not altogether escape the imputation of heresy. In his
funeral orations on the death of Francis I. he said that the soul of the
King had gone straight to paradise. The doctors of the Sorbonne (whom
he had offended by his protection of Robert Estienne) complained of so
horrible a doctrine. Pious as Francis I. was, his soul could not have
escaped passing through the flames of purgatory. Deputies were
appointed to wait upon the new King, and to charge Duchatel, who had
just been appointed Grand Almoner, with heresy. They were received
and entertained at dinner at St. Germans, where the King then was, by
his maitre cfhotel, a certain Mendoza, who urged them not to proceed
further with their complaints. ' I know well the disposition of the late
King,' he said, ' he never could bear to remain long in one place, and if
he did go to purgatory, he only just stayed to drink a stirrup-cup.'
Beza, Hist. Eccl. book ii.

xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 433

heresy in terms which we cannot but regret, but which do
not justify the severe language used of him by Beza and
Henri Estienne. It was seldom that he attempted to in-
fluence his master's opinions or actions. It was still more
rare for him to oppose Cardinal de Tournon. But he
was determined to make a vigorous effort to save from a
cruel death one of the foremost French men of letters, and
one with whom he had formerly been on terms of intimacy
and friendship. No time was to be lost ; the Parliament
was certain to confirm the sentence, and it would immedi-
ately be carried out. No further delay would be possible.
A petition to the King was forthwith prepared by Dolet
stating his case and the circumstances of his trial, repeating
his offer of submission and retraction of his errors, setting
forth the certainty of his conviction by the Parliament, and
praying the King's pardon. The document is judiciously
worded and well calculated to affect the King favourably to
the prisoner. It was presented by Duchatel, who personally
and warmly urged the cause of his friend. In the result,
and notwithstanding the opposition of the Cardinal, he was
successful. The proceedings before the Parliament were
again stayed, the case was brought up by the King's com-
mand before the Privy Council, and there inquired into ;
a favourable report was made to the King, and before the
end of June 1543 (Francis being then at Villers Cotterets)
the good Bishop had the satisfaction of obtaining for the
prisoner the royal pardon.

The letters of remission were in terms full and complete :
the heretic was to abjure all his errors before the Official of
the Bishop of Paris, all the books written and printed by
him referred to in the -prods were to be burnt to ashes, but
subject to these conditions, all that had been done with
reference to the prisoner, the appeals, the sentences, the
judgments, the decrees, the trial, the procedure, were

2 F «

434 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

declared null and void ; perpetual silence was imposed on
the Procureur-Royal ; Dolet was declared to be restored to his
good name, fame, and life ; his goods, which as an effect of
the sentence were to be confiscated, were restored to him ;
the Parliament was commanded to register the pardon, and
to allow the prisoner the full advantage thereof in every
way, and forthwith to set him at liberty.

The royal pardon was, however, but one step towards the
liberation of Dolet. The Parliament was always ready to
raise obstacles to the registration of a royal edict, and (as
in the case of the decree ordering the suppression of the
art of printing) a strong and judicious opposition, if well
supported by personal influence, not infrequently caused a
suspension or even a modification of the royal letters. The
Parliament had at its head a bigoted and violent opponent
of religious reform and intellectual progress, and among its
principal members were many who, if behind the First
President in ignorance and stupidity, were equal to him in
their hatred of the reformers and the men of letters. In a
body which, besides having Pierre Lizet as its head, had
Francois de St. Andre as a President a mortier, and Gilles
Le Maistre as Advocate-General, it was not difficult to find
pretexts for refusing to register the pardon or liberate the
prisoner.

It will be remembered that, owing to some mistake on
the part of Dolet or his advisers, the royal pardon granted
to him for the murder of ' Guillot dit Compaing ' had never
been registered, and that Dolet had only been liberated by
the Lieutenant-Governor of Lyons, on giving security to
appear for sentence whenever called upon. Accordingly,
when on the I9th of July the prisoner appeared in the
Criminal Court of the Parliament, presented the royal
pardon, and demanded that the same should be registered,
his application was refused on the ground (as it seems) that

xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 435

he was still under sentence of death for the murder of
Compaing, and that the letters patent of the preceding June
in no way freed him from that sentence or its consequences,
and the prisoner was taken back to the Conciergerie.

On the 24th of the same month he again appeared in
the chamber of La Tournelle and presented the pardon of
the 1 9th of February 1537 ; but it was contended by his
opponents that this pardon, not having been duly registered
by the Seneschal of Lyons, was of no effect and could not
be pleaded, and the court again refused his application.
Once more the King was personally applied to, and on the
ist of July further letters patent were granted by Francis,
ordering the Parliament forthwith to register and give the
prisoner the benefit of the letters patent of February 1537.
Again difficulties were made, and during the two following
months the unfortunate prisoner was frequently brought
before the court and interrogated, no doubt in the hope
that admissions might be obtained from him inconsistent
with his abjuration and submission to the Church, or that
he might be goaded into the use of unseemly or violent
language which would enable the Parliament, while pro-
fessing to recognise the royal letters, to punish Dolet for
contempt, or for acts or language subsequent to the date of
the pardon.

But the good Duchatel was unwearied in his efforts.
The King's literary tastes had not yet wholly passed away,
and he seems to have been convinced by the Bishop of Tulle
that it was Dolet's love of letters, and not his opinions, that
had led to his prosecution. Though rapidly sinking into
a state of mental and physical weakness, and a prey to
bigotry and superstition, there were still moments in which
Francis resembled his former and better self, and recollect-
ing that he had been called the father of letters, was un-
willing to seem wholly unmindful of his reputation. The

436 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

refusal to register his successive pardons could not but
have been distasteful to him, and accordingly further letters
patent were issued on the 2ist of August confirming the
former, ordering in peremptory terms the pardons already
granted to be forthwith registered and due effect given
to them, or that the Parliament should within fifteen days
set forth and show to the King its grounds for refusing the
registration. This time success attended the efforts of
Duchatel. On the 1 3th of October 1543 Dolet was again
brought before the court in the chamber of La Tournelle,
all the letters patent were read, the Procureur- General
was heard, and the court decreed the registration of the
several letters of pardon and amplification ; the prisoner
was ordered to be liberated upon duly making his abjuration
before the Official of the Bishop ; at the same time his books
were ordered to be burned. The sentence was pronounced
by the President a mortier, Francois de St. Andre.

It is impossible to praise too highly the conduct of
Duchatel in this matter. Accomplished and intelligent, he
was a man neither of strong opinions nor of firm principles.
Essentially a courtier, he desired a life of learned leisure,
accompanied by royal favour and an abundance of good
things of all kinds, yet he risked the loss of all these by
his zealous attempts to save the life of one whom the
most powerful man in France, the Cardinal de Tournon,
had decided was an atheist, and had determined should
be burned. The Cardinal bitterly reproached the Bishop
of Tulle for his conduct. ' Do you,' said he, ' who hold the
rank of bishop in the Catholic Church, dare to oppose
yourself to all who have the interests of religion and piety
at heart, and to defend before the most Christian King, not
only those wretches who are infected with the Lutheran
heresy, but even atheists and blasphemers ?' Duchatel
replied that he had not defended and did not defend any of

xxn THE FIRST PRESIDENT 437

Dolet's crimes or heresies, that he had only interceded with
the King for one who promised a reformation of life and
manners befitting a Christian man. ' I,' he continued, ' act
the part of a bishop of the Church of Christ. I follow the
teaching of the Apostles, and of all those saints and martyrs
who by their blood have built up our holy Church. It is
their example which instructs me that the duty of a bishop
consists in turning the hearts of kings from bloodshed and
cruelty, in inclining them to gentleness, clemency, and mercy.
In accusing me of forgetting my duty as a bishop it is you
who forget your own. I have spoken as a bishop, you are
acting as an executioner.' l .

Released from prison, Dolet lost no time in returning to
Lyons to his wife, his son, his press, and his books. These,
not gold or silver, were, as he tells us, his treasures. To
Lyons he was bound by the strongest ties of affection : it
was there that he desired peacefully to pass his life, and to
pursue his literary and typographical avocations.

1 Gallandus, Vita Castellani, p. 62. About the same time, or a little
later, Duchatel successfully used his credit with the King in favour of
Ramus. Galland, Danes, Gouvea, and others had so worked upon the
King's mind as to induce him to decide on condemning Ramus to the
galleys for his heresies on the subject of Aristotle. It was then that
Duchatel, turning the matter into ridicule, appeased the King, and in-
duced him to come to a milder resolution. He represented to him that
it did not become so enlightened a king to inflict a criminal punishment
on a sophist whom no one believed to be serious, and who understood
nothing of philosophy, but that he ought rather to be made to dispute,
before competent judges, with other learned men, whose arguments might
convince him, and perhaps cure him of his folly.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SECOND ENFER

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book ; who kills a man kills a
reasonable creature, God's image, but he who destroys a good book kills
reason itself; kills the image of God as it were in the eye. Many a man
lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood of
a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond
life. — MILTON.

OT disheartened by his
past misfortunes, or by
the confiscation of nearly
all his books, Dolet lost
no time in again setting
his press to work. But
his misfortunes had, as
he thought, taught him
caution, and he was fully
resolved to keep out of
the dangerous line of
theology, and neither to
write nor print hence-
forth any book which
could cause the least scandal or bring him into the least
danger. The Commentaries of Cagsar, and new editions of
his history of Francis I., of his observations upon Terence,

CHAP, xxni THE SECOND ENFER 439

of the works of Marot, and of the three books which had
previously hit the tastes of the time and enjoyed for the
moment an enormous popularity, La parfaicte Amye^
L'Amye de Court \ and Du Mespris de la Court: et de la
louange de la vie Rusticque, were the first fruits of his
freedom after his fifteen months of imprisonment, and were
books which afforded no handle to his enemies. But he had
underrated their hatred and their power. Shortly before
the 6th of January 1544, two packets, on which were
written in large legible letters the name of Etienne Dolet,
were seized as they were entering the gates of Paris, and,
when examined, were found to be filled, the one with books
which had been printed by him, the other with prohibited
books emanating from the heretical press of Geneva. So
far as we know, there was no evidence whatever that the
books had been sent by Dolet ; he positively denied that
such was the case, and it seems to me in the highest degree
improbable that, if he had sent them, he would have caused
his now too well-known name to be inscribed upon them.
Besides, the whole of the heretical books printed by him or
found in his house had been confiscated, and were already
in the possession of the Parliament or the Sorbonne. But
the clumsy ruse of his enemies was successful. The matter
was forthwith brought before the Parliament. Dolet was
charged with sending prohibited and heretical books to
Paris, and an order for his arrest was despatched to Lyons.
It reached him on the 6th of January, whilst in the midst
of his family and friends he was celebrating ' le jour des rots,
as he himself tells us :—

Ouand on me vint au corps ainsi saisir ;
Car a cela alors point ne pensoys,
Et de crier le Roy boyt m'avancoys.

His denial of the charge was of no avail ; he was

44o ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

forthwith arrested and committed by the Lieutenant-General
of the Seneschalty to the custody of Jacques Devaulx, messager
ordinaire of Lyons, who was charged with the duty of taking
him to Paris, and in the meantime he was thrown into the
prison at Lyons, where, however, he only remained two days.
On the day following he persuaded the concierge of the
prison that it was of great importance to him that he should
on the next day visit his house in the Rue Merciere, as a
sum of money was payable to him which the debtor would
not pay unless he was there in person to receive it ; and he
further added the inducement that he had some excellent
Muscat wine just ready for drinking, and that if the concierge
would conduct him for a short time to his house he could
receive the money, and then they could together drink the
Muscat * a plein fonds.'

Gaolers and turnkeys have at all times had the reputation
of being thirsty souls, and, induced by the promise of the
wine, and not impossibly of a pecuniary gratification or a
commission on the amount to be received, the concierge
agreed to his prisoner's proposal, taking, however, as he
thought, due precautions against his escape. A supper was
provided at Dolet's expense for the concierge and four
sergents-de-ville, and very early the next morning, before
dawn, the concierge and his prisoner, preceded and followed
by two sergents, left the prison of La Rouane, which occupied
the site of the present Palais de Justice. The bridge
which now crosses the Saone at that point did not exist in
the sixteenth century, but it seems probable that a foot-
bridge, possibly of boats, then occupied its place. The party
would cross the river by this bridge, and then would gain
the Rue Merciere very near to Dolet's house by the Rue
de la Monnaie. The Rue Merciere then runs parallel to
the Saone and to the Quai St. Antoine for some distance
in a northerly direction. At the corner of the Rue de la

xxiir THE SECOND ENFER 441

Monnaie stood the convent of St. Antoine, and a little to
the north of the convent stood the house occupied by Dolet.
The upper stories of all the houses in this part of the
street have been since then demolished and rebuilt, but
the solid stone ground floors of most of them still remain
as they were in the sixteenth century. The entrance then
was, and still is, into an arched stone passage, which not
only gives access to the house itself, but extends (or
communicates with a further passage) under the house at
the back facing the river, and so affords a means of egress
to the Quai St. Antoine exactly as Dolet describes it.1

The members of Dolet's household were prepared for his
visit, and had, as it appeared, privately received his directions
as to the course to be pursued. On arriving at the house,
Dolet knocked at the door leading into the dark arched
passage ; it was only partially and momentarily opened,
after much apparent hesitation, by some one from within,
who appeared greatly terrified at the sight of the guard
and immediately shut the door in the faces of the new-
comers. Dolet, however, forced his way into the passage ; the
concierge and sergents, not knowing the locality, followed as
best they could, the outer door was shut and fastened behind,
another door was hastily opened and as hastily shut ; Dolet
passed through it, but the concierge and sergents remained

1 I owe it to the kindness of M. le President Baudrier that I am able
thus precisely to identify the locality of Dolet's house. He was good
enough to walk with me from the Palais de Justice to the Rue Merciere,
following the route which Dolet and the concierge must have traversed,
and through several of the still existing stone passages which connect
the houses on the west side of this street with the Quai St. Antoine.
Though Dolet's house itself cannot be precisely identified, yet his
description of it and the narration of his escape enables us to decide
with certainty that it was one of those lying on the westerly side of the
street, a little to the north of the site of the convent of St. Antoine.
M. Boulmier has strangely mistaken the locality in giving Dolet a house
on the quay.

442 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

fastened up like birds in a cage, while the prisoner escaped
through the passage at the back leading to the quay, and
soon was far from Lyons. He succeeded in making his
escape to Piedmont, where he remained concealed for some
months.1

In the meantime, although Dolet had in person escaped
from the hands of his enemies, his books were still in
their possession, and it will be remembered that part of
the sentence of the Parliament was that they should be
burnt. It would seem that this part of the sentence was
not immediately carried into execution, and it may not
improbably have been the very books which were ordered
to be burnt that had been made use of for the infamous
plot against him which I have already narrated.

Next to burning heretics, nothing delighted the First
President so much as burning books. If he had not a
hand in the plot himself, we shall not be far wrong in
attributing it to his creature Andre, whom, as before
mentioned, he kept in his pay for the purpose of discovering
and betraying the buyers and sellers of heretical books.
The plot having for the present failed by the escape of the
prisoner, a grand auto da fe of the books was decided on,
and that this might be done with more pomp and publicity
it was determined not to rest upon the sentence already

1 The account of Dolet's arrest and escape is taken from his poem
addressed to the King in his Second Enfer. Jacques Devaulx, in his
petition to the Parliament of Paris praying to be reimbursed his expenses
arising from Dolet's escape and subsequent capture (Archives Nationales,
Carton x2 b 6), states that on January 7 he had been 'charge par le
lieutenant general de la Seneschaucee de Lyon d'amener prisonnier
des prisons ordinaires de Lyon en la conciergerie du palais ung
nomme Estienne Dolet imprimeur de Lyon lequel des le VHP desd.
mois et an seroit evade des mains et puyssance dud. suppliant.' It is
not impossible that Devaulx is the person referred to by Dolet as the
concierge.

xxni THE SECOND ENFER 443

pronounced, but to have the matter again brought before
the Parliament and a formal decree made for their burn-
ing. At a sitting of the Grand Chamber on the I4th
of February 1544, presided over by the First President
Lizet in person, the Inquisitor-General made an application
for a special direction for burning the books mentioned in
the sentence of the preceding I3th of October, as containing
damnable, pernicious, and heretical doctrines, and on his
demand the court ordered that they should be burnt at the
parvis of the church of Notre Dame at Paris, to the sound
of the great bell of the church, public proclamation, accom-
panied by the sound of the trumpet, being at the same time
made, forbidding all booksellers and printers thenceforth
from possessing such books, under pain of being punished
as heretics and favourers of heretics. Nevertheless the
court ordered that a single copy of each book should be
preserved and carefully kept in the registry of the Parlia-
ment. The sentence is signed by the First President, and
would be forthwith carried into execution.1 Of several of
the books named in the sentence no copy is now known to
exist, while others are represented by a single copy, probably
the one that was retained by the order of the Court.

The mountains of Piedmont afforded Dolet a safe re-
treat. There he occupied himself in preparing a series of

1 The following were the books ordered to be burned : — Les Gestes du
Roy, Epigrammes de Dolet, Cat on Chrestien, L' Exhortation a la lecture de la
Saincte Escripture, La Fontaine de Vye, Les Cinquante-deux Dimenches
composes par Fabre Stapulense, Les Heures de la Compaignie des Penitent, Le
Chevalier Chrestien, La maniere de soy confesser d'Erasme ; Le Sommaire du
Vieil et Nouveau Testament imprime par le diet Dolet ; Le Nouveau Testa-
ment, imprime par icelluy Dolet en franc oys, Loci communes de Melanchthon,
Unio Dissidentium, la Bible de Geneve, Calvinus intitule, Institution de
religion chrestienne, per Calvinum. Proces d'Estienne Dolet, p. 30 ;
D'Argentre, Collectio Judiciorum, vol. ii. pt. i, p. 133 ;» Bulletin de la
Societe de Fhistoire du protestantisme fran^ais, i Jan. 1885.

444 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

poems upon his imprisonment, to which he gave the name of
Le Second Enfer. In 1532, Marot, then in prison on charges
of heresy, had described his imprisonment, and appealed
against it to the King, in a volume which he subsequently
published under the name of L1 Enfer, and from this time the
expression ' L? Enfer de Marat ' has been used as a synonym
for a prison. Dolet borrowed the title from his friend. He
had intended, as he tells us in the preface, to publish a Premier
Enfer, relating to the fifteen months' imprisonment which had
so lately terminated ; but his arrest and flight had prevented
him from printing, although he had nearly completed, this
work, and the necessity of obtaining the royal pardon for his
escape from the hands of justice, and permission to return to
France, induced him to compose and publish his Second Enfer
before the first had seen the light. It was completed on the
ist of May 1544, and shortly afterwards, unable to resist the
desire of once more embracing his wife and son, Dolet
ventured to enter France, and even to make his way to
Lyons, hoping that his visit would remain undiscovered, and
intending, after he had given the necessary directions for
printing his Second Enfer, to proceed to the royal camp,
which was then pitched in Champagne, to present to the
King, whom he expected to find there, the pathetic epistles
with which the book commences, and to entreat pardon for
his escape, and permission to return in peace to Lyons.
' Lately returning from Piedmont in company with troops of
veteran soldiers in order to proceed with them to the camp
which you, most Christian King, have pitched in Cham-
pagne,' thus he subsequently wrote to Francis I., ' affection
and paternal love would not allow me to pass near Lyons
without visiting it ; so, laying aside all thoughts of the danger
and risk which I ran, I went there to see my little son, and
to visit my family. Being at Lyons four or five days, for
the contentment of my spirit I did not forget to examine my

xxin THE SECOND ENFER 445

treasures to see if there was anything spoiled or lost. My
treasures are not gold or silver or other perishable things,
but the products of my mind as well in Latin as in your
French tongue, treasures of far more importance to me than
earthly riches, and which I hold in singular affection for this
reason, that these are they which will make me live after my
death, and will bear witness of me that I have not lived in
this world as an idle or useless person. Examining these my
said treasures, I chanced to light upon two dialogues of Plato
which I had some time since translated, and as I had resolved
to publish certain of the compositions which I had made in
justification of myself with reference to my second imprison-
ment, it has seemed good to me to add to these compositions
the said dialogues, since the one is not unsuited to my con-
dition, being upon the miseries of human life, and the
other is to show you that I have commenced and made good
progress in the translation of the whole of the works of Plato.
So that either in your kingdom or elsewhere (since without
cause I have been driven from France) I promise you with
the help of God that I will give you within a year the whole
of Plato translated into your own language.

* Certainly, if my chief aim were not the honour and welfare
of my country, I should not devote myself to such excessive
labour ; but even if France should prove ungrateful in refer-
ence to me (I call it ungrateful, since its rulers try to trouble
me and expel me from it without any crime of mine), I shall
not on this account cease from enriching it and illustrating it
in every way that I possibly can. It is in your power, Sire,
to put an end to these my troubles, and by your goodness
and clemency to give me still greater heart for pursuing and
effectuating my literary enterprises as well Latin as French,
and that you would do this I most humbly beg and pray.'

The volume which Dolet caused to be printed at Lyons,
containing the Second Enfer and the two dialogues (Axiochus,

446 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

then erroneously attributed to Plato, and Hipparchus\ is in
some respects the most interesting of all the compositions of
its author. Its extreme rarity is such that no copy is to be
found in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and that neither Nee de
la Rochelle nor any of the writers before M. Aime Martin
who have referred to it (except Goujet) were able to meet
with it. The single copy of the Lyons edition now known
to exist is among the treasures of the Mazarin library, and
it is from this that M. Aime Martin published his reprint in
1830. The epistles of which the Second Enfer is composed
are some of thenTof considerable poetic merit, and are written
in a pathetic and elevated tone, full of lofty and noble senti-
ments, asking for the writer's liberty, yet never in a servile
spirit, but on the grounds of his innocence and his deserts, and
I cannot but think that they conclusively disprove the
charges of irreligion and impiety. But the chief interest in
the volume does not arise from its merits or character, but
from the fact that it cost its author his life. Three words
of the translation of Axiochus constituted one of the capital
charges against Dolet. Of this book M. Aime Martin has
remarked that ' it is one of the pieces of the great process
prosecuted by fanaticism against the friends of intelligence
and of reason. Dolet published it to justify himself from the
calumnies of the monks, and the monks suppressed it in
order to destroy all traces of their victim. Such a work
ought not to perish. We should always be able to find a
copy to throw at the feet of those who regret the temporal
power of the Church, and the weakness of kings who allowed
it to rule.'

The Second Enfer consists of twelve epistles in verse : two
addressed to the King, two to the Duke of Orleans, one to
the Cardinal of Lorraine, two to the Duchess D'Estampes,
and one each to the sovereign and venerable court of the
Parliament of Paris, the heads of justice at Lyons, the Queen

xxin THE SECOND ENFER 447

of Navarre the sole Minerva of France, Cardinal de Tournon,
and the author's friends. The first epistle, addressed to the
King, is both the longest and the most interesting. Dolet
gives an account of the plot of his enemies in preparing and
sending to Paris the two packets of books, and shows the
absurdity of supposing he had done this ; he gives an account
of his imprisonment and of his escape, and then defends his
life, his opinions, and his actions. A single crime he appears
to admit, that he had continued since the royal pardon to
sell several books of Holy Scripture : this seems to have been
' the head and front of his offending ' : —

Mais quelcques gens ne sont point a leur aise,
De ce que vends, et imprime sans craincte,
Livres plusieurs de 1'Escripture Saincte.
Voyla le mal dont si fort ilz se deulent :
Voyla pourquoy ung si grand mal me veulent :
Voyla pourquoy je leur suys odieux :
Voyla pourquoy ont jure leurs grands dieux

§ue j'en mourray, si de propos ne change
'est ce pas la une rancune estrange ?

In his epistle to the Chiefs of Justice of Lyons, he is still
more explicit on this subject : —

Or on scait bien, et bien scavoir se peult,
Que la raison, dont de moy on se deult,
Et dont je suys poursuyvy par Justice,
N'est pour forfaict, et aulcun meschant vice,
Auquel je soys par trop abandonne.
C'est seulement que me suis addonne
(Sans mal penser) depuis ung temps certain,
De mettre en vente en Francois et Latin
Quelcques livrets de la saincte Escripture.
Voyla mon mal, voyla ma forfaicture
Si forfaicture on la doibt appeler.
Mais si au Roy il plaist me rappeller
Et faire tant, que ce malheur me sorte,
Je suys content, que le Diable m'emporte,

448 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Ou qu'on me brusle, ou qu'on me face pendre,
Si pour tel cas jamais tombe en esclandre.

He promises the King that for the future he will never
be guilty of this crime : —

Quant au surplus je m'en deporteray,

Et ton vouloir en tout je parferay :

Car s'il te plaist me defendre tout court,

Que veu le bruict, qui partout de moy court,

Je n'aye plus a liures imprimer

De 1'Escripture ; on me puisse opprimer,

Si de ma vie il en sort ung de moy ;

Et si j'en vends, tomber puisse en esmoy

De mort villaine ou de flamme ou de corde

Et de bon coeur a cela je m'accorde.

Although here, as elsewhere, he seems to have had a
singular prevision of the fate that was to befall him, and
which the boldness of his language seems to invite, he by no
means wishes for death. On the contrary, he begs the King
to grant him life that he may devote it to study and the pro-
duction of works useful to his country : —

Vivre je veulx, pour 1'honneur de la France

?ue je pretends (si ma mort on n'avance)
ant celebrer, tant orner par escripts,
Que 1'estrangier n'aura plus a mespris
Le nom Francoys : et bien moins nostre langue
Laquelle on tient pauvre en tout harengue.

Then, with more vigour than prudence, denouncing the
enemies of literature and culture into whose hands the
wretched King had now fallen, and whose slave, though
sometimes unwillingly, he now was, he calls on Francis not
to permit the persecutions of the learned, but to protect them
against the malice of their enemies :—

Permettras tu que par gens vicieux,
Par leur effort lasche et pernicieux,

xxin THE SECOND ENFER 449

Les gens de bien et les gens de scavoir,
Au lieu d'honneur, viennent a recepvoir
Maulx infiniz, et oultrages enormes ?
II n'est pas temps, ores, que tu t'endormes,
Roy nompareil, des vertueux le pere :
Entends tu point au vray, quel vitupere
Ces ennemys de vertu te pourchassent,

8uand les scavantz de ton royaume ilz chassent,
u les chasser a tout le moins pretendent ?
Certes (grand Roy) ces malheureux entendent
D'anihiler devant ta propre face,
Et toy vivant, la bienheureuse race
Des vertueux, des lettres et lettrez.

All that he desires and supplicates from the King is to
be allowed to return to France, to dwell peacefully at Lyons,
to devote himself to literary pursuits.

' These verses,' remarks M. Aime Martin, * as verses, are
far from being admirable ; but what elevation, what courage
there is in the sentiments which they proclaim ! Thus to
attack face to face the enemies of humanity, to throw light into
the hearts of kings, to teach them that which no one dares to
say to them, but which they have so much interest in know-
ing, namely, that they should make their glory repose on
the happiness and intelligence of their people, to do that
to-day, would be to deserve well of mankind, to do that in
those days of superstition was to devote oneself to death.' l

The epistles to the Duke of Orleans, the Cardinal of
Lorraine, the Duchess d'Estampes, and the Queen of Navarre,
need not detain us. Dolet repeats the assertion of his
innocence, gives an account of the false charge upon which
he had been arrested, and entreats the interest of these
powerful personages with the King. In his epistle to the
Parliament of Paris he ventures on a still bolder strain, and

1 Rehabilitation (p. 8), prefixed to the reprint of Le Second Enfer.
Techener, 1830.

2 G

450 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

defends himself and his acts, and indirectly literature gener-
ally, in a strain of noble indignation, which if the author
really expected it to have any effect, shows us how entirely
ignorant he was of the cruel heart and narrow mind of the
First President : —

Quand on m'aura ou brusle ou pendu,

Mis sur la roue, et en cartiers fendu,

Qu'en sera-il ? ce sera ung corps mort.

Las ! toutesfoys n'auroit on nul remord

De faire ainsy mourir cruellement

Ung qui en rien n'a forfaict nullement ?

Ung homme est il de valeur si petite ?

Est ce une mouche ? ou ung verms, qui merite

Sans nul esgard si tost estre destruict ?

Ung homme est il si tost faict et instruict,

Si tost muny de science et vertu,

Pour estre ainsi qu'une paille ou festu,

Anihile" ? faict on si peu de compte

D'ung noble esprit qui mainct aultre surmonte ?

He concludes with asking from the parliament —

Ung bon arrest qui en sens bref et court

Dira comment la venerable court

Du parlement de Paris me remect

En mon entier : et qu'au neant el'mect,

Du tout en tout, mon emprisonnement,

Sans que jamais bruict en soyt aultrement ?

Cela faisant, justice vous fairez,

Et d'equite grande vous userez

En relevant 1'innocent de malheur,

Qui ne taira jamais vostre valleur.

To Cardinal de Tournon, the all-powerful minister, he
protests his innocence from all thought of heresy, he declares
that he has lived and wishes to live a good Christian ; he
reminds the Cardinal, perhaps rather maladroitly, that it was
he who seven years before at Moulins had presented his

xxni THE SECOND ENFER 451

Commentaries to the King, and that to him he was indebted
for the royal privilege to print the books which he should
compose and edit, and he begs now for a single word to the
King in his favour. But it is in the epistle to his friends
with which the Second Enfer concludes that the author rises
to his highest strain. He has done with apologies, he has
done with justification, he has done with complaint, and as a
true disciple of Cicero and Plato, conscious of his innocence,
conscious of his integrity, he is prepared for either fortune,
equally ready for life or death : —

Bon cueur, ban cueur ; c'est a ce coup,
Que Fortune a faict son effort,
Pour me dresser du mal beaucoup :
Mais tousiours je suis le plus fort,
Car combien qu'elle tasche fort
De ruiner ce peu de bien,

?ue j'avoys quis par bon moyen,
outesfois, 1'esprit me demeure.
Parquoy oster ne me peult rien,

8ue ne recouure en bien peu d'heure.
'est assez, que 1'esprit s'asseure,
Et qu'il ne perd point sa Constance :
Victeur sera (c'est chose seure)
Du monstre arme a toute oultrance.
O que Vertu a de puissance !
O que Fortune est imbecille !
O comme Vertu la mutille,
Quand elle prend le frein aux dents !
Vertu n'est jamais inutille :
Les effects en sont evidents.
Ne plaignez doncq' mes accidents
Amys : doulcement je les porte,
Et me ry de ces incidents :
Car Vertu tousiours me conforte
Tant, que j'espere faire en sorte,
Que Fortune a moy attachee,
La premiere en sera faschee :

452 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Et que du mal bien me viendra.

Ce ne sera chose cachee :
Je suys certain qu'il adviendra.

Had the book ended here we could hardly imagine that
even the First President could have found matter for con-
demnation. But after the Enfer came the two dialogues,
Deulx Dialogues de Platan, Philosophe Divin et supernaturel,
Scavoir est L'ung intitule Axiochus, Qui esf des miseres de la
vie humaine et de rimmortalite de Fame. Et par consequence
du mespris de la mort. Item ung aultre, intitule Hipparchus,
qui est de la convoitise de I'Homme, touchant la lucratifve. Le
tout nouvellement traduict en langue Francoyse par Estienne
Dolet, natif D' Orleans, 1544. This was one of the earliest
attempts to clothe any of the writings of Plato in a French
dress, and it is curious that the first dialogue to be translated
into that language should be one of those now admitted to
be apocryphal.1

1 According to Nee de la Rochelle, the Axiochus had already been
translated into French and printed at Paris. The authority cited for this
statement is the catalogue of the library of Count Hohendorf (now at
Vienna) part 3, No. 1930, where a French translation of the Axiochus
appears, undated but bound up with pieces dated 1537 and 1539, from
which Nee de la Rochelle conjectures that the Axiochus, would be about the
same date. The only other copy known of this translation is in my
possession, having been purchased by me at the sale of Baron Pichon's
Library (May 1897, Cat. No. 1114). Baron Pichon thought it peut etre
unique, but from the fact that the title agrees with that given in the
Hohendorf Catalogue I have no doubt that they are both copies of the
same book. The following is the title : Axiochus Dialogue de Xenocrates
Platonique, ou est traicte de despriser la mort, et de limmortalite de lame,
traduict de Grec en Francoys. On les vent a Paris a la rue sainct Jaques a
lenseigne des troys Corones par Hierome de Gourmont. The dedication
is signed ' Gu. Post,' and confirms the statement of La Croix du Maine
that the Axiochus had been translated by Postel. The translation seems
to be made — as the title states — directly from the Greek, and is altogether
different from that of Dolet. A comparison of the two leads to the con-
clusion that neither translator was acquainted with the other's work, but I

xxni THE SECOND ENFER 453

Whether Dolet translated these Dialogues directly from
the Greek, or from the Latin translations already existing,
has been considered a matter of doubt, and the question
whether he was in fact acquainted with the Greek language
has been a subject of much discussion among his critics and
biographers.1 Duverdier states him to have been ' bien
verse es langues Grecque et Latine.' Baillet adopts this state-
ment. La Monnoye, however, in his edition of the
Jugemens des Savans, says,2 ' It does not appear by the
works of Dolet that he knew Greek, his pretended versions
of the Hipparchus of Plato and the Axiochus have been
made from the Latin translations.' Maittaire quotes this
passage, but is disposed to give more weight to Dolet's
own statement that he had devoted much time and labour
to the study of Greek as well as Latin.3 Nee de la
Rochelle, however, whilst admitting the weakness of Baillet's

am unable to form any opinion which was the earlier in point of time. I only
find two other books of Postel printed by Jerome Gourmont, Syria1 Descriptio,
1540, and Signorum Coelestium Configuratio, 1553. In the Yemeniz cata-
logue, No. 473, is a translation of the Axiochus printed at Paris by Denis
Janot, but without date. A note states it to be a second edition of
Dolet's translation, and it is so given in the last edition of Brunei's Manuel
(vol. iv. c. 703), but this seems doubtful, the title being altogether different.
I have been unable to meet with a copy of the book.

The same year (1544) that Dolet's translation of the two dialogues
appeared, a French translation of the Lysis of Plato by Des Periers was
printed at Lyons by De Tournes, with other works of Des Periers. It is
erroneously stated by M. Aime Martin (Rehabilitation, p. 21) to bear
the mark of Dolet, the doloire or axe.

1 We cannot attach much weight to the statement of so bitter an
enemy as Rr.Floridus who writes 'verum de Graecis Doletus non loquitur, qui
ne primis quidem Gr<ec# linguee rudimentis sit imbutus.' Adv. Doleti Calumnias.

2 Vol. i. pt. 2, p. 43.

8 Maittaire, Ann. Typ. vol. iii. p. 82. M. Boulmier has strangely
misunderstood Maittaire's remark. He says (p. 213), 'Maittaire qui
produit en note cette assertion du savant Dijonnais (La Monnoye) la
combat au moyen d'un argument plus specieux que solide, en invoquant
1'autorite de La Croix du Maine et de Duverdier tous deux probablement

454 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

argument, attempts with much ingenuity to combat the
statement of La Monnoye, and to show that Dolet was a
Greek scholar. He rests his case,1 first, on the statement
of Dolet himself, who in his Manure de bien traduire says
that the reading of the Latin and Greek languages was his
principal occupation ; secondly, on the privilege granted
to him by Francis I., for the impression of Greek, Latin,
Italian, and French books, composed, translated, revised,
amended, illustrated, or annotated by him ; thirdly, he
contends that it would have been impossible for Dolet to
have understood or translated the works of Cicero without
understanding Greek, since Cicero has made frequent use
of Greek words, has inserted in his works a great number
of Greek passages in verse and prose, and has translated or
imitated from that language a still greater number, so that,
without a knowledge of Greek, Dolet would have been
stopped at each line of his translation of the Familiar Epistles,
and still more of that of the Tusculans ; lastly, he replies to
the argument that might be drawn from the fact that Dolet
had not in fact printed any Greek books, by saying that
neither had he printed any Italian work, yet that it could
not be denied that he knew that language after having
spent more than four years in Italy. Nee de la Rochelle
further refers to the Greek verses addressed to Dolet by
Honore Veracius, with the remark, ' C'est a mon avis se
moquer d'un savant, que de le louer en face dans une
langue qu'il n'entend pas.' 2

I need hardly say that M. Boulmier, who invariably

versus dans la langue Grecque.' This is just what Maittaire does not do.
He points out that Baillet was in error in citing La Croix du Maine as
an authority for Dolet's knowledge of Greek, as that writer says nothing
on the subject, and though he considers La Monnoye wrong in saying
that Duverdier was altogether ignorant of Greek, his own view is based
not at all upon Duverdier's opinion but upon Dolet's own statements.
1 Vie de Dolet, p. 71. 2 Ibid. p. 94.

xxin THE SECOND ENFER 455

adopts the conclusion most favourable to the reputation of
his hero, concludes that ' Dolet knew sufficient Greek to
understand and translate Plato, not only by the aid of a
Latin version, but directly from the original text.' I have
already mentioned that I have been fortunate enough to
discover two (partially) Greek books printed by Dolet,
and which have been hitherto entirely unknown, the
Institutiones and Meditationes Grammatics of Clenard.1
To the first of these is prefixed a Latin ode by Dolet
himself. Nee de la Rochelle's arguments do not seem to
me to be of much force. All the passages quoted by
Cicero in the Tusculans from Greek authors are cited in
Latin, and there are not more than about a dozen isolated
Greek words given in that work ; and as to these, and the
verses of Honore Veracius, if verses they can be called,
they could have been easily translated, with the aid of the
dictionary of Craston, Gyllius, or Morrhius, by any one
who knew the Greek alphabet ; an ability to translate these
certainly does not at all imply the ability to read Plato in
the original, and a careful perusal and consideration of
Dolet's translations of the E-pistol<e Familiares and the
Tusculans as well as of his other writings leads me to the
conclusion that he had acquired a certain superficial acquaint-
ance with Greek, but I can find nothing whatever to induce
me to think that he was competent to read Plato, much
less to translate his writings from the original. But further,
a comparison of Dolet's translation of the Axiochus with
the Latin versions of Agricola and Ficinus makes it quite
clear to me that Dolet's translation is made direct from that
of Agricola, and not from the Greek original, though I am
far from meaning to suggest, or even from thinking, that

1 The Meditationes include the Epistle of St. Basil to St. Gregory.
Besides these, Dolet printed T. Gaza's Greek translation of Cicero De
Senectute and Somnium Scipionis.

456 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

he had not gone through the originals with the assistance of
one or more of the Latin translations.1

The Second Enfer and the two dialogues were committed
to the press by Dolet during his short stay at Lyons, but
it is not probable that he was himself able to superintend
their publication, and indeed it has been assumed by all
his biographers, that within a few days after his arrival at
Lyons he was there discovered and arrested. This, however,
is an error. His arrest did not take place at Lyons, nor
until some time after he had left that city, not long indeed
before the beginning of September (1544). In the letter
to Francis I. prefixed to the two dialogues,2 he states that his
principal object in leaving his retreat in Piedmont was to
proceed to the King's camp in Champagne in order person-
ally to obtain, as he seems to have thought he should have
no difficulty in obtaining, the royal pardon for his escape
from prison. Now in this same year (1544), simultaneously

1 The dialogue entitled Axiochus, by whomsoever written, enjoyed
a greater popularity about this time than any of the genuine writings of
Plato. (Even an English translation appeared in 1592, nearly a
century before any part of the genuine works of Plato was translated into
our language.) No less than four independent translations of it into
Latin had appeared before 1 544, and of two of them there had been
numerous editions. The earliest printed was that of Marsilius Ficinus,
by whom the work was attributed to Xenocrates. It was printed, with
the translation of lamblichus and other works, by Aldus in 1497, and again
in 1516. At least eight other reprints appeared before 1540. The
dialogue had, however, been translated by Rudolf Agricola, of whose
translation the first edition with which I am acquainted appeared at
Antwerp in 1511. It was reprinted in 1515, twice in 1518, and again
in 1532. In 1523 Pirckheymer published a translation at Nuremburg,
and in 1 542 there was printed at Paris, and reprinted the following year
at Basle, an edition of the Greek text, with a translation by Joachim
Perion. Of these translations I only know those of Ficinus and Agricola,
both of which I have compared with Dolet's French translation. Of the
Hipparchus I know of no translation printed before 1 544 except that of
Ficinus. 2 Ante, p. 444.

xxin THE SECOND ENFER 457

with or very shortly after the publication of the Second Enfer
at Lyons, an edition, with several of the compositions of
Marot added, was printed at Troyes in Champagne by
Nicole Paris. The poems of Marot are judiciously selected
for the purpose which Dolet had in view, namely, of obtain-
ing the favourable consideration of the King. They com-
prised Marot's epistle to the Duke of Orleans praying him
to use his influence with his father to obtain the poet's
recall from exile, several pious and orthodox compositions
in praise of the Virgin and of our Lord, and one in praise
of the King. I have already stated that I think that the wife
of Dolet was either a native of or connected with Troyes, the
great seat at that time of the paper manufacture in France,
and it seems to me probable that Dolet, after entrusting
the manuscript to his wife or some confidential assistant for
the purpose of being printed, left Lyons (perhaps finding
that his presence there was known or suspected) and pro-
ceeded to Troyes, intending thence to make his way to the
royal camp if he found that the King was there in person,
and that at Troyes he decided to print from a manuscript
which he took with him, intending to present it to the King,
his Second Enfer, together with the compositions of Marot,
in order that a printed copy might be laid before the King
on his arrival at the camp. Certain it is that at Troyes he
was arrested by Jacques Devaulx, the Messager of Justice
of Lyons who afterwards claimed payment from the Parlia-
ment of Paris for his costs and expenses in reference to the
escape and arrest of Dolet, and who we may well believe had
discovered Dolet's visit to Lyons, and had thence tracked
him to Troyes.1

1 The conjecture which I expressed in the first edition of this book
that it was at Troyes — not at Lyons — that Dolet was arrested, is turned
to a certainty by the petition of Jacques Devaulx which has been found
for me by M. Stryienski in the National Archives. It is printed in full
in the Appendix to this volume.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PLACE MAUBERT

What is it, life ? a little strife, whose victories are vain,
Where those who conquer do not win, nor those receive who gain.

LORD STRANGFORD.

HE petition of Jacques
Devaulx to the Parlia-
ment of Paris asking for
the payment of his ex-
penses tells us that after
the escape of his prisoner
at Lyons, on 8th Janu-
ary 1544, he diligently
searched for Dolet in
Germany, Switzerland,
Geneva, Burgundy,
Franche Comte, Dau-
phine, Languedoc, and
elsewhere, and ultimately
arrested him at Troyes and lodged him in the prison there
about the end of August or the beginning of September in
the same year. Devaulx then proceeded at once to Paris,
which he reached in three days, to obtain the directions of the
Parliament. A commission from that body was forthwith
issued authorising him to engage twenty men and horses, and

CHAP, xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 459

to return with them to Troyes, and bring Dolet to Paris, and
lodge him in the conciergerie. Pierre Segnault, Sergent Royal
ou Baillaye du Palais, was included in the commission and
ordered by the Procureur Royal to accompany Devaulx. On
the day following their arrival at Troyes, where as it is stated
Dolet had been ten days in prison, they left that city with
their prisoner, taking besides the twenty men on horseback,
six additional men on foot for the distance between Troyes
and Sens. After three days' journey they reached Paris as it
would seem on the 1 2th of September.1 Dolet was forthwith
delivered over to the custody of the officers of the Parliament,
and thrown into the conciergerie from which he had been
discharged less than a year before, and where he was to pass
the remainder of his life.

The First President determined that the trial should take
place before himself ; yet even on a trial before Pierre Lizet,
it would, one imagines, have been difficult, upon the trumped-
up charge of sending the books to Paris and the subsequent
escape from the hands of justice, to condemn the prisoner to

1 Jacques Devaulx — whose name is variously written Desvaulx, des
Vaulx and Devaulx in the pieces of the Proces — and Pierre Segnault
immediately applied to the Parliament for payment of their expenses.
See in the Appendix the petitions with several orders made thereon.
Devaulx claimed more than 100 ecus, but seems to have been allowed
only 1 86 livres 3 sols and 6 deniers. In the recital of his petition con-
tained in the decree of the Parliament of ^ August 1546 (Proces, p. 36)
it is stated that he claimed more than mille ecus, but this is not borne
out by the petition of 17 September 1544. The decree of 2 August
1546, refers also to a petition of 16 September 1543, which has not been
found. The documents printed in the Appendix are all that M. Stryienski
has been able to find in the Archives in addition to those already printed
by M. Taillandier in the Proces. It will be noticed, however, that though
the actual petition of Devaulx is dated 17 September, his application
for payment had been made on or before the I3th, on which day the
taxation of the Huissier de Montmirel is dated. It is therefore possible
that there may have been some other petitions, to which that of 17
September was merely supplementary.

460 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

death, since the ample letters of remission of the King duly
registered by the Parliament freed Dolet from the consequence
of the acts which had formed the pretext for his former con-
viction and sentence. Even in the Chambre Ardente, and
when the First President presided, a prisoner must be charged
with some offence of a capital nature to allow of his being
sentenced to death, whatever might be the character of the
evidence, perjured or otherwise, to be adduced on the part
of the prosecution.

The only publication of Dolet since his release in 1543
(except the reprints already referred to) was the volume
containing the Second Enfer and the Dialogues of Plato.
This it was now determined to examine in order to find
matter for the prosecution of the author, and it was accord-
ingly referred to the Faculty of Theology of Paris. No
heresy was found in the Second Enfer, or in the translation of
Hipparchus, but it was otherwise with the Axiochus. The aim
of the writer of that dialogue was to prove the immortality
of the soul, an aim which was carefully kept in view by the
translator, and we may well believe that one of the objects
which Dolet had in view in printing it was to prove the falsity
of the rumour which, as we have seen, had prevailed, that he
disbelieved or doubted the existence of the soul after death.
The following is the argument which he prefixed to the
dialogue : ' This dialogue of Plato is nothing else than a
divine remonstrance which Socrates made to Axiochus, who
had been in his life a man of great wisdom and virtue, but
finding himself at the point of death he was troubled in spirit,
and did not continue in his former firmness. This remon-
strance of Socrates, then, consists of a clear proof of the
immortality of the soul, and a declaration of the evils which
there are in human life from which we are delivered by death ;
we then return to the eternal mansions, where every felicity
and happiness abounds for those who have lived virtuously.'

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 461

In the course of the argument, however, which is perhaps
more ingenious than solid, Socrates is represented by the
author as making the following remark concerning death :—

"0x6 TTfpl fiev TOVS £uWas OVK coTiv, oi 8e a7ro0avo!/Tes OVK e'uriv

OXTT£ OVTt TTCpl (T€ VVV £(TTIV, OV jap TC^VT/KdS, OVTC £? Tl 7Ta#OlS, COTOU TTCpl

ere' (TV yap OVK etrei.

This is thus translated by Dolet . —

* Pour ce qu'il est certain que la mort n'est point aux
vivants : et quant aux defuncts, ilz ne sont plus : doncques
la mort les attouche encores moins. Parquoy elle ne peult
rien sur toy, car tu n'es pas encores prest a deceder ; et
quand tu seras decede, elle n'y pourra rien aussi, attendu que
tu ne seras plus rien du tout.1

The passage in the original taken by itself hardly seems
to advance the general argument, and even to be opposed
to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, though this
is by no means the case when taken in apposition with the
context,2 but even the Sorbonne would scarcely have had the
hardihood to accuse Plato (to whom the dialogue was then
by many attributed) of doubting or denying the immortality
of the soul, it was therefore necessary to allege that it was
wrongly translated. On the i4th of November 1544, the
Faculty of Theology assembled in the hall of the Sorbonne.
* A sentence from a certain book of Plato translated into
French by a certain Dolet was read, which is as follows, apres
la mort tu ne seras plus rien du tout. It was judged to be
heretical, agreeing in the opinion of the Sadducees and the

1 The following is the translation of Agricola : ' Quoniam neque circa
viventes est : hi vero qui obierunt non sunt amplius. Itaque neque apud
te est non dum enim obiisti : neque si quid tibi accidat, est circa te futura
non enim eris.'

2 Although Socrates seems to adopt the sentiment which he expresses,
yet it is a statement of an argument which he heard from Prodicus, and
which he merely uses as an illustration of his own views.

462 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Epicureans, wherefore it was committed to the deputies in
matters of faith to pronounce a censure upon the same book.1 '
The censure declares 'that in the dialogue called dcochius
(sic) the passage attendu que tu ne seras plus rien du tout is
wrongly translated and is contrary to the intention of Plato,
in whose work neither in the Greek nor in the Latin are
there these words rien du tout.

The crime of Dolet was thus having added to the text of
Plato the words ' rien du tout] words which if they are not
to be found in the original, or in the Latin translation, in no
way alter the sense of the text, but only express more clearly
the author's meaning, and the censure was made by theolo-
gians ignorant even how to spell correctly the title of the
book they condemned. Yet these three words, added merely
for the purpose of more completely expressing the sense of
the author, contributed in no small degree to Dolet' s death,
and seem to have formed the sole ground of the charge of
blasphemy, one of the three counts of the indictment upon
which the capital and final sentence was based.

The First President had not often such a criminal as
Dolet before him, one who combined in his own person
nearly every character that was hateful to Pierre Lizet ; he
was a printer, a scholar, and a heretic, or something worse.
Of heretics and journeymen printers Lizet had condemned
abundance, but never since the condemnation of Berquin in
1529 had a scholar and a poet (the author of more than
fifteen works) been brought before the Parliament on the
charge of heresy. The process was long, but we have
scarcely any details of it. From the sentence it appears that
the' charges were principally three, blasphemy, sedition, and
exposing for sale prohibited and condemned books. The
blasphemy, which seems to have been the principal charge,

1 D'Argentre, Collectio Judiciorum, vol. i. p. xiv ; Proces d' Estienne
Dolet, p. 33.

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 463

was, as we have seen, that contained in the translation of the
Axiochus ; the charge of exposing prohibited and condemned
books for sale would be based partly upon the false allegation
of sending the two packets of books into Paris, partly upon
the fact, which he admitted, that he had sold portions of the
Holy Scriptures in French and Latin ; the nature and ground
of the charge of sedition we can only conjecture. The escape
from prison could hardly be intended by the word sedition,
but bearing in mind the part Dolet had taken in the disputes
between the master printers and the journeymen, and also
the fact which he tells us that his former arrest was the work
of the master printers, I incline to think that it would be in
reference to this matter that he was accused of sedition.1 He
was further charged generally with ' autres cas par luy faictz
et commit depuis la remission, abolition, et ampliation a luy
donnee par le roy au mois de juing et i*" jour d'aoust 1543.'
The same course was taken as on the previous trial ; the
prisoner was brought before the Judge and interrogated, but,
weak and weary as he must have become by the long
imprisonment, his spirit does not seem to have been broken,
and to judge from the sentence which was ultimately pro-
nounced, no admissions were obtained from him. But besides
the direct charges against him the sentence refers to two
other questions raised in connection with his trial. On the
6th of September 1 544, a petition was presented on behalf
of Charlotte wife of Jehan Mareault, and Jehan Compaing
(probably the sister and brother of Guillaume Compaing),
praying that, in case Dolet should be condemned and his
goods confiscated, five hundred livres tournois which had

1 Prior to the ace ord of May I, 1543, there had been some tumultu-
ous scenes between the masters and the journeymen (Pericaud, Notes et
Documents, p. 63), and Dolet may not improbably have taken part in them,
and as they had formed no part of the matters charged against him on his
former trial, it may have been held that they were not covered by the
royal pardon.

464 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

been awarded to the petitioners by the sentence of the
Seneschal of Lyons might be paid to them, and that in case
Dolet should be found innocent of the charge made against
him, the petitioners might be heard before his discharge in
respect of their interest under such sentence.

The other matter referred to in the sentence was the
petition presented by Jacques Devaulx, in which the petitioner
alleged the great costs, charges, and expenses, amounting
according to the sentence to more than a thousand crowns,
besides his time and trouble, '•pour la fuyte industrieuse du
diet Dolet, duquel il avoit la charge -pour le amener prisonnier
en la conciergerie du palais, et aussi pour I' avoir reprins et
amene a grand fraiz prisonnier en la dicte conciergerie^ and
prayed that he might be reimbursed.

Sentence was not pronounced until the 2nd of August
1 546, the process having thus lasted nearly two years, during
the whole of which Dolet was kept in prison in the concier-
gerie, except on the occasions when he was taken before his
judges. The pathetic and noble epistles of the Second Enfer
had been of no service to him. There was a time when such
poems would have touched the heart of Francis I., but
Francis was now merely the shadow of his former self.
Suffering physically from the terrible vengeance inflicted on
him by the husband of La Belle Ferroniere, his mind
altogether sunk in lethargy and superstition, he had become
the mere grovelling creature of the priests and their supporters
who surrounded him, and who seem to have allowed the
wretched King but two indulgences, the society of his mistress
the Duchess d'Estampes, and of his reader Pierre Duchatel.
To both he was greatly attached, but neither of them
ventured to interfere with the schemes of the 'parti pretre'

The years 1 545 and 1 546 are two of the most horrible
in the history of France, two of the most horrible in the
history of the Catholic Church. A decree was prepared

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 465

by Cardinal de Tournon and Jean de Maynier, Baron
d'Oppede, First President of the Parliament of Aix, revok-
ing the letters patent of the I5th of June 1544, by which
all proceedings against the Vaudois had been suspended,
and ordering that, notwithstanding all subsequent letters of
pardon, the severe decree of the i8th of November 1540,
should be forthwith carried out. Such a decree, in order to
be regular, required the sanction of the keeper of the seals
before it was presented to the King for his signature, and
the counter signature of the same official. Olivier, then
keeper of the seals and afterwards Chancellor, less pliable —
or less callous — than he afterwards became, shocked at the
wholesale murders which were in contemplation, refused to
sanction the decree or to present it to the King for his
signature. The Cardinal caused it to be presented by
L'Aubespine the Secretary of State, and the royal signature
was obtained. It was countersigned by L'Aubespine.

It was not likely that Olivier would affix the seals to a
decree so irregularly and illegally obtained. Accordingly
the Cardinal again interposed, and by some unexplained
means surreptitiously caused the seals to be affixed. And
then a scene of brutality commenced, which had not been
witnessed in France since the days of the crusades against
the Albigenses. On the I2th of April 1545, the Baron
d'Oppede read to the Parliament of Aix the royal decree,
and the day following placed himself at the head of the
soldiers who were appointed to carry out the royal commands.
' These troops,' says M. Henri Martin,1 * reinforced by the
papal Vice-legate of Avignon and by a fanatical and brutal
populace, at once attacked the Vaudois territory. At first
the inhabitants offered no resistance ; murder, rape, and
flames were let loose against the whole district. At the sight
of eight or ten villages in flames the inhabitants of Merindol

1 Hist, de France, torn. viii. book 48.
2 H

466 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

fled to the woods and mountains. The soldiers only found
in entering that town one inhabitant, a poor idiot ; d'Oppede
caused him to be shot. Then they discovered some women
in a church. These unfortunate creatures after a thousand
outrages were thrown headlong from the rocks of the castle.
After burning Merindol, the cut -throats marched upon
Cabrieres, a fortified place, which prepared to defend itself
and to submit to a siege ; d'Oppede offered to the inhabitants
their lives and property, and on the 2oth of April the
Vaudois opened their gates. D'Oppede ordered the troops
to put the whole of the population to death. The old
soldiers of the army of Piedmont declared that their honour
was engaged by the capitulation and refused to obey the
First President's order. The fanatical military and rabble
who followed d'Oppede, headed by his two sons-in-law,
obeyed. Slaughter went on in the streets, in the castle, in the
church. To the latter, a multitude of women and children
had fled : the furious horde rushed headlong among them
and committed all the crimes of which hell could dream.
Other women had hidden themselves in a barn ; d'Oppede
caused them to be shut up there, and fire set to the four
corners. A soldier rushed to save them and opened the
door, but the women were driven back into the fire with
blows of pikes. Twenty-five women had sought an asylum
in the cavern of Mus at some distance from the town. The
Vice-legate of Avignon, a worthy rival and coadjutor of
d'Oppede, caused a great fire to be lighted at the entrance
of the grotto : five years afterwards the bones of the victims
were found in the recesses of the cavern. La Coste had the
same lot as Cabrieres ; the lord of La Coste, a relation of
d'Oppede, had conjured the latter to spare his subjects;
d'Oppede promised to do so, the gates were opened, and all
the horrors of Cabrieres were renewed. A great number of
the wretched inhabitants threw themselves from the walls,

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 467

stabbed or hanged themselves, in order to escape the horrible
treatment of the executioners, who prolonged with an infernal
art the agony of an entire town. A mother finding herself
with her daughter in the hands of these ferocious beasts,
drunk as they were with blood and Just, pierced her own
heart with a knife, and handed the weapon all bleeding to
her daughter.

' The three Vaudois towns were destroyed, three thousand
persons massacred, two hundred and fifty-six executed after
the massacre, and after a phantom of a trial, six or seven
hundred more were sent to the galleys, and many children
sold as slaves.'

Cardinal de Tournon rejoiced at the result, and at his
instance the King formally expressed approval of these
massacres. Letters patent of the i8th of August 1545,
were issued, by which Francis solemnly approved of all that
had been done against the Vaudois. At Rome the satis-
faction was as great as at Paris. Paul III. was especially
delighted ; he wrote a flattering letter to d'Oppede, con-
gratulating him on his pious work, and conferring upon him
the Order of the Golden Spur and the title of Count Palatine.
The Catholic party was everywhere delighted and triumphant.
The King's conversion was now manifest. Henceforth he
definitively belonged to the reactionary party : the remon-
strances of the League of Smalcalde and of the lords of Berne
had been unavailing, and the cause of reform and intellectual
freedom in France had received the first of that series of
blows which was to culminate a hundred and forty years
after in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But the
extirpation of the Vaudois did not stop the persecutions ;
the year 1546 was fruitful in martyrs of the Reformed
Church. At Meaux, still an ardent focus of Protestantism,
no less than sixty members of the reform party, of whom
nineteen were women, were condemned, fourteen to the flames,

468 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

and the remainder to severe corporeal or pecuniary penalties.
Fourteen stakes were arranged in a circle, and the condemned
were burnt alive, at an auto-da-fe which in the number, if
not in the rank of its victims, rivalled those of Spain. Nor
were the executions confined to Meaux. Never had Matthieu
Orry been so busy. We find him presiding, or sitting as
assessor, in many provincial towns : at Sens the Archdeacon
denounced and caused to be burnt his own nephew ; in Paris
the flames were more than once lighted, and everywhere
among the pious and orthodox were to be heard praises
and thanksgivings for the conversion of the King, and for
the example he was setting his people by these displays of
real Christian piety and Christian practice.

At such a time it was not to be expected that any voice
should be raised in Dolet's favour. There can be little
doubt that Duchatel had been given to understand that a
second intervention would cost him his place, and might even
render him personally liable to charges of heresy, and an
ostentatious display of orthodoxy certainly characterised this
part of his life. Nor is it probable that there was much
sympathy anywhere felt for the unfortunate prisoner. He,
in an age devoted to theological disputes, cared for none of
those things ; with the reformed doctrines he had never
sympathised, and except two or three who were men of
letters as well as theologians, such as Charles de Sainte
Marthe and Theodore de Beze, the reformers were generally
hostile to him. Calvin placed him in the same category with
Servetus, and would probably have assisted Orry in promoting
his burning with as much alacrity and satisfaction as he
subsequently displayed in betraying the unfortunate Spaniard
into the hands of the same Inquisitor. Yet the high spirit,
the elevation of feeling, and the consciousness of his own recti-
tude which appears in the Second Enfer, did not desert Dolet
during the two weary years of imprisonment, neglect, and

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 469

danger, which followed his final arrest. Conscious though
he must have been that at any moment sentence might be
pronounced against him, and knowing full well what the
sentence must inevitably be, yet in the last of his compositions,
written very shortly before his sentence, he expressed himself
as saddened indeed by his misfortunes, by the neglect of
his friends and of the whole world, but as consoling himself
by submission to God, by the consciousness that he had done
nothing worthy of death, but had lived a life not of innocence
merely, but of noble aims and no inconsiderable results, and
he shows us that the firmness and serenity of his mind was
unbroken. The following are among the last utterances of
* Estienne Dolet, a prisoner in the Conciergerie of Paris, written
in the year 1 546, on his desolation and on his consolation ' :—

Si au besoing le monde m'abandonne,
Et si de Dieu la volonte n'ordonne
Que liberte encores on me donne
Selon mon vueil ;

Doibs-je en mon cueur pour cela mener dueil,
Et de regretz faire amas et recueil ?
Non pour certain, mais au ciel lever 1'ceil
Sans aultre esgard.

Sus done, esprit, laisses la chair a part,
Et devers Dieu qui tout bien nous depart
Retirez-vous, comme a vostre rempart,
Vostre fortresse.

Mais vous esprit, qui scavez la parole
De 1'Eternel, ne suivez la chair folle ;
Et en celuy qui tant bien nous consolle,
Soit vostre espoir.

Si sur la chair les mondains ont pouvoir,

Sur vous, esprit, riens ne peuvent avoir ;

L'oeil, 1'oeil au ciel, faictes vostre debvoir

De la entendre.

470 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

Soit tost ou tard, ce corps deviendra cendre ;
Car a nature il fault son tribut rendre,
Et de cela nul ne se peult deffendre ;
II fault mourir.

Suant a la chair il luy convient pourrir ;
t quand a vous, vous ne pouvez perir :
Mais avecq Dieu tousjours debues flourir,
Par sa bonte.

Sus, mon esprit, monstres vous de tel cueur ;
Vostre asseurance au besoing soit cogneue :
Tout gentil cueur, tout constant belliqueur,
Jusque a la mort sa force a maintenue ! x

On the 2nd of August 1 546, the First President Lizet,
sitting in the Grand Chambre^ pronounced sentence on
Dolet as guilty of blasphemy, sedition, and exposing for
sale prohibited and condemned books, 'charges which are
set forth more at length in his process,' and condemned him
to be taken by the executioner in a cart from the prison of
the Conciergerie to the Place Maubert, where a gallows was to
be erected in the most convenient and suitable place, around
which was to be made a great fire, into which, after having been
hung on the said gallows, his body was to be thrown, with
his books, and burnt to ashes, his property to be confiscated
to the King. ' Nevertheless the Court orders that before the
execution and death of the said Dolet, he is to be put to
torture and to the extraordinary question in order that he
may inform of his companions ; and it is the will of the
Court (retentum in mente curia'] that if the said Dolet shall

1 This pathetic cantique, the last utterance of fitienne Dolet, remained
in manuscript for more than two centuries. Then, having fallen into
the hands of Guillaume de Bure, it was communicated by him to Nee de
la Rochelle, who printed it in his Vie de Dolet (p. 142).

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 471

cause any scandal or utter any blasphemy, his tongue shall be
cut out, and he shall be burnt alive? To this sentence the
signature of the First President is appended.1

1 I have endeavoured to give all the facts relating to the trials and
sentences of Dolet so as to enable the reader to form his own conclusions,
but I have not hesitated to express, or at least to indicate clearly, those
at which the facts have compelled me to arrive. It may, however, be,
that my judgment is to some extent coloured by sympathy for Dolet and
his pursuits, by hatred of religious persecution, and by the recollection of
the bitter and persecuting spirit displayed by Matthieu Orry and Pierre
Lizet in other cases. There is another view which may be taken of the
final sentence, and which is adopted by one so capable of judging as the
late M. le President Baudrier, distinguished not only as a judge and jurist,
but at the same time one extremely well acquainted with the literary,
religious, and political history and institutions of the time. He is, I need
hardly say, a priori more likely to arrive at a true judgment as to the
significance of the procedure, the cause of the sentence, and the motives
likely to have actuated the judges, in the case of a trial or series of trials
in France in the sixteenth century, than I can be. The conclusion to
which M. Baudrier comes is this ; that Dolet can in no respect be con-
sidered as a martyr for his opinions, that his persecutors existed only in
his own brain, that his misfortunes arose solely from his mauvaise tete and
mauvais casur, that the judges and courts which condemned him simply
carried out the existing laws without any prepossession or prejudice, that
though these laws were unduly severe (as were the laws of every country
at that period), yet, so far as they applied to the case of Dolet, they did
not trench upon liberty of conscience, and were neither unduly nor un-
fairly pressed against him. For the ten years previous to the final sentence
Dolet had been an incessant law-breaker. Twice he had been found
guilty of capital offences. Twice he had been condemned to death by
the courts of Lyons ; the sentence in one case having been confirmed on
appeal by the Parliament of Paris. He had been found guilty and
sentenced for a riot by the Parliament of Toulouse. He had several times
been summoned before the courts at Lyons for offences against the press
laws. He had been rescued from the capital sentences simply by the
royal pardon, upon the representations and by the influence of powerful
friends. Tried for the third time, upon a capital charge of blasphemy,
sedition, and exposing for sale prohibited books, and the judges being
satisfied upon the evidence (as to which we have no counter evidence
except the statement of the prisoner himself) that he was guilty, the
Parliament had no option but to pronounce upon him the capital sentence

472 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

The sentence was carried out on the day following, the
3rd of August, the day of the Invention of St. Stephen,
and the day on which Dolet entered his thirty-ninth year.
We are fortunate in possessing an almost contemporary
narrative of the event, though unfortunately not by an
eye-witness. Three weeks afterwards, a certain Florent
Junius wrote to Herman Laethmatius, Dean of the Faculty
of Theology at Utrecht, an account which had been given
to him by one of the officials who assisted at the execution.1
It was of course not to be expected that an atheist should be
simply executed in pursuance of the sentence. Physically
weakened by the torture which had been applied to him the
previous night or the same morning, or possibly both, he had
now to be morally tortured by the confessor with a view to
induce him to repent and publicly abjure his errors. What-
ever the result, the Church would be the gainer. If he
repented and abjured his errors, it was a triumph, far greater
in the case of a scholar and a reputed atheist such as Dolet,
than in the case of a poor wool-carder of Meaux, who, as
the Church herself declared, scarcely understood the doctrines
on which he presumed to form an opinion. If, on the other

which, however, was done in no haste, but after two years had been spent
in investigating the charges. He came before the Parliament of Paris
as a notorious, a persistent, and a wilful law-breaker, and was looked upon
by the court, and treated in exactly the same manner, as a persistent law-
breaker would be (and justly) by the courts at the present time. After a
series of offences such as those adverted to, no sentence other than a
capital one could have been pronounced upon him.

I cannot say that this reasoning is to my mind conclusive, though it
is undoubtedly of weight and worthy of consideration, and I think in the
interests of historical truth I ought to put it before my readers. If I do
not in this note attempt to controvert it, it is because the line of reasoning
that has led me to take a different view is sufficiently indicated, though
not always categorically expressed, in the text.

1 This letter is inserted in Almeloveen's Amcenitates Theologico-
Philologicce, Amsterdam, 1694, p. 78.

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 473

hand, he persisted in his impiety to the point of death, the
brutalities of the retentum would be carried out, the physical
tortures of the condemned would be increased, and an enjoy-
ment would be afforded to the pious crowd of which they
would have been deprived by the repentance of the sinner.
On his arrival at the place of execution, Dolet was exhorted
to think of his salvation, and to recommend himself to God
and the saints. He did not show himself too eager to follow
the advice, but muttered something or other, when the
executioner declared to him that he had orders to speak to
him of his salvation before the people. * You must,' said he,
* invoke the Blessed Virgin and your patron saint, whose
fete is celebrated to-day, and if you do not do this, you
know quite well what I am to do.' The unhappy prisoner
knew it too well. If the executioner's commands were not
obeyed, if Dolet did not invoke the Blessed Virgin and St.
Stephen, his tongue would be cut out and he would be burnt
alive.

Dolet, who had always professed himself a good Catholic,
would have no difficulty in repeating what was to him an
unmeaning formula, and so avoiding the terrible sufferings
which a refusal would have entailed upon him. He obeyed
the directions of the executioner, and repeated in Latin
the form of invocation which was suggested to him, ' Mi
Deus, quern toties offendi, propitius esto ; teque Virginem
Matrem precor, divumque Stephanum, ut apud Dominum
pro me peccatore intercedatis.'

He then, so Florent Junius was informed by the official,
warned the assistants to read his books with much circum-
spection, and declared several times that they contained
many things which he had not properly understood or
meant. A moment afterwards the sentence was carried out.
He was suspended at the gallows, and then, when he was
possibly dead, but more probably still breathing, the faggots

474 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

were lighted, and the author and his books were consumed
in the flames.

Such was the manner in which the festival of St. Stephen
was celebrated in the good old times, the times which an
influential party, led by men of exalted rank and high
culture, fondly regret, and would gladly see restored. But
their efforts are happily vain ; whatever were the excesses
and crimes of the Revolution, it has placed an impassable
barrier between the good old times and the nineteenth
century.

The account of the execution given by Florent Junius
was that which the Church desired should go forth to the
people. The official who was the informer of Junius,
assured him that at the last moment Dolet had repented
of his errors. The same story had been spread abroad
respecting Berquin. The confessor who attended him at
the stake told Montius that he had acknowledged his
errors, adding, * I doubt not that his soul departed in
peace.' ' I do not believe a word of it,' wrote Erasmus,
to whom Montius had communicated this statement, 'it is
the usual story which these people invent after the death
of their victims.' l

Jacques Severt in his Anti-Martyrologe 2 relates a story

1 Erasmus, Epist. 1060. ' On sait 1'usage invariable des jugements
ecclesiastiques : c'est d'affirmer que le coupable a tout avoue, tout retracte,
qu'il s'est dementi a la mort. Depuis que 1'figlise n'a plus le Chevalet
ni 1'Estrapade elle a toujours le confesseur qui suit le patient, bon gre,
mal gre, et qui ne manque pas de dire du plus ferme des n6tres : il s'est
reconnu heureusement, il a abjure ses folies. C'etait un grand mise-
rable ! Mais grace a Dieu il a fait un tres bonne fin.' Michelet, Hist, de
France, Renaissance, p. 264.

2 L'anti-Martyrologe, ou verite manifest'ee contre les Histoires des supposes
Martyrs de la religion pr'etendue reformee, imprimees a Geneve onze foil.
Divise en douze livres. Monstrant la difference des vrais Martyrs d'avec
les faux corporellement ex'ecutez en divers lieux. Par M. Jacques Severt,
Docteur Theologal en la Faculte de Paris. Theologal en 1'figlise de

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 475

which has placed Dolet in the ranks of ' les grands hommes
qui sont morts en plaisantant,' and which has since by its
introduction into numerous books of anecdotes made at
least the name of Dolet known to many who would other-
wise never have heard of the man or his death. ' When
Dolet,' says the Anti-Martyrologist, 'was at the place of
execution he fancied that the people who stood around
were regretting his death, then, instead of a prayer, he
uttered this Latin verse, " Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia
turba dolet ; " l on which it was replied to him worthily by
the criminal lieutenant sitting on horseback ' (or, as the
story is related in the Patiniana, by the doctor who accom-
panied him for the purpose of converting him), ' on the
contrary, " Non pia turba dolet, sed Dolet ipse dolet."

The death of Dolet, grateful to and approved by the
religious bigots of both parties, Protestant as well as
Catholic, was mourned only by the few men of letters in
whom the love of literature or the love of justice was not
overpowered by religious bigotry or personal malevolence.
It might be thought that personal animosity, where not
inflamed by religious bigotry, would have been softened
by his fate, but in one conspicuous instance this was not
the case ; the lapse of ten years had not induced Julius
Caesar Scaliger to forget or to forgive the wound which
the young scholar of Toulouse had inflicted on his vanity
by writing in defence of Longolius and Cicero, and scarcely

Lyon. Lyon, Rigaud, 1622, 4° (p. 475). I am particular in giving the
title of this very rare book at length because I have nowhere seen
the title accurately cited, and although in almost every book where Dolet
is mentioned the story of the Latin verse made by him at his execution
is related, I can find no writer except the anonymous author of the
Histoire abregee des Martin Francois (Amsterdam, 1684) who has cited
the story at first-hand or who has even seen Severt's book.

1 'Dolet himself does not grieve, but the pious crowd grieves.'

2 'The pious crowd does not grieve, but Dolet himself grieves.'

476 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

were the flames that consumed Dolet's body extinguished,
ere Scaliger began to heap insults on his memory. Fifteen
years later the wound still rankled in his bosom, and in his
Poetics he seized an opportunity of indulging in brutal
pleasantry on Dolet's fate and gloating over his sufferings :—
' Dum optimi atque maximi regis Francisci fata canit,
ejus nomen suo malo fato functum est ; quodque turn illi,
turn illius versibus debebatur solus passus est Atheos flammae
supplicium. Flamma tamen eum puriorem non efFecit : ipse
flammam potius efFecit impuriorem.' l

It is pleasant to know that there were some men of
letters who mourned Dolet's fate, and were not afraid to
express their sympathy for him, and their grief for his
loss. Theodore Beza, still young and sympathetic, whose
heart had not yet been hardened to the texture of that of
his great master, and for whom humanity and the Muses
had not yet lost their charm, composed and did not fear
to print an ode devoted to the apotheosis of the scholar
and the poet : 2

Ardentem medio rogo Doletum

Cernens Aonidum chorus sororum,

Charus ille diu chorus Doleto,

Totus ingemuit ; nee ulla prorsus

E sororibus est reperta cunctis,

Nai'as nulla, Dryasve, Nereisve,

Quae non vel lachrymis suis, vel hausta

Fontis Pegasei studeret unda

Crudeles adeo domare flammas.

1 Page 305. This passage will be found translated ante, p. 216.

2 This ode, printed by Theodore Beza in the first edition of his
poems Juvenilia, Paris, 1548, p. 51, and reprinted in the edition s. 1.
aut a. (with the death's head), was omitted by its author in the editions
he gave in 1569 and 1576, after he had fallen wholly under the spiritual
dominion of Calvin. It has of course reappeared in the beautiful
edition lately published by M. Liseux, with a French translation by
M. Machard.

xxiv THE PLACE MAUBERT 477

Et jam totus erat sepultus ignis,
Jam largo madidus Doletus imbre,
Exemptus poterat neci videri,

§uum coelo intonuit severus alto
ivorum Pater, et velut peraegre
Hoc tantum studium ferens sororum,
At cessate, ait, et novum colonum
Ne diutius invidete coelo,
Ccelum sic meus Hercules petivit.

Another contemporary, whose name has not come down
to us, has written with more sympathy and with more
pathos the following epitaph in French : — l

Mort est Dolet, et par feu consomme.

Oh ! quel malheur ! oh ! que la perte est grande,

Mais quoy, en France on a accoustume

Toujours donner a tel saint tel offrande.

Bref, mourir faut, car 1'esprit ne demande,

Qu'issir du corps, et tost estre delivre,

Pour en repos ailleurs s'en aller vivre.

C'est ce qu'il dit, sur le point de bruler

Pendant en haut, tenant ses yeux en 1'air.

* Va-t-en esprit droit au ciel pur et munde,

Et toy mon corps, au gr£ de vent voler,

Comme mon nom voloit parmy le monde.'

1 Le Laboureur, Additions aux Memoires de Castefaau, vol. i. p. 348
(edit, of 1731).

CHAPTER XXV

OPINIONS AND CHARACTER

Ti's otSev el TO ggv pev eo-ri KarOaveiv

rb Kardaveiv 8e (riv : -^

EURIPIDES.

Atheism is the shadow of sacerdotalism. — T. P. KIRKMAN.

HE religious opinions of
Etienne Dolet have been
the subject of considerable
discussion among his
critics and biographers ;
and much that is wholly
false, much that is only
partially true, has been
written on the subject.
Rejected alike by Catholics
and Protestants, he has
been generally regarded as
an atheist, nor until the
publication by M. Taillan-
dier of the Proces from which I have so frequently quoted,
was it at all clearly known what were the precise charges
upon which he was condemned to death. That he was
convicted and executed as a relapsed atheist was the received

CH. xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 479

view, and although this is not borne out by the language of
the sentence, yet I incline to think that this was its effect
and intention, and that the almost universal belief that
he was a materialist, or (for the words were then and after-
wards used as synonymous) an atheist was shared by his
judges. Yet it sometimes served the purposes of Catholic
controversialists to confuse him with the Protestants, so
as to charge them with the blasphemies attributed to the
unfortunate Dolet.

La Croix du Maine speaks of Dolet as burned for
Calvinism. Jacques Severt in his Anti-Mar tyrologe, already
cited, speaks of him as a Lutheran,1 and Le Laboureur
in his additions to the Memoires de Castelnau 2 says that he
is among the pretended martyrs commemorated in the Grand
Martyrologe of Geneva ; but, as Bayle first pointed out, no
mention of or reference to Dolet is to be found in that book.
Nor indeed have I found any Protestant work in which he is
referred to as a Protestant martyr, earlier than the anony-
mous His to ire Abregee des Martirs Franfois du Terns de la
Reformation? the author of which simply adopts the state-
ment of Severt. Le Laboureur quotes a letter of Cardinal
Philibert Babou dit de la Bourdaisiere, written from Rome
to Bernard Bochetel, Bishop of Rennes, on the 23rd of
May 1562, in which he speaks of having in his youth seen
'Dolet, one of the earliest Huguenots, who beginning by
sufficiently thoughtless opinions, and these of little im-
portance, fell in a short time into the most execrable
blasphemies I ever heard.' 4

Calvin, writing shortly after the death of Dolet,5 says,

1 His language is, ' II catechisoit sur dogmes adulterins et scandalizoit.
... II fut etrangle, puis brule . . . sous le bruit et la qualite d'homme
Luthcrien.' 2 Vol. i. p. 347.

3 Amsterdam, 1684, p. 4.07.

4 Mem. de Castelnau, vol. i. p. 347.

5 De Scandalis, Geneva, Crespin, 1551, p. 78.

480 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

* It is a matter of common notoriety that Agrippa, Villano-
vanus, Dolet, and such-like Cyclopes have always ostenta-
tiously despised the Gospel, and at length they have fallen
into such a depth of insanity and fury, that not only have
they vomited forth execrable blasphemies against the Son
of God, but as regards the life of the soul have declared that
it differs in no respect from that of dogs and pigs.' Du
Verdier a few years later says that Dolet was ' convicted
on a ^charge of atheism,' J and Dupreau (Prateolus) includes
him in his list of atheists together with Diagoras, Pliny,
Lucian, and Lucretius.2

We have seen that a rumour was current as early as
1535 that Dolet was a materialist, and denied the immor-
tality of the soul. In the letter of Odonus to Gilbert
Cousin written in that year, Dolet is classed among the
atheists, his irreligious conduct is referred to, and he is
spoken of as ' impius, sine deo, sine fide, sine religione ulla?
And in one of the earliest pages of the first volume of
the Commentaries, Dolet tells us that the Tolosans had
calumniated him to the King in reference to religion, and
seems to imply that it was on the occasion of the King's
visit to the city (in August 1533) that this denunciation
took place. We can hardly imagine that this was the
case, yet it is a clear admission on his part of the existence
of a rumour at a very early date unfavourable to his
orthodoxy. This rumour was formulated in print by
Floridus Sabinus in 1540, and undoubtedly was generally
believed. It was probably based rather on the conversation

1 Prosopographie, 410 Lugduni, 1572, p. 503 (by mistake numbered
4103). 'Dolet enfin avec son scavoir, estant pousse du diable fust
convaincu d'acte d'atheisme et brusle a Paris publiquement.' The
portrait and all reference to Dolet are omitted in the edition of the
Prosopograpbie of 1605.

2 De Vitit Sectis et Dogmatibus omnium Heereticorum (Cologne, 1581),
p. 71.

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 481

than on the writings of Dolet, since it is not borne out by
the general tenour of the latter, though there are not wanting
passages, both in his poems and in his Commentaries, which
would certainly afford corroborative evidence to those who
wished to believe in the rumour.

In his Lectiones Succistv*, Floridus speaks of Dolet as
one who asserted the mortality of the soul, and placed the
chief good in corporeal pleasures.1 To this Dolet makes the
following answer : * You say Dolet does not believe that
the soul survives the body. . . . You must prove this either
from my writings or my life. Who can say that my
language is other than pious, chaste, filled with reverence
for God ? As to my writings, what is there in the slightest
degree to excite even the suspicion of impiety (for I call
the opinion that the soul perishes, impiety). And the life
which I lead is it not truly Christian ? ... It most clearly
appears from my writings how far I am from this opinion :
I here quote the verses on the subject of the immortality
of the soul which I inserted in my Genethliacum.' He
then cites the passage part of which I have before quoted,
beginning, ' Tu ne crede, animos una cum corpore, lucis
Privari usura.' And he follows it up with an appeal to those
in whose intimacy he lived, whether his life was not such as
a Christian's should be.2 In his work Adversus calumnias
Doleti, Floridus thus replies to Dolet's defence : ' The
opinion of your impiety, which is everywhere held, cannot
be got rid of by any extracts from your Genethliacum, for
I hold this to be certain, that what you believe concerning
God and the soul you would speak of cautiously and not
openly to all, lest you should be immediately seized and put
to the torture.'

1 ' Qui inquam, unicus Aristippi gerraanus, animam mortalem esse, ac
summum bonum in corporis voluptate consistere, non dubitat.' Lib.
iii. c. 4.

2 Doleti Liber De imit. Cic. adv. Floridum Sabinum, p. 41.

2 I

482 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

That Dolet was generally believed by his contemporaries
to be, if not an atheist, at least a materialist, we have a
good deal of contemporary evidence. The fact is referred
to by J. C. Scaliger more than once, and their contemporary
Andre Le Freux (Frusius) honours Dolet (whose name
easily lent itself to the puns of his enemies) by devoting to
him two of his epigrams against notorious heretics ; one of
them runs : —

Mortales animas gaudebas dicere pridem ;
Nunc immortales esse, Delete, doles.1

In the copy of Dolet's Francisci Valesii Fata contained
in the Bibliotheque Nationale, the following verses are
written in a contemporary hand, signed Einetus : — 2

Qui modo Francisci descripsit Fata Doletus,

Non sua prospexit fata futura miser ;
Debuit insequier Christum, nee vivere fato

Atheus, et rapidis inde perire focis.

Gigas begins one of his epigrams : —

Nate Dei verbum ridere dolende Delete.

Now when we come to the writings of Dolet, one thing
is certainly clear, not only is there nothing to justify the
appellation of atheist, but there is everything to lead to
the conclusion that Dolet was a sincere theist, fully
recognising a divine being as the creator and ruler of the
world. When, however, we desire to arrive at anything
more definite than this, we are met by a considerable

1 Epigrammata in Heretic os, 1609, Nos. Ixxxvi. Ixxxvii.

2 This was clearly Jehan Binet, a native of Beauvais, appointed pro-
fessor in the College of Guyenne in Nov. 1533. See Britanni Epistola,
passim, and Gaullieur, Histoire du College de Guyenne, pp. 54, 118. The
facsimile of his autograph given by M. Gaullieur (p. 60) exactly
corresponds with the signature Binetus in the copy of the Francisci
Valesii Fata in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 483

difficulty, and by some inconsistencies in our author's
writings. His ostentatious avowals of orthodoxy, and his
odes to the Virgin, are not entirely conclusive. They do
not strike the reader as proceeding from the writer's heart,
but as being inserted rather as a matter of form than of
actual belief. In the second volume of his Commentaries,
under the word Anima, after some explanations and ex-
amples of its use by Cicero, he thus continues : ' Besides
this signification, Anima is used to express a certain celestial
force by which we live and move and are partakers of
reason. Which some indeed attribute to the blood, and
some to other parts of the body, and which some think
is mortal and is extinguished at the same time with the
body, but which others have asserted to be immortal,
believing that after the destruction of the body, according
as the life of the man has been right and pure, or wicked,
the soul either ascends into heaven or descends into hell.
These opinions concerning the mortality or immortality of
the soul, as well as the various judgments of men concerning
religion, and their different doctrines in reference to the
worship of God, I have discussed in those books De
Opinione which I have left to posterity in order that it may
understand that I have passed my life as it becomes a man
to do, and have not wasted it in a painful devotion to
trifles.'

On the subject of the immortality of the soul, however,
there can be little doubt that Dolet expressed his genuine
sentiments when he declared in his reply to Sabinus, and
in many of his poems and other writings, notably in the
Avant Naissance, that it was impiety to deny it. Yet he
seems to have been in considerable doubt, as must be the
case with every one who does not accept as authoritative
and final, what is laid down by the Church or what is
stated in the New Testament, as to what he meant by

484 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

immortality. Whilst sometimes using language, which
implies that he accepted the immortality of the soul in the
orthodox and ordinary sense of the words, we gather from
other expressions that he certainly doubted whether the
individual soul had an independent existence after death,
or whether it was not absorbed in the Creator or in the
soul of the universe. In his earlier poems indeed, and par-
ticularly in his ode to the memory of Simon Villanovanus,1
he seems to doubt whether consciousness exists after death,
and in a melancholy poem in the same volume, Expetendam
esse mortem, M. Boulmier conjectures that we find the phrase
which originated the charge of atheism and materialism.
It thus concludes2 : —

Nunc ergo vitam quo insipiens cupis ?
Quo corpus optas omnibus obvium
Morbis, malisque ? Quo precare
Perpetuas tibi stulte pcenas ?

Ne mortis horre spicula, qu& dabit
Sensu carere ; vel melioribus
Locis tegi, et statu esse laeto,
Elysii est nisi spes inanis.3

The note which he gives in the second volume of his
Commentaries on the word Mors perhaps lets us see his
real sentiments more clearly than any other passage of his
writings. * I now come to the subject of death, the extreme
boundary of life, terrible to those who are about to die, but

1 Ante, p. 34. 2 Or at, diue, p. 224.

8 ' Now therefore why, O senseless one, do you desire life, why do you
wish your body to be exposed to all diseases and to all evils ? Why, O fool,
do you pray that your sufferings may be perpetual ? Do not be terrified
by the arrows of death, which will cause you either to be deprived of
sensation, or else to be sheltered in happier regions and to be in a joyful
condition, unless the hope of heaven is vain.' See also ante, pp. 390,

391-

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 485

only an event to be laughed at by those who are immortal,
that is by those who are renowned either by military glory
or by literary reputation. For by the separation of the
soul from the body will he, to whom for all future time
life after death has been gained by his reputation for ex-
cellence, think that he is about to be annihilated for ever ?
Is the dart of death terrible to heroes of this kind, when by
the eternal fame and reputation of their name they have
blunted it and deprived it of all force ? That this is true of
myself I do not hesitate here to testify. There is certainly
nothing that could induce me more readily or courageously
to devote myself either to arms or letters than the constant
meditation upon and recollection of death. I do not say
this from any desire to die before my time, for to do so
would be contrary to the nature of man, but because I desire
to conquer death, and whilst I live to pass my life so nobly
and courageously, that I may achieve immortality either in
arms or letters. Unless those who either expose themselves
to the dangers of war, or pour out their life by their too
great devotion to literature, were actuated by this desire,
were borne up by this elevation of mind, do you think they
would act as they do, so eagerly or so nobly ? And indeed
there can be no greater stimulus to noble-minded men to
strive to attain an immortality of fame than the constant
recollection, agreeable to those who are immortal, horrible to
those who are mortal, that this life is to come to an end
in so short a space of time. What indeed has death been
able to accomplish as yet against Themistocles, Epami-
nondas, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar, Pompey,
the Scipios, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Lysias, Homer, Pindar,
Aristophanes, Cicero, Sallust, Plautus, Terence, Virgil,
Ovid ? The power of death is naught against men fenced
about with such firm barriers of immortality. What again
will death with all its rapacity and ferocity be able hereafter

486 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

to do against Bude, Longolius, Macrin, Maine, Maurice
Sceve, Richer, Hugues Salel, Bembo, Sadolet, Vida, Sannazar,
Erasmus of Rotterdam, or Melanchthon ? The works of
men of such excellence, consecrated as they are to immortal-
ity, are clearly beyond the power of death, and will I am
certain never perish, but rather the sharpness of death, and
of time which tramples all things under its feet, will be
blunted by their virtue. The consideration of death then
causes fear only to those who are weak-minded, those who
are' courageous it makes still more so, and incites them more
and more to undergo all kinds of labours and dangers.' l

The immortality to which Dolet really looked forward,
and in which he was in his heart of hearts a believer, was
metaphorical immortality only, such as that in which Horace
believed, an immortality of fame.

Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam.

He believed that what he had written would live, and thus
that the better part of him would descend to future ages
and in that way be immortal, and where he speaks of im-
mortality he certainly sometimes means this only. Some-
times again he doubts whether eternal happiness does not
consist in eternal unconsciousness and eternal insensibility,
whether, in short, Nirvana is not the highest good. Yet
in other moods we find a belief in the actual existence of
the individual soul after death set forth, and the providential
government of the world insisted upon.

A belief in the immortality of the soul may, roughly
speaking, rest upon one of three grounds, the authority of
the Church, the authority of the New Testament, or the
conclusions of reason. But those who reject the two
former will rarely be induced to accept the latter as an

1 2 Com. 1 162.

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 487

adequate basis for the belief, or for anything more than
a vague hope. To every thinking man there must be ex-
cessive (I do not say insuperable) difficulties in accepting
as authoritative on such a question the voice of the Church.
The reformers with illogical ingenuity, rejecting the authority
of the Church and yet desirous of maintaining the doctrines
of the creeds, while they returned to a simpler faith and
a purer practice, invented an ingenious though illogical
theory, which has since found its symbol in the popular
Protestant cry, ' The Bible and the Bible only] a shibboleth
to which one would suppose it must be difficult for those
who have not been accustomed to it from childhood, to
frame their lips. Difficult it must be to understand what
are the grounds except the authority of the Church on
which the Canon of Scripture is arrived at, or on which the
theory of plenary inspiration can be based ; to say why the
epistles of Barnabas and Clement have not the same
authority as those of Jude and James, and why the books
of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus are relegated to the
Apocrypha, while the Song of Songs and the Book of
Esther are enrolled in the Canonical books.

That the Church was infallible was believed neither by
Dolet nor by most other thoughtful men of the time, but
he could as little believe that Luther or Calvin was in-
fallible, nor was he likely to appreciate the grounds upon
which they asserted the plenary inspiration of Scripture in
an entirely different sense from the inspiration of Augustine,
of Jerome, or of Cicero. The religion which recommended
itself to Dolet, as it seems .almost inevitable for it to have
done to all thinking men of that day who were equally
unable to accept the authority of the Church or the arbitrary
theories of the reformers, was natural religion, a religion
of duty in relation to this world only, and troubling itself
not at all with the future, as being a matter of which

488 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

nothing can be certainly known, and concerning which it
is useless to reason or to speculate. ' Naturalistic religion/
says one of the ablest writers of our own day, speaking
of a century and a half later,1 ' may seem a very unsafe
and comfortless halting-place to us, but to many who heard
of religion only in connection with the Bull Unigenitus
and Confessional certificates, with some act of intolerance
and cruelty, with feeble discussions about grace and the
five propositions, the naturalism which Shaftesbury taught
in prose, and Pope versified, was like the dawn after the
blindness of night.' And much more is this true of natural
religion in the sixteenth century, when the acts of intoler-
ance and cruelty were greater both in number and in kind
than in the seventeenth. Dolet was neither a Protestant
nor a Catholic ; as M. Henri Martin remarks, ' philosophy
alone has the right to claim on its side the illustrious victim
of the Place Maubert, whom the reformation has denounced
as impious by the voice of Calvin.' 2

But while Dolet's religious opinions seem the natural
outcome of the circumstances in which he was placed, yet
all his sympathies were with the party of reform; and
while questions of doctrine, and indeed theological questions
generally, seem to have been wholly alien from his mind,
he was not insensible either to the value of the New
Testament or to the fact that the cause of the reformers
was the cause of intellectual progress. However little
interest we may feel in the dreary theological controversies
which occupied not only the religious minds of the sixteenth
century, but even those who in less theological times would
have devoted themselves to the healthy business of life,
in the precise method of justification, in such questions as
whether the rule of faith and life is to be found exclusively

1 John Morley, Fortnightly Review, 1875, p. 495.
2 Hist, de France, 4me edit. vol. viii. p. 343.

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 489

in the sixty -eight books which the Protestant Churches
generally have held to be alone canonical, or whether the
living voice of the Church has a co-ordinate authority,
whether prevenient grace or grace of congruity exist, nay,
however it may seem to us that in many of the discussions
the champions of Rome held the broader and more reason-
able opinions, yet we can never forget that the cause of
Protestantism was essentially the cause of intellectual pro-
gress and of freedom of thought. It was the cause of the
development of reason, as the other was of its repression,
of the retrogression of the intellect.

There were indeed then, as there have been since at all
times, numerous Catholics who were better, and numerous
Protestants who were worse than their respective creeds :
Pierre Duchatel, Michel de 1'Hopital, Cardinal Sadolet,
and Thomas More, favourably contrast with Calvin, Carl-
stadt, Cranmer, and Somerset.

There may seem to a superficial observer little to choose
between, on the one hand, Luther (with his incessant talk
about justification by faith) and Calvin (with his predes-
tination, his rigid Trinitarian orthodoxy, his personal in-
fallibility, and his readiness to betray into the hands of
the Inquisition those who ventured a hair's-breadth beyond
the limits which he had laid down, and if need be to burn
them himself) ; and on the other, Eck (with his defence of
indulgences) and Clement VII. (with his time-serving
worldliness and expediency), and Francis I. (with his
mixture of piety and profligacy). If a tree is to be known
by its fruits, we cannot deny that Sadolet was far in
advance of Calvin in all the Christian graces and virtues, and
that in the controversial epistles which passed between them
a much truer spirit of Christianity appears in the letters of
the Cardinal than in those of his great opponent. Nay,
our sympathies are more in unison, our reason less shocked

490 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

with the arguments and doctrines of Sadolet, than with
those of Calvin. And we are apt to lose sight of the fact,
which cannot be too prominently put forward or too clearly
remembered, that in the sixteenth century, whatever we may
think of the dogmatic views of the reformers, Protestantism
by the logic of its position, though unknowingly and
sometimes unwillingly, permitted freedom of thought, and
Catholicism deliberately and intentionally repressed it. The
Catholic party was logically and consistently wrong ; the
Protestant party was illogically and inconsistently right.
Freedom of judgment, of thought, was really the basis
and standpoint of Protestantism, which yet in terms re-
jected it, or only admitted it reluctantly when driven by
its Catholic adversaries from all other positions. Besides,
the reformers, even Calvin the most dogmatic of all, had
a sincere love and desire for the truth as such, and were
only in error in thinking and positively asserting that the
portion of truth which each had acquired for himself was
the whole truth ; thus each Church set up for itself canons
of infallibility, little less odious and much more ridiculous
than those of the Church of Rome. When Luther, having
rejected transubstantiation, excommunicated all who could
not accept the doctrine rather less reconcilable with
common sense of consubstantiation, and pronounced the
Zwinglian hypothesis no less heretical than the Roman,
and when Calvin, though certainly unsound on the doctrine
of the Trinity (if on this point the doctrine of the Churches
of England and Rome is to be counted as orthodox), burnt
Servetus for being a little more heretical than himself, they
were utterly false to the principles which had alone entitled
them to throw off so many of the doctrines and practices of
the Church of Rome, and to separate from her communion ;
they had ceased to deserve the name of Reformers.
Bossuet's history of the variations of the Protestant

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 491

Churches would have lost most of its force had each of
those Churches been content to accept for its own guidance
the measure of truth which it had acquired, without
attempting in a ridiculous rivalry of its great opponent to
uphold its own doctrines as the absolute and whole truth
for all men and for all time, and without excommunicating
with bitter hatred, and persecuting when it had the
opportunity, those who went a hair's-breadth farther from,
or halted a hair's-breadth nearer to, the Church of Rome.

That Dolet's friends were all on the side of reform
is certain, that he admired the pure life and moral teaching
of Lefevre d'Etaples and Charles de Sainte Marthe, that
he both read, admired, and desired to promote the reading
of the New Testament is clear, but to say that he was a
Christian, as the term was then used or accepted equally
by Protestant and Catholic, would be undoubtedly to say
what is not the fact. But we may ask, what was there
to attract him in Christianity as displayed by its chief
ministers and adherents, by Cardinal du Prat with his
wealth and his avarice, by Cardinal de Tournon with his
massacre of the Vaudois and his repression of everything
like freedom of thought, by Noel Beda who considered
Greek and Hebrew as in themselves heretical studies-, by
Pierre Lizet with his hands red with the blood of martyrs,
by the most Christian King oscillating between devotion
and debauchery, and by Calvin with his narrow and rigid
system of doctrine and his persecuting spirit ?

If the description which Lucretius gives us of religion
is accurate, certainly all these may be called religious men,
but if we are to take our idea of religion from the defini-
tion given by St. James, or from St. Paul's enumeration
of the fruits of the Spirit, not one of these eminent persons
possessed a spark of it, not one of them displayed a single
one of those fruits, at least some of which we may expect

492 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

to find in every Christian man. Goodness attracted Dolet
wherever it was to be found, whether in Sadolet, in Lefevre
d'Etaples, in Jean de Pins, or in Sainte Marthe ; but moral
goodness unaccompanied by orthodox sentiment was rejected
as no sign of real Christianity, equally by the Reformers
as by the Catholics.

We can hardly doubt the sincerity of the language with
which in the Genethliacum Dolet recommends to his son
the belief and trust in God as a sure support and consola-
tion from the miseries of life. In the Commentaries he
offers up this prayer : —

" Ye gods, the omnipotent rulers of all things, grant me
this one, only this one piece of good fortune. The material
goods of fortune, as fleeting and vain things, I deem not
worthy of your care, nor do I for them seek to weary you
by my prayers. But grant this to me, that my reputation,
my safety, my life, may never depend on the sentence of a
judge. If I can obtain this from you by my prayers, I shall
think that I abound in all good things, that every good
fortune which I could desire is heaped upon me, that my
life has been surfeited with every pleasure. That I may
obtain this I implore you with the same earnestness and
sincerity with which I attribute to your goodness everything
that I possess, with the same zeal with which I reverence
your divine will, and with which I contemplate with admira-
tion and awe your power.' *

It will hardly be believed that this prayer, so suitable
to his circumstances, has been the source of vehement
attacks. His use of the word superi instead of deus was
made a charge against him, and by this he was said to have
shown himself a heretic and a pagan ; and the following is
the remark which our English Jortin, generally so fair and
liberal, but who was frightened by the terrible word Atheist,

1 2 Com. 1328.

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 493

makes upon it : * The most charitable thing to be said for
the author of such a prayer is, that he was mad : and prob-
ably it was the truth of the case. Perpetual application to
study, continual quarrels, violent passions, poverty, a series
of calamities, and infinite pride and vanity, had soured his
temper, heated his blood, and shattered his brains.' 1 And
a writer whom Jortin quotes 2 had previously remarked on
the prayer, ' An ita precatur homo sanus, et non male sibi
conscius, et Christianus ? '

But it is only from the accident of his condemnation and
death that the religious opinions of Etienne Dolet have
acquired any interest or have any significance.3 For the
theological discussions and parties of the time he really
cared nothing, except so far as they affected the cause of
literature, and the remark which a contemporary writer
makes upon Dryden is equally (perhaps more strictly)
applicable to him : 'A busy man of letters, who never
seriously reflected upon such matters, but who amused
himself as occasion offered with easy acquiescence in con-
troversial dogmas, with the casual speculations of languid
scepticism, or with laughing at both.' 4

1 Life of Erasmus, vol. ii. p. 68.

2 Re/at. Getting, vol. iii. fasc. I, p. 101.

3 I have so frequently had occasion to note the shortcomings of M.
Boulmier's work that I am glad to be able to say that he seems to have
fairly discussed and to have arrived at true conclusions as to Dolet's
religious opinions. Any one who is interested in the matter will find
the seventeenth chapter of his book worthy of attention.

4 J. C. Collins, Essays and Studies, 1895. M. O. Douen, in two
articles in the Bulletin de la Societe d' Hist o ire du Protestantisme (separately
issued under the title Etienne Dolet ; ses opinions religieuses, Paris, 1881),
has endeavoured to show that my view of the religious opinions of Dolet
is incorrect and has claimed him, if not as a martyr of Protestantism, at
least as a " catholique biblique, a moitie reforme, anime" de 1'esprit
nouveau, lequel delaissait paisiblement le culte des saints, les indulgences,
la confession auriculaire, le cargme, et posait pour regie de foi la

494 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

It is as a scholar and a man of letters that Dolet desired
and ought to be judged by posterity, and in each of those
characters, if we cannot place him among the two or three

parole sainte, oui, certes, il le fut, au moins dans ses dernieres annees, et
c'est ce qui explique pourquoi il repete avec une assurance non feinte
que 1'impression de la Bible n'est pas un acte heretique. Aux savants
auteurs de la France protestante disant de lui : " Sa revoke se bornait a
favoriser le schisme, en pretant ses presses a la publication d'ouvrages mal
sentant de la foi," Dolet aurait pu repondre avec un parfaite loyaute :
La revoke, 1'heresie, sont, d'une part, en ceux qui annulent la parole
divine par leurs traditions, et, d'autre part, en ceux qui dechirent
outrageusement 1'Eglise de Jesus-Christ. — La rebellion de Dolet et de
ses pareils n'etait done qu'une demi-revolte, puisqu'elle excluait toute idee
de schisme."

M. Douen appears to think that I have read neither the Cato
Christianas, nor the prefaces to the several religious books, all of a
Protestant tendency, printed by Dolet. I had, however, read them all
before M. Douen's etude appeared, and since that time I have repeatedly
re-read them, especially the Cato Christianas, one of the only two known
copies of which is in my possession, and have very carefully weighed
the arguments of M. Douen, but I am unable to think that the pious
sentiments of which these prefaces are full, express the sincere opinions
of Dolet except in so far as they show his sympathy with the reformers
as favouring liberty of thought and the free circulation of the Scriptures
so bitterly opposed by those in authority. M. Douen considers that
in the latter part of his life, and in fact from the date of the publication
of the Cato Christianas (at the latest in 1538) Dolet had entirely laid
aside the opinions which had gained for him the reputation of an
atheist, and had adopted those indicated in the above extract from
M. Douen's work. I can only say that I find nothing to warrant this
hypothesis. Nowhere in the writings of Dolet is to be found the
slightest expression of regret for any of the opinions he had before
expressed or had before held. From beginning to end he is the same ;
he alters nothing, he retracts nothing. He is indeed surprised that
anything he has written should be thought contrary to the faith, and
desires wholly to submit himself to authority just as Pomponatius did
more than twenty years earlier, and I am obliged to agree with the
conclusions of the writer of the interesting (though very inaccurate)
article on Dolet in the new edition of La France Protestante that he
displayed to the end " 1'esprit rationaliste qui 1'inspirait quand, dix
ans plus t&t, dans ses Commentaires de la langue latine, il portait toute son

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 495

foremost names of his contemporaries, he is certainly entitled
to a high position. Though he may not have been that
consummate master of Latin style that he fondly believed,
and though he may have been wanting in critical acumen,
yet he must be admitted to have been a sound Latin scholar
as scholarship was then understood, possessed of much
learning, of strong classical feeling, of unwearied industry,
and of both the will and the power to make his learning
available for the use and benefit of others. His Cow-
adoration sur 1'Etre supreme et sur lui seul. . . . Sans doute Dolet
employa les derniers temps de son activite litteraire a imprimer des
livres protestants et a les recommander dans de pieuses prefaces,
mais il pouvait favoriser la Reforme et la recommander parce qu'elle
s'accordait beaucoup mieux que 1'eglise catholique avec les libertes de
1'esprit, et ne point en accepter les dogmes. En effet on a vu dans
tout le cours du present article, Dolet lui-me'me proteste centre cet
enr61ement, en confessant son pur deisme." (In this article a number of
M. Boulmier's errors are reproduced including the confusion of Jean de
Langeac with Jean du Bellay-Langey.)

But though I cannot agree with the conclusions of M. Douen, I none
the less thank him for the attention he has paid to my book, and I can
assure my readers that they will find his articles well worthy of their
attention.

In reference to the religious opinions of Dolet I may note that
among the books of M. Leopold Double (No. 343 in the sale catalogue)
was a volume of Hor<£ described as " a la reliure d'fitienne Dolet et qui
porte sur les plats la devise qu'il avait adoptee : Preservez-moi, Seigneur,
des calomnies des hommes." A note of M. Paul Lacroix appended to the
volume assumes that it had belonged to fitienne Dolet and that it was
" un solennel temoin qui vient, pour ainsi dire, apres trois siecles de
doute et d'erreur, rehabiliter la me'moire du celebre imprimeur con-
damne a mort, comme ath'ee re/afs." M. Lacroix further assumes that
it proves that Dolet was " un bon chretien, attache a la foi, de ses peres,
et surtout au culte de la Vierge, lisant ses Heures et pratiquant ses devoirs
de piete avec autant de candeur qu'un digne chanoine." It is, of course,
possible that the book may have belonged to Dolet though the fact of
the device being stamped on it can hardly be admitted as conclusive proof,
but assuming it to have been Dolet's, 1 fail to see that it affords any evidence
of his religious opinions or as to his practice of " ses devoirs de piete."

496 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

mentaries were one of the most important contributions
to Latin scholarship which France had as yet given. His
Formula, his criticisms on Terence, and his translations,
are all amongst the most meritorious works of their kind.
That his Latin works are rhetorical rather than scientific,
looking at form and not at substance, is only to say that
they were the works of a scholar of the Renaissance, of a
scholar of the first half of the sixteenth century. His
Latin verse is neither better nor worse than that of most
of his contemporaries,1 and if he never rises to the height

1 The judgment of Buchanan was very unfavourable, but it was rather
the matter than the style that he censured. His two epigrams on Dolet
are as follows : —

Carmina quod sen su careant, mirare Doleti ?
Quando qui scripsit carmina, mente caret.

Verba Doletus habet (quis nescit ?) splendida : verum
Splendida nil praeter verba Doletus habet.

Pasquier is not more friendly ; he says of him

' Cui placuit nullus, nulli hunc placuisse necesse est.'

This is rather unkind, for the idea as well as the form of a long passage
in Pasquier's Recherches sur la France (book vii. c. vi.) is clearly taken
from the digression in Dolet's Commentaries, quoted ante, pp. 256-262.
On the other hand, Macrin — the French Horace — classes him with
Brice, Dampierre, Bourbon, and Voulte, and speaks of his verses in terms
of high praise. The reader who desires to see more fully the estimation
in which he was held by his contemporaries will find a large collection
of epigrams favourable and unfavourable to him in Maittaire's Annales
Typographic^ vol. iii. pp. 10-113. None of his biographers have, how-
ever, noticed the bitter epigrams written against him by Gilbert
Ducher, generally under the name of Durus (Epigrammata, Lugduni,
1538, pp. 12, 38, 96, 104, 105), by Simon Vallambert, under different
transparent disguises (Epigrammaton Somnia, Lugduni, 1541, pp. 24, 28,
47, 48), by Antoine de Gouvea (Epigrammata, Lugduni, 1540, p. 16), by
Cl. Rosselet (Epigrammata, Lugduni, 1536, p. 66), and by Jehan Gigas
(Sylvarum Libri, Vitebergas, 1540. This unpaged volume contains four
epigrams against Dolet.) The author of the life of Dolet, in Lei
Hommes illustres de rOrleanais (taken principally from the MS. of Dom
Gerou preserved in the public library of Orleans) says that Muret was

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 497

of Vida or Sannazar, he at least does not fall to the level
of Julius Caesar Scaliger. That he sometimes admits false
quantities is a fault which he shares with scholars and poets
of much greater reputation.1 Yet sometimes in his Latin,
and still oftener in his French verse, notably in several of
those quoted in the course of this book, he rises to a height
of pathos, vigour, and imaginative power rarely if ever to
be found among the poets of the day, which certainly in-
duces us to believe that had he devoted to French verse
the labour and pains which he gave to elaborating and
polishing his Latin prose, he might have equalled any of
his contemporaries, and surpassed all except Marot. Nor
must his services to the French language be forgotten. He

among the intimate friends of Dolet, and speaks of him with lloge in his
collection of Epigrams. I have not been able to find any reference to
Dolet in the writings of Muret, nor anything to indicate that there was
any acquaintance between the two men. Muret was only twenty years
of age at the time of Dolet's death.

Besides the two poems of Charles de Sainte Marthe already quoted,
his Polsie Fratifotse contains the following ode to Dolet : —

Demosthene vivant, qui n'eut oncque second,
Les Grecs eurent jadis Eloquence entre mains.
Lui mort, au monde vint Ciceron le facond,
Lequel avecque soi la porta aux Romains.
Apres luy, elle fut transported aux Germains,
Ou toujours demoura tant qu'Erasme a eu vie ;
De la s'en retourna visiter 1'Italie,
Et avoit prins manoir chez Bembe et Sadolet.
Mais depuis peu de temps leur a este ravie
Et tout droit amenee en France par Dolet.

1 Gray, usually one of the most correct and elegant writers of Latin
verse, has the following lines : —

' Irasque, insidiasque et taciturn sub pectore vulnus.'
' Quin, uti nos oculis jam nunc juvat ire per arva."
' Scilicet haec partem tibi, Masinissa, triumph!. '
* Tempus ego certe memini felicia Poems.'

Salmasius notices mistakes of quantity in the poems of Milton, and neither
Buchanan nor Beza is free from them, nor even from faults of grammar
and construction. Joseph Scaliger twice (in the Scaligerana) remarks upon
the Gallicisms of Beza.

2 K

498 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

was one of the few scholars of the day who did not despise
his mother tongue, and who had formed a true conception
of its importance, and of the method of treating it scientific-
ally. His grammatical tracts and his translations afford
us proofs of this, and add to the many other indications of
what he might and probably would have done had a longer
life been allowed to him. For in judging of his talents and
abilities we must not forget that he had only attained the
age of thirty-eight years at his death, and that the last four
years of his life were almost wholly passed in prison. What
would have been the reputation of Bude, of Calvin, or even
of Erasmus had their lives terminated with their thirty-
eighth year ? But the man ' was greater than his books.'
His books have fallen into a common oblivion with those
of greater men. ' The books of the scholars of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries,' says Mr. Pattison in his admir-
able Life of Casaubon (p. 434), 'have for us little more
than an historical interest. They will be visited only by
those curious inquirers who may wish to acquaint them-
selves with the history of learning. The biographical data
will be of more interest than the philological matter.'

The books that Dolet did not write, but only planned,
interest us even more than those he actually composed,
since they help us to understand better the mind, the
aspirations, the aims of the passionate Ciceronian. The
history of opinions, the complete translation of Plato,
the translation of the whole Bible, the Orateur Franfoys,
the history of his own times, the lives of the Kings of
France after the manner of Suetonius, make us half admire
the enthusiasm, half laugh at the conceit of the man who
could imagine himself competent to undertake them, or
who could believe that one life could be sufficient to
accomplish them all, while his orations in his own defence
in reference to the death of Compaing, and his defence

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 499

from the serious charges on which sentence of death was
pronounced on him, and which he composed in the prisons
of Lyons, could not fail to have been of the highest bio-
graphical interest. His enthusiastic love of learning and
his intense belief in himself are his two strongest character-
istics, and both contributed in no slight degree to his
misfortunes.

It has been my endeavour in this book to show Dolet as
he really was, and I have omitted neither the unfavourable
criticisms of his contemporaries, both on his writings and
on his disposition, nor the facts from which unfavourable
conclusions may be drawn. When I first planned this
work I had absolute faith in the panegyrists of Dolet. I
believed, as it has been the fashion for a certain class of
men of letters in France to represent, that he was a man of
the noblest character, that his virtues and learning alone
excited the hatred of the enemies of virtue and learning,
and brought him to the Place Maubert. But the careful
study of his own writings, and of contemporary authorities,
has led me, however unwillingly, to the conclusion that his
own faults of head, and I fear it must be added of heart,
were, though not the principal, yet important co-operating
causes of his misfortunes. Yet even with these drawbacks
he remains a man possessed of many most admirable
qualities, of high talent, an intense desire after knowledge
for himself, and an equally intense desire of communicating
it to others, a profound sympathy with every kind of in-
tellectual progress, and a bitter hatred of ignorance, bigotry,
superstition, and priestcraft.

In judging fairly of his character, and in weighing his
merits and defects, I would ask that two facts be re-
membered in his favour, and due weight given to them.
The first is, that with all these serious faults of temper and

500 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

temperament, which could not fail at once to make them-
selves seen, he yet excited the affection, the admiration, and
the respect, and obtained and at least for a time retained the
friendship of every man of learning and virtue with whom
he came into personal contact. One who so easily acquired
and so long enjoyed the friendship of men so different in
station, in sentiments, and in disposition as Jean de Langeac,
Simon Villanovanus, Jean de Pins, Arnoul Le Ferron,
Jacques Bording, Gui de Breslay, Jean de Boyssone, Charles
de Sainte Marthe, the two Sceves, Sebastian Gryphius,
Nicolas Berauld, Pierre Duchatel, Jean Voulte, and last
though not least, of Clement Marot and Francois Rabelais,
must have been possessed of some excellent qualities of head
and of heart.

The second fact is this, that with all the violence of
Dolet's temper, with all the outrageous and abusive language
in which he indulged towards his real and fancied enemies,
no single word of unkindness was ever printed by him con-
cerning any one of those with whom he had been on terms
of friendship, but with whom, from whatever cause, he had
quarrelled. Wherever the names of Rabelais, Marot, Voulte,
Bourbon, or Sussanneau occur in his writings, he uses the
language of affection and of admiration. It is possible
that every mention of them was written by him before their
estrangement, yet if so his silence ought to be allowed to
tell strongly in his favour. It is from them, not from him,
that we learn the existence of dissension. I have already
expressed my opinion — though the evidence on the subject
is very slight — that the probability is that in each case
Dolet was in the wrong. But the fact that he made no
complaint and used no unkind word, and that it is so much
more easy for the injured than for the injurer to forgive,
should be remembered in his favour, and will probably
lead us to the conclusion that thoughtlessness and personal

xxv OPINIONS AND CHARACTER 501

vanity, rather than badness of heart, led to the conduct of
which his friends complained.

It is not from a priest and a Barnabite that we should
expect a perfectly fair and impartial opinion concerning
one who was reported to be an atheist, but I do not know
that there is much to complain of in the Abbe Niceron's
judgment (though only an imperfect one) on Dolet : — l

' II fut outre en tout, aime extremement des uns, ha'i des
autres a la fureur : comblant les uns de loiianges, dechirant
les autres sans pitie, toujours attaquant, toujours attaque,
scavant au-dela de son age, s'appliquant sans relache au
travail, d'ailleurs orgueilleux, meprisant, vindicatif, et
inquiet.'

1 Mem. four servir a /'Hisf. des Hommes Illustres, vol. xxi. p. 118.

CHAPTER XXVI
CLAUDE DOLET

Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.

SCOTT.

O trace has hitherto been
discovered of Dolet's
widow or son Claude.
The question, what be-
came of them after his
death, has often been
put, but never answered.
The diligence of Nee de
la Rochelle was able to
discover the existence of
only two persons of the
same surname in the two
centuries which followed
the death of our hero —
a certain Leon Dolet, advocate and echevin of Paris in 1603,
and a Jacques Dolet, who filled the same characters in
1623 ; and M. Boulmier was unable to add any others to
this meagre list. ' After the death of Dolet,' he writes,
' we completely lose the trace of his son Claude.' ' This
young unfortunate,' says Nee de la Rochelle, ' excites our
compassion, and compels our tears. An innocent victim,

CHAP, xxvi CLAUDE DOLET 503

having bitterly to complain of the fury of the enemies of
Dolet, what became of him after the death of his unfor-
tunate father ? Forced by a prejudice, which still exists, to
conceal her misfortune, his mother perhaps sought an
asylum far from the city which gave him birth, where they
could live together in retirement, unknown, and sheltered
from the persecutions of the devotees and too zealous
defenders of the Catholic religion. Nevertheless it is
certain that this child was lost for the literary world in
which he had been destined to shine, or that he so com-
pletely concealed his name from the curiosity of the vulgar
that no one has since spoken of his existence, or even of his
death/1

I believe that I am able partially to draw away the veil
of mystery which has hitherto enveloped the after-life of
Claude Dolet, and to give some indications both as to him
and his descendants which, however, I must leave to others
with greater opportunities than I possess, to follow up.

After repeated and lengthened searches in likely and
unlikely quarters for persons bearing the name of Dolet,
J at length discovered that at Troyes, the great seat of
the paper manufacture in France, where the printers of
Lyons obtained most of the paper for their impressions, and
with which city the publication of an edition of the Second
Enfer in 1544 (by Nicole Paris) proves that Dolet had
intimate relations, and where, in fact, his final arrest took
place, Claude Dolet was living as a flourishing citizen from
1570 to 1585. Among the manuscripts of the Biblio-
theque Nationale is a French translation of the Ethics of
Aristotle made by Nicole Oresme.2 The volume is a large
quarto, written on vellum, in the handwriting of the

1 Vie de Dolet, p. 63.

2 See Les Manuscrits Francois de la Biblioth'eque du Roi, par A. Paulin,
Paris, vol. iv. p. 430, No. 7059. 551.

504 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP.

fifteenth century, and ornamented with numerous miniatures,
vignettes, and initial letters, and on the last sheet is this in-
scription, * Cest livre de Ethiques est de Messire Bertran de
Beauvau. . . . et le acheta a Paris le XX I IP jour de May
I'an Mil CCCC. quarante sept.' Then below follows, ' Et
depuis a Claude Dolet qui demeure a Troyes et Fachepta le
XXVII decembre M.Ve LXX au diet Troyes.' Afterwards
on the vellum page which is fastened to the binding is
written, ' A Troyes Nicolas Vignier docteur en medecine
1587.' Fifteen years after the date of Claude Dolet's
inscription in the book (i.e. 1585), I find one of the same
name an echevin of the city.1 If as I conjecture this was
the same person and was the son of Etienne Dolet, he would
be thirty-one years of age when he purchased the manuscript
of the Ethics and forty-seven when he was chosen an echevin
of Troyes. The extreme rarity of the surname, the identity
of the Christian name, the age of Claude Dolet, the con-
nection of Etienne Dolet with Troyes, and lastly the
hereditary literary taste displayed in the purchase of the
beautiful and costly manuscript, seem to me to prove con-
clusively the identity of Claude Dolet, echevin of Troyes,
with the son of Etienne Dolet. And if we are satisfied
of this identity, we shall probably not be far wrong in
concluding that it was from Troyes that Etienne Dolet
brought his wife to Lyons, and that she retired to her
native city and to her family there, when the sentence
of the Parliament of Paris had deprived her of her
husband.

Fourteen years after Claude Dolet had filled the office
of echevin, I find the Leon Dolet mentioned by Nee de la
Rochelle, an advocate at Paris. He appears in Loisel's list

1 Courtalon-Delaistre, Topograph. Hist, de la Ville et du Diocese de
Troyes, Troyes, 1783.

xxvi CLAUDE DOLET 505

made in the year I599,1 and, according to the Antiquites de
Paris par Malingre (1640, p. 690), he was chosen echevin
of Paris on August 16, 1603. The next of the name whom
I have found is the Jacques Dolet (also mentioned by Nee
de la Rochelle), who according to Malingre (p. 692) was an
advocate, and was in 1623 echevin of Paris. In 1698 Paul
Dolet and the widow of Michel Dolet, both of Sedan, were
Protestant refugees at Cologne, and in 1704 the name of
Jean Dolet of Pignan, Languedoc, occurs as that of a Pro-
testant receiving assistance at Geneva.2

In the eighteenth century there lived a Dolet who on
account of his Christian name is especially interesting to us.
Claude Louis Dolet, ' religieux Benedictin de la Reforme de
Clugniy is mentioned by Le Long in his Bibliotheque His-
torique (1719) as the author of ' MS. Histoire, ou plutot
memoires de la province de Nivernois.' To the edition of Le
Long given by Ferret de Fontette,3 M. Parmentier, ' assesseur
de la Marechaussee du NivernoisJ contributed the following
note relative to Claude Louis Dolet : ' Ses MSS. ont etc
disperses apres sa mort, et il y en a quelques morceaux a
S. Martin des Champs a Paris. II avait bien amasse des
materiaux mais il parait qu'il n'avoit rien redige. J'ai vu
de ses extraits en plusieurs endroits mais son histoire dont
parloit le P. le Long n'est nulle part.'

In the Grand Dictionnaire Historique of Larousse (vol.
vi.) I find an account of a Charles Dolet, an actor and
theatrical manager, son of an officer of the mint, born at
Paris in 1682, and who died in the same city in 1738.
Francois Dolet was a printer at Boulogne in 1781.* Lastly,
there died in 1823 a certain Pierre Dolet, President d 'etude

1 Pasquier, ou Dialogue des Avocati du Parlement de Paris.

2 La France Protestante, 2nd edition.

8 1772. 4 vols. fol., vol. iii. p. 415, No. 35.570.

4 Morand, Essai sur les principals impressions £ou/onais, 1841.

506 ETIENNE DOLET CHAP, xxvi

de la petite communaute de St. Louis en V He. His funeral
oration was delivered by the Abbe de Rolleau, and after-
wards printed by Gamier (8vo, 1823).

Searches in the Archives of Troyes, of the Faculty of
Advocates of Paris, of the Benedictine order of Clugni, and
in other official records would probably result in the dis-
covery of the parentage of these persons. Much interest
has of late years been shown by France in those of her
children who shared in the revival of letters. This leads me
to hope that the indications given in this chapter, which,
however scanty or insufficient they may seem, have not been
collected without much labour, will be followed up by some
who, living in France, have facilities for researches of this
kind which I do not possess. It is in the belief that, if this
suggestion is carried out, it will appear that the persons
mentioned were the descendants of the victim of the Place
Maubert, and therefore not without interest to the few
whom sympathy for an unfortunate scholar of the Renais-
sance may induce to follow a somewhat dull record to its
close, that I venture, with these fragmentary notices, to
conclude my story of the life and death of Etienne Dolet.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

DOCUMENTS

I

ACT OF ASSOCIATION of 10 July 1542, between DOLET and
his WIFE, and HELAYN DULIN.

ARCHIVES OF LYONS.

[The omissions are of illegible words and passages.]

Personnellement estably honnorable personne Mtre Estienne
Dolet, marchant imprimeur et libraire, citoyen de lion et de son
autorite Loyse Giraud sa femme pour eulx et en leurs noms d'une
part et honorable homme Helayn Dulin, demeurant ^u dit lion aussi
pour luy et en son nom .... lesquels . . . . et iceux maries Dolet
1'un pour 1'autre et chacun d'eux present et pour le tout renoncans
au benefice de demission d'actions ont fait et font entre eulx nouvelle
compaignie oultre les deux compaignies cy-devant faictes, d'une
presse d'imprimerie que les dits maries Dolet ont promis et pro-
mettent tenir dans les premiers jours de septembre prochain venant
soubs les memes actes . . . conventions et accords contenus es dites
premiere et seconde compagnie . . . faictes et passees entreux dudit
fait et train d'imprimerie la premiere le 24* jour du moys de Janvier
Ian mil cinq cens trente neuf et la seconde le dix huictieme jour du
moys d'aoust ensuyvant mil cinq cens quarante et ce pour le terns et
terme de six ans entreux continuels et consequutifs commencant du
dl premier jour du moys de septembre prouchain veut mil cinq cens
quarante deux et finissant le dit jour d'aoust que 1'on comptera mil
Vc quarante huict jusques auquel temps les dites parties par ces dites
presentes ont continue et proroge les . . . deux . . . premieres com-

510 APPENDIX A

paignies a ce que toutes les dites troys compaignies viennent a finir
en ung mesme jour, adjoustant touteffois a 1'accord de cette presente
compaignie les articles qui en suyvent savoir est que les diets maries
Dolet baillent presentement gratis au dit Dulin ung livre de chacune
sorte qu'ils ont imprimes en leurs deux presses depuis qu'ils commen-
cerent a lever la premiere presse et s'ils les ont imprimes derechef
quils lui en baillent aussy ung de autant de foys qu'ils les auront
imprimez, en declarant au dit helayn quel nombre il y en aura im-
print et d'ici en avant, promettent faire le semblable de tous ceux
quils imprimeront ou reimprimeront en toutes leurs presses, plus
promettent semblablement que s'ils avaient imprim£ ou imprimeront
par cy apres quelque livre ou livres qui fussent ou vinssent a estre
reprins ou defendus . . . que iceux maries Dolet prennent cella sur
leur charge et en laisseront portant de les faire bons audit Dulin
suyvant leurs diets accords tout ainsi que s'ils etaient prins et auraient
. . . sans ce que le dit hekyn en soit charge ou empesche . . . Et ce
moyennant le prix et somme de quinze cens livres que le dit Dulin
promet fournir aux diets maries Dolet pour son fonds dans cette
presente compaignie sur laquelle somme de quinze cents livres les dits
maries Dolet ont confesse et confessent avoir eu et receu dudit Dulin
cinq cents livres tant en cinquante escus d'or sol qu'ils ont cydevant
receu . . . ils ont dit et confessent . . . quatre vingt sept livres dix
sols qu'ils ont receus presentement en ducats doubles ducats ung demi
escu dor sol en partie et tellement que des . . . cinq cents livres les
susdicts maries Dolet se sont tenus et tiennent pour contents et en
ont quite et quitent le dit Dulin lequel Dulin a promis et promet leur
fournir et delivrer les mil livres restans desdites quinze cents livres
aux festes de Toussaint et de Pasques prouchains venant par dgalle
portion permettant les dites parties . . . et soubs leur serment et
soubs obligations et ypotheque de tous leurs biens . . . avoir agreable
tenir devoir tenir et accomplir des dites parties respectivement et en
droyt soy tout le contenu en ces presentes sans jamais controvenir
sur payne de tous arrests deppens dommaiges et interets soubmettans
... a toutes cours royaux, senechaussees, officialite . . . Privileges
des foyres dudit lion voir de Champaigne . . . Donne a Lion en la
maison d'habitation des dits maries Dolet le lundi dixieme jour de
juillet 1'an mil Ve quarante deux. Presents Claude Millet Dr en
medecine et Guillaume Lamayne demeurants au dit Lion.

(Signe] COTEREAU.

DOCUMENTS 511

[The first witness Claude Millet was a friend of Dolet to whom
there is an epistle in the edition of La Chirurgie de Paulus Mgineta
of 1540 (see Appendix B). The name of the other witness is
unknown to me. " Cotereau " appears as the Notary in several
Notarial Acts of the same epoch. He was probably a relation of
Dolet's friend Claude Cottereau.]

II

DOCUMENTS relating to the Arrest of Dolet at Troyes in 1543,
and his subsequent removal to the Conciergerie of Paris.

ARCHIVES NATIONALES.
Carton X2 b 6.

A NOSSGRS DE PARLEMENT

Suppl. humblement Jacques des Vaulx, messager ordine de Lyon
comme des le septme jour de Janvier M.VCXLIII derr passe en
vertu de la comission emanee de la court led. suppl. ayt este charge
par le lieuten. general de la seneschaucee dud. Lyon de amener
prisonnier des prisons ordinaires dud. Lyon en la conciergerie du
palais ung nome Estienne Dolet imprimeur dud. Lyon lequel
des le VIIIe desd. mois et an seroit evade des mains et puyssance
dud. suppl. qui apres plusieurs diligences et perquisitions par luy
faictes pour le recouvrer tant es pays dalemaigne, Suysse, Genefve,
Bourgongne, Franche conte, Daulphine, Languedocque ailleurs en ce
Royaulme lauroit finablement faict constituer prisonnier es prisons
de Troyes en Champaigne des quell, il auroit este extraict avec led.
suppl. Ses gens et ay des jusques au nombre de vingt homes et
vingt chevaulx et rendu prisonnier en lad. conciergerie come
appert par ce seront cy atach. le tout aux fraiz, despens et poursuicte
dud. suppl.

Ce considere, il vo. plaise comectre lun de vous nosd. srs. tel
quil vous plaira por tauxer aud. suppl. ce voyage davoir amene
ledit Dolet prisonnier des prisons de Lyon en lad. conciergerie
tant por luy que por six personnes de cheval ses gens et aydes actendu
la qualite dud. prisonnier Leu esgard aux grands fraictz que led. suppl.
a faictz pour lamener dud. Troyes qui excedent plus de cent escuz.

DOCUMENTS 513

Et de la somme quil vo8 plaira tauxer ordonner executoire estre
delivre aud. suppl. contre le receveur des amendes de lad. court. Et
v° ferez bien.

Visa captura et adductione dicti Dolet et habito juramento dicti
Jacobi Desvaulx iterum qualitate temporis et captivis pro sex homini-
bus cum tribus et dicto captivo et pro redditu consortium dicti
Desvaulx, habent centum quinquaginta libras parisienses. Actum
XVIIa septembris millesimo quingentesimo quadragesimo quarto.

DEMONTMIREL.

Commictitur magister Stephanus de Montmirel, Regis consilia-
rius. Actum in parlamento, XVIa septembris M° V° Xliiii0 .

Consentio pro Rege taxationem rationabilem fieri supplicanti
habita ratione ad quantitatem tam equorum quam servientiarum
pro qualitate temporis necessarii pro executione dicte capture.
[BJlanchard. J. BRULART ?

FRAIZ et MISES faictz par JAQUES Desvaulx, messaigier ordinaire de
la ville de Lion, depuis la capture de mc ESTJENNE DOLLET
faicte es prisons de la ville de Troyes.

ET PREMIEREMENT

Habito jura- Pour neuf postes prinses par ledit Desvaulx pour

mento Jacobi venir en ceste ville de Paris dudit lieu de Troies

Desvaulx, mes- pOur advertir messieurs de la court de ladicte capture

sagerii Lugdu- et pOur avojr commission d'icelle pour amener ledit

ne,?sls . Dolet dudit lieu de Troies en la consiergerie du

SClllCCt Xlll1 X S. 1 • i J 11 '

palais, pour chacune desquelles postes a este paie
trente solz tournois. Pource pour les neuf

xiii1 x s. tournois

s xviii s. t. Item aux postilions et guydes

xviii s. tourn.

s xxxvi s. t. Item pour le sejour faict par ledit Desvaulx en

ceste ville de Paris par Pespace de trois jours a
sollicker ladite commission

xxxvi s. tourn.
2 L

5*4

Habito jura-
mento Jacob!
Desvaulx, mes-
sagerii Lugdu-
nensis et Petri
Seguyneau, ser-
vientis palatii,
qui affirmant
solvisse pro quo-
libet homine
viginti solidos
turonenses et
pro sex diebus
1. t.

Habito jura-
mento iiil x s. t.

s. Pro quolibet
caballo et pro
sex diebus : s.
xxx. 1. t.

Habito juramen-
to died mes-
sagerii, scilicet
pro quolibet
homine pro quo-
libet die vi s. t.
i homi-

pro
nibus
xxxvi 1- 1.

Habitojuramen-
to pro quolibet
homine sequente
vii s. vi d. t.

s. vi 1. xv s.

s. x s. t.

APPENDIX A

Pour la despence par luy faicte de vingt hommes
et vingt chevaulx tant pour aller que revenir depuis
ceste ville jusques audit Troies.

Item pour la despence faicte par ledit Dollet
durant dix jours qu'il a demoure aux prisons dudit
Troyes.

Item pour le louaige de vingt chevaulx

Item pour le sallaire de vingt hommes a cheval

Item pour six hommes de pied par luy prins
pour luy faire aide depuis ladicte ville de Troies
jusques a Sens

Item pour 1'expedition de ladicte commission

x s. t.

Item pour le sejour faict tant par luy que par
ses aides en ceste ville de Paris

DOCUMENTS 515

A Paris les parties susdictes avons taxez a la somme de neufvingtz
six livres trois solz six deniers parisis en regard au personnaige
et qualit^ du temps. Faict par nous huissier soubscript, le xiiJe jour
de septembre mil vc quarante quattre. DE MONTMIREL.

A NOSSEIGNEURS DE PARLEMENT

Supplie humblement Pierre Seguinault, sergent royal au baillage
du palais comme, en vertu de la commission de ladicte court et a la
requeste de monsieur le procureur general du Roy et a la poursuicte
et diligence de Jaques de Vaulx, messaigier ordinaire de Lyon, ledict
suppliant ait amene de la ville de Troyes en la conciergerie du palais
a Paris, luy acompaigne de vingt hommes et vingt chevaulx avec
plusieurs personnes de pied, ung nomme Estienne Dolet, estant
prisonnier audit Troyes, lequel Dolet n'a aucuns biens pour luy,
satisfaire esdicts fraiz, ce considere, il vous plaise commetre 1'un de
vous nosseigneurs tel qu'il vous plaira pour tauxer les fraiz, sallaires et
vaccations dudit suppliant et de ses aides, et ordonnance executoire
de ladite tauxe en estre delivr£e audict suppliant a prendre sur le
revenu des amendes de ladicte court. Et vous ferez bien.

Audi to procuratore generali Regis l

magister STEPHANUS DE MONTMIREL.

Regis consiliarius. Actum in parlamento, xiiia septembris
m.v°

Consentio pro Rege taxationem rationabilem fieri supplicant!,
habito respectu ad quantitatem tarn equorum quam servientiarum que
necessaria erat pro qualitate rei et temporis pro executione dicte
capture. J. BRULART ?

BLANCHARD.

La Court oy sur ce le procureur general du Roy et veu la taxe de
certain conseillier dicelle a ce par elle commis A ordonne et ordonne,
actendue la qualite de la psone et du temps, a Nicolas Hardy recepveur
des exploictz et amendes de ladicte court bailler, paier et delivrer

1 Or Regio.

516 APPENDIX A

a Jaques des Vaulx messaigier ordinaire de la ville de Lion la somme
de cent livres par. pour avoir amene des prisons de la ville de Troves
es prisons de la Consiergerie du palais a Paris Estienne Dollet Im-
primeur et libraire de ladicte ville de Lion.

Septbre ST. ANDR£.

c XLIIII DEMOTMIREL.

Aujourd'huy maistre Estienne Dollet a este amene prisonnier
des prisons de Troyes et mys es prisons de la conciergerie du palais
par Pierre Seguyneault, sergent royal au bailliage du palais suyvant
certaine ordonnance et commission de la Court dactee du IIIIe jour
de ce present mois, signee Malon, obtenue a la requeste de Jaques
Desvaulx, messaigier ordinaire de Lion, et de Monsieur le procureur
general du Roy.

Faict le XIIejour de Septembre, Tan mil cinq cens quarante et
quatre BUTET.

APPENDIX B

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THIS Appendix contains as complete a list as I have been able to
make of the books written, edited, or printed, by Etienne Dolet.
The list given by M. Boulmier, the most nearly complete which had
appeared when the first edition of this book was printed, contains (in
addition to four books written by Dolet and printed by Gryphius)
fifty-three books as printed by Dolet ; the present list contains
eighty-four, besides four of which he was the editor for other
printers. To the books enumerated in the edition of 1880 I am able
to add three of which I have since discovered the existence — but on
the other hand I have satisfied myself that two of those which I had
there mentioned are not the productions of the press of Dolet.

In each case in which I am able to refer to an existing copy I
have done so j in all other cases the authority is given upon which
the title of the book is inserted. Of the eighty-four books printed
by Dolet I have seen and examined copies of sixty-five. Of each of
these I print the complete title-page. Of ten of the remainder, I
am able to refer to a copy now or lately existing, while nine have
totally disappeared, and I have been able to discover no trace of
any recently existing copy. Of these eighty-four volumes, copies
of forty-five are in my own possession, the Bibliotheque Nationale
possesses thirty-two, and the British Museum twenty-two.

The abbreviations, Bib. Nat.^ Brit. Mus.^ and R. C. C.y respec-
tively after the description of any book, indicate that a copy is in
the Bibliotheque Nationale, the British Museum, or in my own
possession.

I further give lists of the reprints, if any, of each of the books
written or edited by Dolet.

5i 8 APPENDIX B

I

BOOKS WRITTEN BY DOLET AND PRINTED BY
SEBASTIAN GRYPHIUS

1. Stephani Doleti Orationes Duae in Tholosam. Eiusdem
Epistolarum libri ii. Eiusdem Carminum libri ii. Ad eundem
Epistolarum amicorum liber.

8vo. Italics. 256 pp. Sigs. $ two, a-p fours, q two. 8 pp. unnumbered, 246 pp.
numbered. Last page, Doletus, Durior est tfectata iiirtutis quant inctgnitte conditio.

No date or printer's name, but certainly printed by Sebastian Gryphius at Lyons, between
Aug. 13 and Oct. 15, 1534.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.— Brit. Mus.

2. Stephani Doleti Dialogus, De Imitatione Ciceroniana adversus
Desiderium Erasmum Roterodamum, pro Christophoro Longolio.
\_Mark and motto of Gryphius.] Lugduni apud Seb. Gryphium.

M.D.XXXV.

4to. Roman letters. 200 pp. Signatures a-z and A and B twos. Ends on p. 197, then
3 pp. unnumbered, two of these blank. Last page, mark of Gryphius.
R. C. C.— Bib. Nat. —Brit. Mus.

3. Commentariorum Linguae Latinae. Tomus primus. Stephano
Doleto Gallo Aurelio Autore. [Mark and motto of Gryphius.] Lug-
duni apud Seb. Gryphium, 1536. Cum privilegio ad quadriennium.
[All within woodcut border. See ante^ pp. 251, 252.]

Folio. Italics. 912 pp. Signatures #, Aa sb, c threes, D two, a-z, A-Z, aa-zz, aaa
threes, bbb fours. 56 preliminary pp. unnumbered. 854 pp. text, in double columns,
numbered 1-1708. i p. blank, i p. mark of Gryphiua.

Commentariorum Linguae Latinae. Tomus Secundus. Ste-
phano Doleto Gallo Aurelio Autore. [Mark and motto of Gryphius. ]
Apud Seb. Gryphium Lugduni, 1538. Cum privilegio ad quad-
riennium. [In woodcut border.]

Folio. Italics. 924 pp. Signatures a$c, aA-cc threes, do four, A-Z, aa-zz, AA-ZZ, AAA,
BBB threes, ccc two. 64 preliminary pp. unnumbered ; 858 pp. text, in double columns,
numbered 1-1716. 2 pp. unnumbered 5 on the second, mark of Gryphius.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

Watt (Bib. Brit.) and other bibliographers are in error in stating that the Commentaries
of Dolet were reprinted at London 1734, and at Leipsic 1749. The books cited as such
reprints are editions of the Latin Dictionary of Robert Estienne. Monfalcon (Manuel du
Bib. et de FArch. Lyonnais, Paris, 1857, p. liv) is equally in error in saying that Antoine
Gryphius printed a second edition of the Commentaries of Dolet. They have never been
reprinted.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 519

An epitome of the first volume was printed at Basle with the mark of Lasius and
Platter in 1537, the author of which styles himself Jonas Philomusus. An epitome of the
second volume by a different author appeared in 1539 (Basileae, Westheimer) and an epitome
of the first volume by the author of that of the second, and altogether different from that
of 1537, appeared in 1540. (Basileae, Westhemerum et Winter.)

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

4. Stephani Doleti De re Navali. Liber ad Lazarum Bayfium.
\_Mark and motto of Gryphius.~\ Lugduni apud Seb. Gryphium,

410. Roman letters. 220 pp. Signatures A and B twos, c three, a-z and A twos.
28 pp. unnumbered. 1-189 text, i p. errata. i p. blank, i p. mark of Gryphius.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

This book has been reprinted by Gronovius in the Thesaurus Antiquitatum Grtecarum,
Lugd. Bat. 1697-1702, and Venice 1732-1737, vol. xi.

5. Doleti Carmina (see post, Books printed by Dolet}.

II
BOOKS EDITED BY DOLET FOR DIFFERENT PRINTERS

1. Recueil de Vers Latins et Vulgaires de plusieurs poe'tes
Francoys composes sur le trespas de feu Monsieur le Daulphin.
[Mark of Fr. Juste.'] M.D.XXXVI. On les vend a Lyon chez
Francoys Juste pres nostre Dame de Confort.

4to. Roman letters. 4o(?)pp. unnumbered. Signatures A and B fours, c twos.
(Should not c have two more folios ?)
R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

2. M. Tullii Ciceronis Orationes ex optimorum quorumque exem-
plarium collatione accuratissime castigatae. Tomus Primus. \_Mark
of Gryphius.'} Apud Seb. Gryphium, Lugduni, 1536.

The second and third volumes have the same title only substituting Secundus Tomus and
Tertius Tomus.

8vo [or small 410?]. Italic letters. Vol. i. 22 + 538 + 2 pp. Signatures jfc four,
$ $ two, a-z, A-L fours, except L three. Last page, mark of Gryphius. pp. 3-6. Pre-
face purporting to be by Gryphius, but really by Dolet addressed to Cardinal du Bellay,
followed by an ode of Dolet Ad eundem which is reprinted almost verbatim in the Carmina
Doleti, but is there addressed to Francis I. Vol. 2. 509 + 3 pp. Signatures aa-zz, AA-II,
fours. Last page, mark of Gryphius. Vol. 3. 491 + 1 pp. Signatures Aa-zz, aaa-hhh
fours, except hhh three. Last page, mark of Gryphius.

R. C. C. — Brit. Mus. (imp.)

520 APPENDIX B

3. Le Courtisan de Messire Baltazar de Castillon. Nouvelle-
ment reveu et corrige. [Mark of Fr. Juste.] Avec privilege royal
pour trois ans. Francois Juste, M.D.XXXVIII.

8vo. Roman letters.

Each page is in a woodcut border. This volume is divided into three parts, each with a
separate title-page, and pagination of folios. Pt. i (Books i and n), 292 pp. CXLVI folios
irregularly numbered and full of mistakes : last, which should be CXLVI, is CXLII. Signa-
tures a-r fours, s five. Pt. Z. Le tiers livre du Courtisan. [Mark of Juste surrounded by
motto, and two -verses underneath^ On les vend a Lyon ches Francoys Juste devant Nostre
Dame de Confort, M.D.XXXVIII. 118 pp. Folios numbered I-LIX. Pt. 3. Le quart livre
du Courtisan. 120 pp. Folios numbered I-LVIII. Signatures A-P. On rev. of folio 58,
Fin du quatriesme et dernier 1'rvre du Courtisan imfrime de nou-veau. Lyon, par Francoys Juste,
demourant devant le grant forte Nostre Dame de Confort Lan 1538. Then follow 4 pp. un-
numbered.

Bib. Nat.— Brit. Mus.

4. Le G-uydon des Practiciens contenant tout le faict de'practique
come Ton se doibt conduyre en exerceant icelle Premierement
imprime avec son repertoire et avec les allegations des droictz.
Et est divise par plusieurs chapitres comme amplement apert.
\_Mark of Gabiano.~\ Avecques privilege pour six ans. M.D.XXXVIII.
II se vendent a Lyon en rue Merciere chez Scipion de Gabiano et
freres.

8vo. Gothic letters. 856 pp. Signatures a-g fours, h five, a-v, A-Z, Aa fours, sb five.
132 pp. unnumbered, CCCLXII folios numbered. On rev. of title ; Estienne Dolet au lecteur
salut.

Brit. Mus.

This seems to be the original edition of this book, which was frequently reprinted.

[Le Theatre des bons engins auquel sont contenuz cent Emblemes (par Guil-
laume de la Perriere). The first edition of this book (without date but about 1536) has
been frequently attributed to the press of Dolet, and sometimes stated to have been edited
by him, but for no other reason than that it bears at the end a device similar to one after-
wards adopted by Dolet ; — Redime me a calumniis homlnum. Brit. Mus.]

Ill

BOOKS PRINTED BY DOLET1

M.D.XXXVIII.

i. Stephani Doleti Galli Aurelii Carminum Libri quatuor.

1 This division includes all books purporting to issue from the press of Dolet. It is
certain that the two first mentioned, and probable that some others, were not in fact
printed by him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 521

[Mark of Dolet with motto^ SCABRA ET IMPOLITA AD AMUSSIM DOLO
ATQUE PERPOLio.J Lugduni. Anno M.D.XXXVIII.

4to. Italic letters. 4+175 + 5 pp. Signature a three, b-y twos, z one.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

The mark of Dolet on the title-page shows that he put it forth to the public as printed
by him, but it is clear from the type and initial letters that it was in fact printed at the
press of Sebastian Gryphius.

2. Les CEuvres de Clement Marot de Cahors, valet de chambre
du Roy. Augmentees de deux Livres d'Epigrammes : Et d'ung
grand nombre d'aultres CEuvres par cy devant non imprimees. Le
tout songneusement par luy mesmes reveu et mieulx ordonne.
[Mark of Dolet with motto^ SCABRA etc.] A Lyon au Logis de
Monsieur Dolet, M.D.XXXVIII. Avec privilege pour dix ans.

8vo. Gothic letters. 488 pp. Folios numbered i-xc, i-xcvi, i-xxxn, i-xxvi. Signatures
a-1, A-M, Aa-Dd, A-C. Each of the four divisions has a separate title, with the mark of
Dolet, which again appears on the last page.

Bib. Nat.

That this edition of Marot, though purporting to be, yet was not really printed by Dolet,
is clear. It was probably printed by Gryphius.

3. Cato Christianus. Stephano Doleto Gallo Aurelio Autore.
[Mark of Dolet with motto.] Lugduni, apud eundem Doletum,
1538. Cum privilegio ad decennium.

8vo. Roman and Italic letters. 40 pp. Signatures A-B fours, c two. Rev. of title an
ode by Dolet ; pp. 3, 4, Dedication to Sadolet j 5, 6, Address ad Ludimagistros christianos 5
7, two odes by A. Dumoulin and G. Durand ; 8, Table of Contents, Decalogi expositio.
Accessio ad praecepta legis, ex Christi doctrina. Christianae et Apostolicae persuasionis
Symbolum cum ejusdem expositione. Precatio dominica et ejus interpretatio. Odae, de
laudibus Virginis Maria?. At the end the mark of Dolet ; underneath, Durior est spectatte
vlrtut'u, quam incognita conditio.

R. C. C. — (Coste's and Didot's copy).

4. Catonis Disticha cum scholiis Erasmi. Nunc primum a
Stephano Doleto emendata et quibusdam in locis fusiis explicata.
Nonnulla huic opusculo attexta sequente pagina reperies. [Mark
with motto.~\ Lugduni, apud eundem Doletum. Cum privilegio
ad decennium.

8vo. Roman and Italic letters. 112 pp. Signatures A-G. p. 2. Catonis Disticha
GrSece a Maximo Planude Latino versa. Apophthegmata Graecias sapientum interprete
Erasmo. Eadem per Ausonium cum scholiis Erasmi. Mimi Publiani cum ejusdem scholiis
recogniti j pp. 3, 4, Stephanus Doletus Joanni Pellissoni Gymnasiarchae Turnonensi (at the

522 APPENDIX B

end) Lugduni XII Cal. Octob. . . 1538. Last p. mark of Dolet ; underneath, Doletus,
Durior, etc.

Roanne Library (Cat. No. 3281).

The special interest of this book in addition to its rarity, consists in the Greek translation
of the Disticha which it includes.

M.D.XXXIX.

5. Formulae Latinarum Locutionum Illustriorum. Stephano
Doleto Gallo Aurelio Autore. Prima pars conflatas ex nomine et
verbo locutiones habet. Secunda significationem et constructionem
verborum profert. Tertia usum particularum indeclinabilium de-
monstrat. [Mark with motto, SCABRA etc.] Lugduni, apud
eundem Doletum, 1539. Cum privilegio ad decennium.

Folio. Roman and Italic letters. 204 pp. Signatures A-R threes. Last page mark ;
underneath, Dofetus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat.— Brit. Mus.

This book has been frequently reprinted : —

i. By Sturm with the Connubium Adiierblorum of H. Sussanneau, under the title Phrases
et formulae linguae latinae elegantiores cum praefatione Joan. Sturmii quibus adjecimus
Connubium adverbiorum Ciceronianorum Hub. Sussannaei. Argentorati, Rihel.
1576, 1580, 1585, 1596, 1610.

ii. In 1606 Barezzi published at Venice an edition of the Thesaurus Giceronianus of
Nizolius, incorporating therewith, with some slight alterations, the Formula Latinarum
Locutionum of Dolet, but without any reference to Dolet's name, and stating both on
the title-page and in the preface that the Formula were by Nizolius : this was repeated
in the edition given by Bernard Junta at Venice in 1607, and probably in other
editions printed during the seventeenth century. In 1734 Facciolati restored the
Formula to their true author, in the edition which he gave of Nizolius under the
following title : Lexicon Ciceronianum Marii Nizolii ex recensione Alexandri Scoti.
Nunc crebis locis refectum et inculcatum. Accedunt Phrases et Formulae Linguae
Latinae ex Commentariis Stephani Doleti. Patavii, M.D.CCXXXIV. Facciolati has
prefixed a preface of his own composition, has omitted some examples given by
Dolet, adding others, and giving also the references to the passages cited. Reprinted
with the Lexicon Nizolianum, London, 1820, 3 vols. 8vo.

iii. In 1753, and again in 1764, Bandiera printed the Phrases et Formula of Dolet at the
end of his volume, Osservazioni su le epistole di Marco Tullio Cicerone a famigliari.
Venezia, Bettinelli. (See as to these volumes and the curious printer's errors therein,
ante, p. 270, note i.)

6. Genethliacum Claudii Doleti Stephani Doleti Filii. Liber vitae
communi in primis utilis et necessarius. Autore patre. \_Mark
with motto, SCABRA etc.] Lugduni, apud eundem Doletum, 1539.
Cum privilegio ad decennium.

4to. Italic letters. 24 pp. Signatures A-C.
R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. (two copies). — Brit. Mus.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 523

Of the two copies of this book in the Bib. Nat., each with the date 1539, I have
already remarked that one is interleaved, and have quoted the additional verses contained
therein (ante, pp. 350-52). This copy was clearly prepared for a new edition, and probably
formed the basis of the reprint given by Dolet in the following year. The Gtnethliacum
was again reprinted by Techener in 1830 with other tracts of Dolet, preceded by the
Rehabilitation of M. Aime Martin. A hundred and twenty copies only of each tract were
printed. The Genethliacum is intended to be an exact reprint of the edition of 1539 (it is
clear that neither the interleaved copy, nor the edition of 1540, was known to either the
printer or editor). Apparently by an error, the reprint omits the ode of Janus Guttanus
which immediately precedes the Xenia of Maurice Sceve. The marginal notes to the
original edition are also omitted in the reprint. In other respects, the impression given by
Techener is an exact copy of the original edition of 1539.

7. L'Avant Naissance de Claude Dolet, filz de Estienne Dolet :
premierement composee en Latin par le pere, et maintenant par ung
sien amy, traduicte en langue Francoyse. CEuvre tres utile et
necessaire a la vie commune ; contenant comme I'homme se doibt
gouverner en ce monde. \_Mark with motto.~\ A Lyon ches
Estienne Dolet, M.D.XXXIX. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

4to. Roman letters. 32 pp. Signatures A-D. Last page mark j underneath, Doletus,
Durier, etc.
R. C. C.
Reprinted by Techener in 1830. 120 copies only.

8. Francisci Valesii Gallorum Regis Fata. Ubi rem omnem
celebriorem a Gallis gestam nosces, ab anno Christo M.D.XIII.
usque ad annum ineuntem M.D.XXXIX. Stephano Doleto Gallo
Aurelio Autore. \_Mark with motto.] Lugduni. Anno M.D.XXXIX.
Cum privilegio ad decennium.

4to. Italic letters. 80 pp. Signatures A-K. Last page mark ; underneath, Doletus,
Dunor, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.— Brit. Mus.

9. Claudii Coteraei Turonensis jurisconsulti clarissimi, De jure,
et privilegiis militum libri tres. Ad haec de officio Imperatoris liber
non magis ipsi Imperatori quam cuivis alii communis prudentiae
studioso utilis. Cum singuloriim capitum, vocum et rerum Indice
luculentissimo. [Mark with motto.'] Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum,
1539. Cum privilegio ad decennium.

Folio. Roman letters. 268 pp. Signatures if. four, A-X threes. 16 preliminary pp.
unnumbered, 250 pp. numbered, i p. blank; last page mark of Dolet ; underneath, Dolctus,
Durior, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

524 APPENDIX B

Contains a dedication and ode from Dolet to Cardinal du Bellay.

This book has been twice reprinted, first in vol. xii. of the great collection Trac'atui
universi juris, Venetiis, Ziletus, 1583-86, 29 vols. royal folio (Brit. Mus.) ; and secondly,
' recensente Joachimo Gluten, Urgent, apud Jo. Carol. 1610, 8vo.' Draudius, Eibl. Classica,
Francfort, 1625, and Bibl. Hulsiana, vol. iv., No. 3020. A French translation was made by
Gabriel du Preau, and printed under the title of Le devoir (Pun cafitaine et chef de Guerre.
Auisi du combat en camp cloz ou duel le tout falct Latin par Claude Cotereau, et mis en langue
Francoyse far Gabriel du Preau, Poictiers, a 1'enseigne du Pelican, 1549, small 410. (Brunet).
Cl. Cottereau was also the author of a translation of Columella.

La Croix du Maine and Du Verdier make two persons of Claude Cottereau, the one
Claude Cottereau translator of Columella, the other Claude of Touraine the friend of Dolet, and
translator into French of the Genethllacum. Neither Rigoley de Juvigny nor La Monnoye
has noticed this error, nor do any of these writers seem aware of the existence of the book
De jure militum.

M.D.XL.

10. Stephani Doleti Galli Aurelii Liber. De imitatione Cicer-
omana adversus Floridum Sabinum. [ Mark with motto.] Lugduni
apud eundem Doletum, 1540. Cum privilegio ad decennium.

4to. Roman letters. 56 pp. Signatures A-G. Last page unnumbered, mark ; under-
neath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

11. Genethliacum Claudii Doleti Stephani Doleti Filii Liber vitae
communi in primis utilis et necessarius. Autore patre. Lugduni,
apud Doletum, 1540.

Cat. de Boze, 1054. — Heber, pt. r. 2261 — Yemeniz, 1533, — Catalogue des Livres de M.
De la Roche la Carelle. Potier, 1859 ; 131.

12. Observationes in Terentii Comcedias nempe Andriam et item
Eunuchum. Steph. Doleto Gallo Aurelio Autore. [Mark with
motto.] Lugduni, apud eundem Doletum, 1540. Cum privilegio
ad decennium.

8vo. 176 pp. Last page, mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

Public Library of Berne.

A second edition was given by Dolet in 1543. The observations of Dolet have been
frequently reprinted. They are included in the following editions of Terence : —

P. Terentii Afri Poetae Lepidissimi comcediae. Parisiis, apud Joannem de Roigny,
1552. Folio. (R. C. C.)

P. Terentii Afri Poetas Lepidissimi comcediae omnes cum absolutis commentariis . . .
Stephani Doleti in Andriam et Eunuchum . . . Venetiis, apud Bartholomaeum
Caesanum. Anno M.D.LIH. Folio. (R. C. C.) This edition, including the Obser-
vationes of Dolet, was five times reprinted at Venice : — Bonellus, 1558, and 1561,
(R. C. C.) ; Cessanus, 1562 ; Hi. Scotus, 1561, and 1563.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 525

Terentius in quern triplex edita est P. Antesignani Rnpistagnensis Commentatio.

Lugduni, apud Mathiam Bonhome, M.D.LX. 410. (R. C. C.)
Many of the observations again reappear in the Variorum editions.

13. Publii Terentii Afri quae extant Comoediae. Nunc primum
a Steph. Doleto recognitae et emendatae, atque scholiis illustratae :
idque praeter Erasmi, Melanchthonis, et Rivii animadversionem,
[Mark with motto.'] Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1540.

8vo. Italic letters. 368 pp. Signatures a-z. Rev. of title, Judicium Doleti de compara-
tione Terentii et Plauti ; pp. 3, 4, Steph. Doletus Jacopo Bordingio amico singular! ; pp. 364-
366, Steph. Doletus Lectori.

Brit. Mus. — Bib. de 1'Arsenal.

14. M. Tullii Ciceronis Epistolae Familiares ~um argumentis
scholiis et Grascorum interpretatione. Nunc primum a Stephano
Doleto quam castigatissime recognitae et iis ipsis scholiis illustratae.
Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1540. 8vo.

Orellius, Ciceronis Opera, Turici, 1836. Vol. 6 (Onomasticon Tullianum), p. 286.
MacCarthy, 2319.

15. M. T. Ciceronis Libri tres de Officiis. Item de Amicitia,
de Senectute, Paradoxa et de Somnio Scipionis, cum Des. Erasmi
annotationibus, quibus accessit Graeca Theod. Gazas in librum de
Senectute et Somnium Scipionis traductio. Lugduni, apud Steph.
Doletum, 1540. 8vo.

Bordeaux Library (Cat. Sciences et Arts, No. 1284).

1 6. Pub. Vergilii Maronis Opera. [Mark with motto.] Lugduni,
apud Steph. Doletum, 1540.

8vo. Italic letters. 608 pp. (last two unnumbered). Signatures, a-z, A-P. Last page,
mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc. pp. 3, 4, Stephanus Doletus, Gulielmo Bigotio 5 pp.
458-606, the Supplement to ./Eneid by M. Vegius, and the minor poems attributed to
Virgil including the Priafeia.

Brit. Mus.

In 1545 the following edition of Virgil was printed at Cologne : —

Vergilius P. Melancthonis scholiis . . . illustratus . . . Adjunximus . . . item in
omnia Virgilii opera ex S. Doleti de lingua Latina commentariis annotatiunculas. M.
Gymn. Coloniae, 1545, 8vo.

Brit. Mus.

At the end of the volume is a long note referring to the annotations of Dolet, and
written so much in his style that I cannot but think that the Annotatiuncula must have been
selected and the note written by him.

526

APPENDIX B

The Annotathtnculig of Dolet (with the same note as a preface headed Ludovicus Britan-
nicus Lectori and dated Brixiae ex officina nostra anno 1546) also appears in two editions of
Virgil given by Britannicus at Brescia in 1546 and 1548, and (according to Draudius) in
those edited by Henri Estienne and printed by him s.a. (1575), 1583.

17. De Duplici Copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo Des.
Erasmo Roterodamo Autore. [Mark with motto.] Lugduni, apud
Steph. Doletum, 1540.

8vo. Italic letters. 360 pp. Signatures a-y fours, z two. pp. 3-346 numbered, n pp.
Index, unnumbered. 2 pp. blank, i page mark of Dolet ; underneath, boletus, Durior, etc.
R. C. C. — Brit. Mus.

1 8. Alphabeticum latinum, cum plerisque aliis ad Christianam
juventutem pie sancteque instituendam apprime utilibus. Lugduni,
Steph. Doletus ; 1540, 8vo.

Chartres Library (Information of M. Buisson).

19. Les Gestes de Francoys de Valois Roy de France. Dedans
lequel oeuvre on peult congnoistre tout ce qui a este faict par les
Francoys depuis Lan mil cinq cents treize jusques en Lan mil cinq
cents trente neuf. Premierement compose en Latin par Estienne
Dolet : et apres par luy mesmes translate en langue Francoyse.
\_Mark with motto.'] A Lyon ches Estienne Dolet, M.D.XL. Avec
privileige pour dix ans.

410. Roman letters. 80 pp. Signatures A-K twos. Last page unnumbered, mark ;
underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

Reprinted by the author in 1543, carrying on the history to that year. Twice reprinted
by others : —

1. Sommaire et recueil des Faictz et Gestes Du Roy Francoys premier de ce nom.
Premierement composez en Latin par Estienne Dolet : et apres par luy mesmes trans-
latez en langue Francoyse a Lyon. Imprime ceste annee mil cinq cens quarante et
troise. At the end on p. 95, Imprime nouuellement a Paris par Alain Lotrian.

Bib. Nat.

This reprint appears to have been made on the edition of 1543.

2. Les faitz et gestes du Roy Fr3coys : premier de ce n3 . . . Composez par Estienne
Dolet ... La description dung enfant ne en forme de monstre aux basses Allemaignes.
8vo. Gothic letters. 6 pp. preliminary and 78 pages.

A copy of this reprint, coming from the collection of MM. Aime-Martin and Coppinger,
was sold at M. Firmin-Didot's sale in 1878 for 999 francs. In M. Didot's catalogue
(No. 701) it is described as the only copy known, but a copy is in the Bib. Nat. and
another in the public library of Berne.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 527

20. La maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en autre. D'ad van-
tage, De la punctuation de la langue Francoyse. Plus Des accents
d'ycelle. Le tout faict par Estienne Dolet, natif D'Orleans. [Mark
with motto.'} Lyon, Estienne Dolet, 1540.

4to. Roman letters. 40 pp. Signatures a-e twos. Reverse of title, Au lecteur ; pp. 3-6,
Dedication to Monseigneur de Langei ; 7-10, Estienne Dolet au peuple Francoys ; 11-16, La
Maniere de Hen traduire; 17-24, De la punctuation ; 25-39, Let accents; 39, Dixain de
Saincte Marthe. Last p. unnumbered, mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

Bib. Nat.

Dolet reprinted this book in 1541, 1542, and 1543. It was also many times subsequently
reprinted in the sixteenth century, sometimes separately, sometimes with other grammatical
treatises, to which one or more of these three tracts were appended. The following are the
reprints which I know : —

Traicte touchant le commun usage de Fescriture Francoise faict par Loys Meigret
Lyonnois, 1545, Paris, Jeanne de Marnef. Italic letters. Pages not numbered. (Brit.
Mus.)

Some copies have Paris, Jean Longit et Vincent Sertenas, 1545. (R. C. C.)

Although no mention of Dolet or his treatises appears on the title, they are inserted in the
book, preceded by a preface explaining why the printer had inserted them. .

La Maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en aultre, D'avantage De la punctuation de
la langue Francoyse. Plus Des accents d'ycelle. En Anvers par Jehan Loe. Gothic
letter. Small 8vo (or I2mo). 40 pp. unnumbered. (Brit. Mus.)
An exact reprint of Dolet's book, except that the name of Dolet nowhere appears. It
forms part of Le protocolle des secretaires et aultres gens desirant scavoir 1'art et maniere de
dieter en bon francois toutes lettres missives et epistres en prose nouvellement Imprime.
Avec la maniere de bien traduite (sic) dune Langue en oultre. En Anvers par Jehan Loe.
The first part of the Protocolle has 152 pp., then follows : La Maniere.

La maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en autre, d'advantage, de la punctuation de
la langue franc,oyse, plu sdes accents d'ycelle. Caen. Robert Mace, 1550. 8vo.
56 pp. (Bib. Mazarine.)

An exact reprint of Dolet's book.

Art Poetique Francois pour 1'instruction des jeunes studieux et encor peu avancez en la
poesie Francoise Avec le Quintil Horatian, sur la defense et illustration de la langue
Francoise Reveu et Augmente. A Lyon par Jean Temporal, M.D.LVI. i6mo. (Brit.
Mus.)

This book contains pp. 267-292, Dolet's two tracts upon punctuation and accents, but
without any mention of his name, and they are also contained in the following
reprints with the same title : —

Lyon, Thibault Payan. 1556. i6mo. (Bib. Arsenal.)

Paris, Ruelle. 1564. i6mo. (Brunei.)

Paris, Veuve Jean Ruelle. 1573. i6mo. (Bib. Nat.)

Lyon, B. Rigaud. 1576. i6mo. {R. C. C. — Bib. Arsenal.)

La Forme et Maniere de la Poinctuation et accents de la langue Franchise. Paris par
Guillaume Thibaut Imprimeur et Estienne Denise, Libraire, 1556. i6mo. 32 pp.
(Brit. Mus.) Reprinted with the same title, size, and number of pp. A Lyon par Jean
Gros, 1557 (Brit. Mus.), and again by Regnault in 1560 (Bull, du Bib. 1860,
p. 916).

Reprints of the two tracts of Dolet on punctuation and accents, but with no mention of
his name.

528

APPENDIX B

Le stile et maniere de composer dieter et escrire tout sorte d'Epistre ou lettres missives
. . . avec Epitome de la poinctuation et accents de la langue Francoise ... A Lyon
par Thibauld Payan, 1566. (Brit. Mus.)

pp. Z94-3IQ contain Dolet's two tracts on punctuation and accents, but without any
mention of his name.

La Maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en autre. D'advantage de la punctuation de
la langue Francoyse, plus des Accents d'ycelle. Autheur Estienne Dolet, natif
d'Orleans. Lyon, Estienne Dolet, 1540, Techener 1830, 8vo, 48 pp.

Of this reprint, 120 copies only were given. There is no indication from what copy the
reprint was taken, but it will be noticed that on the title-page, instead of the words
Le tout faict far Estienne Dolet, which are in all the editions printed by Dolet, are the
words autheur Estienne Dolet.

21. La Chirurgie de Paulus .ffigineta. Qui est le sixiesme Livre
de ses oeuvres. Item ung Opuscule de Galien des Tumeurs centre
nature. Plus ung Opuscule du diet Galien de la maniere de curer par
abstraction de sang. Le tout traduict de Latin en Francoys par
Maistre Pierre Tolet, Medecin de 1'hospital de Lyon. \_Mark with
motto.'} Ches Estienne Dolet. A Lyon, 1540. Avec privilege pour
dix ans.

Small 8vo. Large round letters. 560 pp. Sig. A-Z, Aa-inm. pp. 3-11, A Monsieur
Squironit docteur Royal en I'uni-versite de Montpelier & Medecin de la Royne de Navarre,
Maistre Pierre Tolet docteur en Medicine humble salut, dated A Lyon fan des Mortelz racheptes
far le sang et merite de la passion de Jesus Christ M.D.XXXIX, et du mcys d'Augst le xx ; pp.
iz-i6, Proesme au chyrurgien Francoys; 17-32, Table ; 33-411, La Chirurgie de Paulus ALgineta
(p. 240 is repeated) ; 412, 413, Epistle of Dolet to Claude Millet; 414-452, Des tumeurs
centre nature j p. 453 blank ; 454-546, De I'e-vacuationdu sang; 547 blank and unnumbered ;
548-556 (should be 557), Petit s traictes propres a la medecine, autheur Galien (Des sangsues.
De revulsion. Dei "ventouses. De scarification). 2 pp. blank. Last page mark in border ;
underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C, C.— Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

This is the earliest of the remarkable series of medical treatises in French, printed or at
least purporting to be printed by Dolet in 1540, 1541 and 1542. (For the remarks of
Rabelais upon this series see ante, p. 384.) Brunei erroneously describes the Opuscules of
Galen as a separate and independent book (Manuel, torn. ii. col. 1451) as follows : —

' Livre de la curation par mission du sang, et par sangsues, revulsion, cornettes et scari-
fication, mis en fran^ois par maistre Pierre Toilet. Lyon, Est. Dolet, 1540, in 8°.'

The ^Egineta and the tracts of Galen were separately printed by Dolet in 1542, but I am
satisfied that he did not print them separately in 1540.

The whole book, including the Opuscules of Galen and the letter of Dolet to Claude
Millet, was reprinted at Paris in 1541 by Les Angeliers (R. C. C.), and again by Jean de
Tournes at Lyons in 1552. Brunei erroneously gives the date of the edition of Les
Angeliers as 1540. Dolet's epistle to Claude Millet maybe found in the Re-vue du Lyonnais,
vol. vi. p. 455. The best account of Pierre Tolet is that given in M. Breghot du Lut's
Melanges Biographiques et Litteralrespour ser-vir a I'histoire de Lyon, 1828, pp. 180-182.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 529

M.D.XLI.

22. Novum Testamentum Latinum. Lugduni, Stephani Dolet,
1541.

2 vols. i6mo.

The only original authority I can find for the existence of this book is Le Long, Bibliotheca
Sacra (Antwerp, 1 709), vol. i. p. 674 5 vol. ii. p. 474. He marks the book as having been seen
by him, and refers to a copy in the library of Saint Germain des Pres. The notice of it in
Maittaire, Nee de la Rochelle, Masch, Nodier (Bit!. Sacre'e], and elsewhere, seem all to be
based on the statement of Le Long. His reference to it is so precise that it is difficult to sup-
pose that he was in error, yet it is almost as difficult to suppose that it should so completely
have disappeared that no other trace of its existence can be found, as it was not one of the
books condemned, or ordered to be burnt. If a copy really existed in the library of Saint
Germain des Pres it was no doubt burnt in the great fire which took place on the igth of
August, 1794, in which most of the printed books were destroyed. See Franklin, Precis de
rhiitoire de la Bib. du Roi, zme edition, Paris, 1875, p. 270.

23. Dominicae Precationis Explanatio. Cum quibusdam aliis
quae sequens indicabit pagella. [Mark of Dolet with SCABRA DOLO
on the axe.] Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1541.

i6mo. alternately Italic and round letters. 200 pp. unn. Signatures a-z, A, B. On the
recto of the last leaf Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, on the verso the mark of Dolet.

R. C. C.

On the reverse of the title is the table of contents : — Dominicae precationis interpretatio ;
Meditatio in Psalmum Miserere mei Deus, Hieronymo Savonarola ; Ejusdem in Psalmum In
te Domine speravi 5 Idem in Psalmum Qui regis Israel intende ; Decalogi Interpretatio per-
brevis ; Symboli Apostolici Exegesis paraphrastica ; Paraphrasis orationis Dominicae ; Alia
Dominicae orationis Expositio.

The only writers who have mentioned this edition of Dolet are Nee de la Rochelle and
J. B. Riederer in his 'Nachrichten zur Kirchen Gelehrten und Buecher-Geschichte aus
gedruckten und ungedruckten schriften gesammelt.' (4 vols.) Altdorf, 1763-1768.
(Brit. Mus.) Vol. 4, pp. 227-232, contains an elaborate description of the book and its
contents.

A reprint of a very popular devotional work frequently printed by S. Gryphius and others,
and inserted in the Index. To the Paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer Riederer says that the
initials P. M. (Philip Melanchthori) are affixed, but they do not appear in my copy. He also
states that the short exposition which follows, and with which the book concludes, is also by
Melanchthon. This would account for the work being put in the Index.

24. Stephani Doleti Galli Aurelii Liber unus De officio Legati,
quem vulgo Ambassiatorem vocant. Et item alter De immunitate
Legatorum. Et item alius De legationibus Joannis Langiachi,
Episcopi Lemovicensis. [ Mark with motto.'] Lugduni, apud Steph.
Doletum, 1541.

4to. De off. leg. and De immum. leg. Roman letters ; De leg. Jc. Langiachi Italic letters.
48 pp. Signatures a-f twos. Reverse of title blank, pp. 3-46 numbered (but the pagination
full of mistakes), i p. blank, i p. mark in border ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.— Brit. Mus.

2 M

530 APPENDIX B

25. Rhetoricorum ad Herennium libri quatuor M. T. Ciceroni
ascripti, doctiss. plurimorum judicio. Ejusdem De inventione libri
n. [Mark -with motto.~\ Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1541.

Svo. Italic letters. 274 +14 pp. Signatures A-S. pp. 3-274 text. Then follows 2 pp.
Steph. Doletus Lectori. 9 pp. Index. I p. blank. On the last leaf (missing in my copy)
would be Dolet's mark.

R. C. C.

In Dolet's address to the Reader he attacks Floridus Sabinus arid others who denied the
Rhetorica to be the work of Cicero.

26. C. Suetonii Tranquilli XII. Caesares. Ad veterum codicum
spectatam, atque probatam fidem, summavirorum multorum doctissi-
morum diligentia recogniti : quorum quidem Elenchum proxima
statim pagina reperies. [Mark with motto.'] Lugduni, apud Steph.
Doletum, 1541.

8vo. Italic letters. 560 pp. (528 numbered, followed by 32 unnumbered). Signatures
a-z, A-M fours. On last page mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Brit. Mus.

This edition is stated by Boulmier (and others) to be lfaite tfapres celle de Gryphius
1537.' This is an error, as a comparison of the two editions shows. The work is an
independent edition made by Jean Raynier, who has added marginal observations and scholia
which do not appear in the edit, of Gryphius of 1537. Besides Suetonius, with the preface
and notes of Erasmus, it includes Egnatius De Romanis Principibus and his annotations upon
Suetonius.

27. Pandora. Jani Oliverii Andium Hierophantae. \_Mark with
motto.'} Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1541.

4to. Italic letters (except pp. 5-9 Roman). 52 pp. (50 numbered, 2 unnumbered).
Signatures a-f twos, g one. pp. 3, 4, Preface by Dolet addressed to the Chancellor Fr.
Olivier, the nephew of the author. Last page mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

28. Gentiani Herveti Aurelii quaedam opuscula. Quorum index
proxima statim pagina sequetur. [Mark with motto.'] Lugduni,
apud Stephanum Doletum, 1541.

8vo. Italics. 112 pp. Signatures A-G fours. On p. no a Latin ode, Stephani Doleti
carmen ad Lectorem ; last page mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Brit. Mus.

This volume contains only the orations and the translations from St. Basil. The
Antigone and the Epigrams form a separate volume. (See next article.)

29. Sophoclis Antigone Tragcedia a Gentiano Herveto Aurelio
traducta e Graeco in Latinum. Ejusdem Herveti Epigrammata.
[Mark with motto.'] Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1541.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 531

8vo. Italic letters. 72 pp. (last 1 6 by mistake numbered 67-82). Signatures A-D fours,
z two. Last page mark in border ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Brit. Mus. — Bib. Mazarine.

An examination of this and the preceding article leads me to the conclusion that the
second, the Antigone, was first printed as an independent work, and subsequently the volume
containing the Orationet with the translation of St. Basil, and that to this latter volume
was prefixed a title-page and contents applicable to the two volumes.

The epigrams are thirty-five in number, and include one addressed to Dolet himself.
This is worth noting as coming from a man of the undoubted learning and orthodoxy of
Gentian Hervet.

30. Clenardi Grammaticae Institutiones Graecas. Ejusdem item
sequentia, Annotationes in nominum verborumque difficultates.
Investigatio thematis in verbis anomalis, cum indice. Compendiosa
et exacta syntaxeos ratio. [Mark with motto.] Lugduni, apud
Steph. Doletum, 1541.

8vo. Italic letters. 160 pp. (last 6 pp. unnumbered). Signatures A-K fours. Reverse
of title, Stephani Doleti carmen. On recto of last leaf, Lugduni Excudebat Stcphanut Doletus
Gallus Awel'ms, 1541. On verso, mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C.

I find no mention anywhere and know no copies of this or the next article except my
own. They are reprints of two of the most popular Greek school-books of the day.

31. Clenardi Meditationes Graecae in artem Grammaticam.
Eae in eorum gratiam, qui viva praeceptoris voce destituti sunt.
\_Mark with motto.] Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1541.

8vo. Italic letters. 144 pp. (last 3 unnumbered). Signatures a-i fours. Last page
mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C.

This book, though less popular than the Institutiones, went through numerous editions.
It consists of the Epistle of St. Basil De -vita in solitudine agenda, in Greek with a literal
Latin translation by Clenard and a more elegant one by Bude, and a grammatical analysis
of each sentence.

32. Laurentii Vallae Elegantiae latinae linguae. Lugduni, apud
Steph. Doletum, 1541.

Of the writers who have referred to this book, Maittaire (Annalcs, vol. iii. p. 95)
appears to be the only one who ever saw a copy. He says that it is dedicated by Dolet to
Jean Raynier, whose notes would seem to be appended to it. The dedication is dated
Lugduni, Calend. Decent, anno 1541. Maittaire states that this edition was reprinted in
1543 at Lyons by Guillaume Rouille. An edition of the Elegantia of Valla, with notes
by Dolet and other savants, was given at Cologne by Jean Gymnicus in 1545, and reprinted
by Fabricius at the same place in 1563. But the notes by Dolet printed in these editions
are all extracts from Dolet's Commentaries.

33. Tabulae Poeticae Joannis Munnellii Ruremundensis. Pleraque
alia, quae hie liber habet, sequens statim pagina non obscure demon-

532 APPENDIX B

strabit, adjectis numeris, ubi quicque nullo negotio reperias. [Mark
with motto.'} Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1541.

8vo. Italic letters. 48 pp. Signatures A, B, c fours. Last page mark of Dolet ;
underneath, Dcletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

A reprint of one of the most popular introductions to Latin verse composition of the
day.

34. Maturini Corderii de corrupt! serm. emendatione et Latine
loquendi ratione liber ; Lugduni apud Steph. Doletum, 1541.

8vo. 624 pp.

La France Protestante, 2nd edit. Art. Cordier.

35. La Maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en aultre. D'ad-
vantage. De la punctuation de la langue Francoyse. Plus. Des
accent d'ycelle. Le tout faict par Estienne Dolet, natif d'Orleans.
[Mark with motto.'] A Lyon, ches Dolet mesme. M.D.XLI. Avec
privileige pour dix ans.

4to. Roman letters. 40 pp. Signatures a-e twos.

R. C. C.

The second edition, and an exact reprint of that of 1540.

36. L'Anatomie des os du Corps Humain. Autheur Galien.
Nouvellement traduicte de Latin en Francoys par monsieur maistre
Jehan Canappe, Docteur en Medecine. [Mark with motto.'] A
Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1541. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 48 pp. Signatures A-C fours. Last page mark ; underneath,
Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

Reprinted at Lyons by Benoist Rigaud, 1588. According to the Bull, du Bouquiniste,
1878, p. 327, No. 2162, this book had already been printed in 1540 at Paris by Denys
Janot. But I doubt whether the edition of Dolet was not the first. On the title-page he
claims privilege for ten years, which he could not be entitled to if the book had previously
appeared, and which in other such cases he did not claim.

This is the first of Canappe 's translations of medical treatises which Dolet printed, and
which was succeeded by several others. In or before 1539, translations of the third and of
several other books of the Therapeutics of Galen had appeared, which are erroneously
attributed to Dolet in the Cat. des li-vres . . . de M. Filheul (Paris, Dessain, 1779, 8vo),
No. 631. A MS. note of Nee de la Rochelle in M. Baudrier's copy of the Vie de Dolet
gives the title of this translation of the third book as follows : — ' Le troisieme livre de la
Therapeutique, ou Methode curatoire de Claude Galien, prince des Medecins, auquel est
singulierement traictee la cure des ulceres. On les vend a Lyon en Rue Merciere chez
Guillaume de Quelques Libraire ' ; and he adds that behind the title is a letter of Dolet
addressed to Canappe dated 2nd January 1539, and that at the end is ' Imprime a Lyon par
Jehan Barbeu, 1539.' It was no doubt the letter of Dolet that gave rise to the error in
the Cat. Filheul. I have found in the Bib. Nat. an imperfect copy of this book, unfortu-
nately without the title-page, which besides the 3rd contains the 4th, 5th, 6th and I3th
books of the Therapeutics, all printed by Barbou in 1539, and sold by Guillaume de

BIBLIOGRAPHY 533

Quelques. With the volume is bound up Le deuxiesme livre dt Claude Galien intitule fart
curatoire a Glauccn. On hi vend a Lyon chez Guillaume de S^uelques (s. d., but last page is
wanting). And Le quatorzieme li-vre de la methode de Therapeutique de Claude Galien.
Lugduni, apud Guliclmum de S^uelques, anno M.D.XXXVIIl. (The volume is numbered T.
e. -?nV) The 6th book contains two figures, the Glottotomon, t 'invention de Me. Francois
Rabelais, doctew en Me'decine, the other the syringotome. The names of the translators of
these books are not given, but the 4th and 5th are said to be translate par Philiatros. An
earlier edition of the translation of the 4th, and perhaps of the 5th and 6th books, is noticed
in the Bull, du Bib., 1858, p. 1298 ; the 4th, Lyon, Fr. Juste, 1537 ; the 5th, Lyon, Pierre
de Saincte Lucie, s. a. ; and the 6th, s. 1. n. a. (No. 786, Yemeniz, seems to be a copy of
the same). A note of M. Briquet appended states that the translations of the different
books are by different hands. I should have thought the translator was Guillaume
Chrestien, who about this time, besides other medical works, published several translations
from Galen and Hippocrates j but I have found at the Bib. Nat. Le second Livre de Claude
Galien . . . mil en Francois par Guillaume Chrestien, medecin (Paris), Chaudiere, 1549 (not
mentioned in any of the lists of his works that I have seen), and it is an entirely different
translation from that published by de Quelques, with which Chrestien does not appear to
be acquainted. [According to the Supplement to Brunei (vol. ii. col. 374), 'Rabelais est
incontestablement 1'auteur de cette traduction. C'est lui-meme qui s'est designe sous le
nom de Philiatros.']

37. Du mouvement des muscles livres deux. Autheur Galien.
Nouvellement traduict de latin en francoys par Monsieur maistre
Jehan Canappe, Docteur en Medecine. [Mark with motto.] A
Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1541. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

8vo. Italic letters. 88 pp. (last 5 unnumbered). Signatures A-E fours, r two. Last
page mark of Dolet.

Bib. Nat. (imperfect, wanting pp. 65-80).

In the Bull, du Bouquiniste, 1878, p. 327, No. 2162, is Du mouvement des muscles par
Jetton Canappe, 1541, 64^ in 8° carac teres gothiques. Whether this or the edition given by
Dolet is the original I cannot say certainly, but as the Royal privilege is claimed by Dolet
we may infer that his edition was the original. It was again reprinted A Lyon, chez Sulpice
Satan four Antoine Constantin (Yemeniz, 784, where it is stated to be sans date], Brunei
however gives the date as 1541. This is clearly wrong. The book is several years later.
Brunei was misled by the date of the preface.

M.D.XLII.

38. De Comparanda Eloquentia Opusculum. Francisco Rever-
gato Autore. \_Mark with motto.] Lugduni, apud Stephanum
Doletum, 1542.

8vo. Roman letters. 48 pp. Signatures A-C. pp. 3-9, Francisci Revergati De com-
paranda Eloquentia ad Jacobum Bcrdingum et Claud. Baduellum Prafath ; pp. 10-37, De
comparanda Eloquentia Dialogus ; pp. 37-47, Franc. Revergati in conscribendis epistolis Exer-
citatio. Last page mark j underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

Bib. Nat.

I find no mention anywhere of this book. It appears from the preface thai Revergal
had lalely been a sludent at Nimes under Baduel, and that his preceptors there, especially
Prater Gulielmus (possibly Guillaume Bigot, who was then a professor at Nimes), had wished

534 APPENDIX B

him to give a course of lectures on eloquence (i.e. Latin composition), but that this had
been prevented by the malice of his enemies, and that thereupon his friends had urged on
him the composition of an essay on the subject. In the preface he refers to Dolet. The
interlocutors in the Dialogus are the author and Prater Gulielmus. Dolet is referred to as
one ' qui jam non minorem laudem in lingua Gallica videtur assecutus quam in Latina.'
The epistles with which the volume ends are all written from Carpentras. All except the
last are addressed simply ' Amico? In one the writer refers to ' Podianus consobrinus tuus,'
'Joannes Ribotusfelix tutf cognatus,' ' Bcyssonus familiar is meusj ' Noalkus getter tuus.' In another,
written apparently to Hording, he speaks of Baduel and Bigot. The last and longest is
addressed to Baduel. In this he speaks of ' ea facultas >uehementiaque dlcendi qua in suo iambico
utitur Doleful

The only mention I have anywhere found of Revergat is a very uncomplimentary one.
In 1544 he obtained the prize of the Eglantine at the Floral Games at Toulouse for his
Chant Royal. It is thus referred to by M. du Mege (Hist, des Instil, de Toulouse, vol. 4,
p. 308) : — ' Francois Revergat qui obtint 1'eglantine est auteur d'un Chant Royal plus
ridicule encore que celui de Forcadel. II voulut representer poetiquement f 'incarnation du
•verbe, et il se servit des personnages de la fable. Dans son poeme Jupiter est le Pere eternel,
Andromede la nature, et la Sainte Vierge est DanaeV

39. Libellus de moribus in mensa servandis Joanne Sulpitio
Verulano autore cum familiarissima et rudi juventuti aptissima
elucidatione Gallico-latina Guil. Durandi. [Mark with motto.']
Lugduni, apud Stephanum Doletum, 1542.

8vo. 56 pp.

I have been unable to find any copy or any notice of a copy of this book except that of
M. Coste afterwards Didot's. The text of the tract of Sulpicius had been many times
before printed, but this is the original edition of the translation of Guillaume Durand. It
contains a dedication to Dolet, dated Lugduni, Cat. S^uintil. 1542. It was frequently
reprinted in the next thirty years. The following are the editions which I know or have
seen noticed : —

1548. (T. Payen?). Lugduni, 8vo. (Pinelli, 10,209.)

1554. Claud. Marchant. Lugduni. (Draudius, p. 1187, by mistake numbered 1087.)

1555. C. Stephanus. Paris, 8vo. (R. C. C. ; Yemeniz, 1215.)
1560. M. Menier. Paris, 8vo. (R. C. C.)

1563. G. Buon. Paris, 8vo. (Bib. Mazarine.)

1564. R. Stephanus. Paris, 8 vo. (Renouard, Annal. da Estienne.)
1570. G. Buon. Paris, 8vo. (R. C. C. ; Bib. Nat.)

1573. G. Buon. Paris, 8vo. (Roanne Library.)

1574. R. Stephanus. Paris, 8vo. (R. C. C.)
1577. G. Buon. Paris, 8vo. (Bib. Mazarine.)

Du Verdier notes an edition of T. Payen, Lyon, but gives no date. Of the above editions,
the seven which I have seen have each the dedication to Dolet.

40. 01. Baduelli Oratio Funebris in funere Floretae Sarrasiae
Habita. Epitaphia nonnulla de eadem. [Mark with motto.'}
Lugduni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1542.

For a notice of this excessively rare tract, see Claude Baduel et la Reforme des Etudes au
XVf sie'cle par M. J. Gaufres (Paris, 1880, 8vo). The only other mention of it which I
have found is in Haag (La France Protestante, art. Baduel). I only know the reprint

BIBLIOGRAPHY 535

accompanied by a French translation given at Montpellier in 1829, a copy of which is in
the Bib. Nat. and another in the public library at Montpellier.

M. Gundisy, the Public Librarian of Montpellier, has been so obliging as to inform me
that the copy of the original from which the reprint was made was formerly in the Montcalm
library, which was sold some years since. From the same source I learn that the translator
was M. Saurine, then juge <t 'instruction at Montpellier, and that of the fifty copies printed
nearly the whole were consumed in a fire which occurred at M. Saurine's house.

An older translation is mentioned by Du Verdier (art. Ch. Rczef), and the title is thus
given in the Supplement to Brunei : — ' Oraison funebre sur le trespas de vertueuse dame,
Dame Florete Sarrasie, premierement faicte en latin par Claude Baduel, et depuis traduicte
en langue Fran^oyse par Ch. Rozel. Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1 546. pet. in 4, de 42 pp.

41. De Antique Statu Burgundiae Liber. Per Gulielmum
Paradinum virum eruditionis multae atque judicii non vulgaris.
[Mark with motto.'] Lugduni, apud Stephanum Doletum, 1542.
Cum privilegio Regio.

4to. Roman letters. 168 pp. (last 10 unnumbered). Signatures A-X twos. pp. 3, 4,
dedication by Dolet, Francisco Montelonteo Galllie cancellario, dated Cal. Nwemb. 1542 ; pp.
3-158, text. 8 pp. index, i page blank. Last page mark in border ; underneath, Doletus,
Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

This book was reprinted under the above title in 8vo at Basle, without printer's name
or date (but about 1555). (R. C. C.) The reprint contains the preface of Dolet; and
several short tracts are appended.

42. Le Nouveau Testament imprime par Dolet en fran^oys.

Our only knowledge of the existence of this book is from the mention of it in the
Royal pardon of June, 1543 (Proces d'Estienne Dolet, p. 9), and in the several condemnations
of which it was the subject. By the decree of the Parliament of Paris of the I4th of
February 1543 (1544) it was ordered to be burnt (Proces, p. 30; also D'Argentre, Col.
"Jud. vol. 2, pt. i, pp. 133, 134, by whom however the decree is erroneously cited, several
words being omitted, making it appear that only the Sommaire du Nouveau Testament was
condemned). It is again inserted in the catalogue of books censured in the same year. Id.
p. 135. It is there described as follows : — ' 36. Nouveau Testament imprime a Lyon par
Estienne Dolet. 37. Le contenu en cette seconde partie du Nouveau Testament.' It again
appears in bthe catalogue of works censured in 1551 (Id. p. 174), and in the catalogue of
the books condemned by" the Inquisition at Toulouse in 1548 or 1549 printed by M. de
Freville in La Police des Li-vres, Paris, 1853, p. 16. No. 26 of this catalogue is as follows :
— ' Les nouveaux testamentz imprimez par Dalet, Christophorum de Rimondia, Joannem
Lul ou aultres, plains d'erreurs et heresies, ou bien dangereux de y induire.' Dalet is evidently
a clerical error for Dolet.

It is probable that this New Testament was intended as an instalment of the Bible in
small size, and that it was never actually finished or published, but was seized with Dolet's
other books soon after his arrest in 1542, and was burned in the far-vis of Notre Dame in
the following February. This would account for the entire disappearance of the whole of
the impression. A copy of an edition with the date 1539 is in the Bib. Ste. Genevieve, and
a second copy in the British Museum, and is attributed by M. Dufour (Catechisme Francois de
Calvin, p. cxxii) to the press of Dolet. But neither in size, paper, type, initial letters, nor
in any single point does it bear the smallest resemblance to any one of the books printed or
purporting to be printed by Dolet.

536

APPENDIX B

43. Le Sommaire du viel et nouveau Testament. Imprime par
Dolet.

This book is only known to us from the mention of it in the pardon of June 1543,
where it is referred to as one of those for printing which Dolet had been condemned
(Proces, p. 9), and in the decree of I4th February 1543 (1544), (Proces, p. 30, and
D'Argentre, Coll. jfud. vol. ii. pt. I, p. 134), by which it was ordered to be burned. As I
do not find it referred to in any of the catalogues of heretical books cited in the note to the
last article, I conjecture it was only in the course of printing when it was seized after
Dolet's arrest in 1542, and was never actually completed or issued.

44. Les Epistres et Evangiles des cinquante & deux Dimenches
de 1'An Avecques briefves & tresutiles expositions d'ycelles.

Medallion of Jesus Christ holding the cross, with these words under-
neath in the medallion, Si quis sitit veniat ad me et bibat. Joan. 7.]
A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avecq privileige du Roy.

i6mo. Roman letters. 656 pp. Signatures a-z, A-S. p. 2, List of Les sermons ou
exhortations contenues en ce present Traicte, oultre les cinquante et deux Dimenches de
1'an ; pp. 3, 4, preface by Dolet, beginning : Estienne Dolet au lecteur Chrestien salut ; pp.
5-594, Les Epistres et Evangiles et les exhortations ; pp. 595-655, Les sermons ou ehhorta-
tions (sic) de nouveau adjoustes. Last page, mark of Dolet ; underneath, Dolet, Preserve
may o Seigneur des calumnies des hommes.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

The copy of this book in the Bib. Nat. was lost for many years, and the copy which
appeared in the Yemeniz catalogue, No. 58, at the sale could not be found. It afterwards
fell into the possession of M. Renard, at whose sale I purchased it for 265 frs.

The epistle of Dolet Au lecteur Chrestien is dated Lyon le in. de May 1542, and in it he
promises ' rendre farfaict la Bible en petite forme dedans troys ou quatre mays et en grande forme
dedans huit et desormais ne tiendra qu'en toy si tu n'as continuellement la parolle de Dieu de-vant les
yeulx. La quelle tu dolbs recepvoir en toute reverence comme la "vraye nourriture de ton ame.'

This book, the authorship of which is ascribed by La Croix du Maine, Du Verdier, and
others to Dolet himself, is however, as first suggested by Nee de la Rochelle, a reprint of the
work of Le Fevre d'fitaples first printed in 1523. Yet M. de Freville (La Police des Li-vres,
p. 1 8) asserts this to be a different book from that of Le Fevre. But the translations in
Dolet's book are certainly taken from Le Fevre's translation of the New Testament.
Besides what is announced on the title the book contains Sermons ou Exhortations for several
festivals, beginning with one for the Nativity of our Lord.

45. Psalmes du Royal Prophete David. Fidelement traduicts de
Latin en Francoys. Auxquelz est adiouxte son argument & som-
maire a chascun particulierement. \_A small round woodcut, at the
bottom David kneeling, his harp lying beside him ; above, God the Father
holding a scroll inscribed with the words Delevi peccatum tuum.~\ Ches
Estienne Dolet a Lyon, 1542. Avec privileige du Roy.

i6mo or 321110. Roman letters. 384 pp. Sig. A-Z, aa fours. (Paging full of mistakes,
e.g. goes from 67 to 78). pp. 3-6, Estienne Dolet au lecteur Chrestien; 7-341, Translation of
the Psalms divided into five books ; 342-368, Nous a-vons adiouste au li-vre des Psalmes les

BIBLIOGRAPHY 537

cantiques lequelx on chante journellement aux eglises ; then follow, in French, the Benedicite, the
Confitebcr (from Isaiah xii.), the song of Hezekiah, the song of Hannah, the song of Moses,
the song of Habakkuk, the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc Dimittis, and the Te Deum ;
369-391, Opuscule de Sainct Athanasc sur Us Psalmes de David. Cest asscavoir comme on let
peult accommoder aux affaires humains. Opuscule premierement traduict de Grec en Latin far
Politian et de Latin en Franfoys par Estienne Dolet. It ends (on page numbered 391) with Tel
est le style du Royal Prophete David ; le tout a tutilite des hotnmes. 2 pp. blank. Last page
mark of Dolet with the words SCABRA DOLO inscribed on the axe. Beneath, Dolet, Preserve
may, etc.

Brit. Mus. (A copy was formerly in the Bib. Nat., but has been missing for some
years.)

Graesse (Trescr de Livres rares, art. Psalterium, vol. v. p. 481) in his eagerness to point
out the errors of Brunei erroneously says of this and the Paraphrase of Campensis next
hereinafter described, ' Ces deux articles cites par M. Brunei ne font qu'un seul. Unique-
ment le format avail etc indique differemment dans les deux catalogues de Heber et de
Veinant.' Brunei is quite correct in distinguishing between the two books ; a copy of each
is in ihe Brilish Museum, and ihey are enlirely differenl.

46. Paraphrase c'est a dire claire et briefve interpretation sur les
Psalmes de David. Item Aultre interpretation Paraphrastique sur
1'ecclesiaste de Salomon. Le tout faict par Campensis. [ Mark with
SCABRA DOLO on the axe.] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542.

i6mo or 321110. Roman tellers. 448 pp. Sig. A-Z, a-e fours, pp. 3-8, Estienne Dolet
au Lecteur Chrestien ; 9-403, Psalmes de David paraphrases par Campensis ; 404-446, Exposi-
tion paraphrastique sur fecclesiaste du sage Salomon selon la -verite Hebraicque composee par Jehan
Campensi & nouvellement translated de Latin en Francoys. I page blank. Lasl page mark (as
on lille) 5 undernealh, Dolet, Preserve may, etc.

Brit. Mus.

This iranslalion of ihe Paraphrase of Campensis had previously appeared (bul wilhoul
ihe preface of Dolel) in 1534, wilhoul indicalion of place or prinler's name (Bib. Nal.). Il
was reprinled al Anlwerp by Jehan Gymnick in 1556 wilh the preface of Dolet, but
omitling all menlion of his name. (An imperfecl copy of ihis is in the Brit. Mus.)
Another reprint (Antwerp, Jehan Steelsius, 1543) was in ihe Cailhava colleclion (Cal. No.
9), and is apparently the same that was sold at ihe Libri sale (1859).

Allhough the size and the type of this volume are the same as ihose of ihe lasl article,
ihis is prinled much more carefully, and has fewer errors of ihe press.

47. L'Internelle Consolation. CEuvre divisee en deux parties &
necessaire a tout esprit Chretien. Imprimee a Lyon chez Estienne
Dolet, 1542.

i6mo. Roman lellers. 382 pp. pp. 3, 4, Eslienne Dolel au lecteur Chretien ; 5-364,
Texl of ihe three parls ; 18 pp. unnumbered, ihe Table and Iwo dixains of Dolel ; lasl
page, mark of Dolel, wilh SCABRA DOLO on ihe axe ; undernealh, Dolet, Preserve
may, elc.

Bib. Nal.

I give ihe litle of this book from Du Verdier, Bibliotheque Francoise, p. 779 (edit, of
Rigoley de Juvigny, vol. iv. p. 562), for ihe only copy which I know, lhal of ihe Bib. Nal.,
wanls ihe lille. I believe il lo be ihe same which was formerly in ihe possession of M.
Haillel de Couronne, and afterwards fell inlo ihe hands of M. Barbier, who has given a long

538

APPENDIX B

account of it in his Dissertation sur soixante traductions Francises de I 'imitation de Jesus-
Christ (Paris, 1812), pp. 119-121, and states that the following is the colophon : —

'"Ce present oeuvre fut acheve d'imprimer a Lyon, 1'an de grace mil cinq cents, quarante,
et deux, chez Estienne Dolet, detenu pour lors aux prisons de Rouenne, et ce par 1'enuye, et
calumnie d'aulcuns maistres imprimeurs (ou pour myeulx dire, barbouilleurs) et libraires
dudict lieu, centre lesquelz il feit, estant prisonnier, les deux dixains qui s'ensuyvent."

Draudius in his Bibliotheca Exotica (1625), according to Barbier, places this book among
the French works of Protestant theologians, and it has sometimes been ascribed to Dolet
himself. It is however, as M. Barbier states, merely a reprint of the older translations of the
De Imitatione. Although the book does not appear in any catalogue of books censured by the
faculty of Paris, it is inserted (No. 50) in the catalogue of books censured by the Inquisition
at Toulouse as VInternelle Consolation imprimee par Dolet. (See La Police des Li-vres au xvie>"f
siecle par E. de Freville.) No doubt it would be the preface of Dolet or his dixains which
gave occasion to the censure, for the orthodoxy of the book itself was never doubted.

48. Le Chevalier Chrestien. Premierement compose en Latin par
Erasme : & depuis traduict en Francoys. [Similar medallion and
inscription to that on the title-page of Les Epistres et Evangiles^ ante
No. 44.] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avec privileige du
Roy, pour dix ans.

i6mo. Roman letters. 348 pp. (last 2 unnumbered). Sigs. a-y. p. 2, Extraict du
Privileige ; 3,4, Estienne Dolet au lecteur ckrestien (in which he says that ce present eeu-vre a
etc regarde par quelques uns comme scandaleux ou illicite ; 5-48, Dedication of Erasmus. The
text begins on p. 49 and extends to p. 346. On the following page, Cest aeuvre fut imprime'
fan de grace Mil cinq cents quarente & deux, a Lyon ches Estienne Dolet, demeurant pour lors en
la rue Merciere a tenseigne de la Dohuere d'or. On the last page the mark of Dolet, with
SCABRA DOLO on the axe j underneath, Dolet, Preserve may, etc.

R. C. C.

This translation is by Louis de Berquin. It had been originally printed by L'Empereur,
Anvers, 1529 ; and another edition was given by J. de Tournes in 1542. (See for the
different editions, Barbier, Diet. des. Anonymes, 3ieme edit. vol. ii. p. 102, and Bull, du Bib.
1860, p. 1210.)

49. De vrai moyen de bien et catholiquement se confesser.
Opuscule faict premierement en Latin par Erasme ; et depuis
traduict en Francoys. A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542.

i6mo.

Du Verdier cites this translation as made by Dolet, and in the title in the Supplement to
Brunei (the Catal. des Foires de Francfort being cited as the authority) the title is given as
bearing these words, Traduict du latin d' Erasme par Estienne Dolet. Nee de la Rochelle
however does not think he was the translator, and implies that his name was not on the
title-page as such. It seems doubtful, however, whether Nee de la Rochelle had seen a copy.
I can find no trace of the existence of one. In the pardon of June 1543 (Proces, p. 9), and
in the decree of the parliament of I4th January 1543 (1544), (Proces, p. 30), it is referred to
as one of the books printed by Dolet with epitres liminaires excitati-ves a la lecture ficeux,
which implies that he was not the translator, but only the author of the epltre liminaire.

50. Exhortation a la lecture des Sainctes Lettres : avec suffisante
probation des Docteurs de 1'Eglise, qu'il est licite, & necessaire, icelles

BIBLIOGRAPHY 539

estre translatees en langue vulgaire : & mesmement en la Francoyse.
[Mart.] A Lyon, dies Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avec privileige pour
dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Roman letters. 132 pp. p. 2, Exlraicl du privileige; on recto of last leaf
Imprime a Lyon far Estienne Dolet : pcur Icrs demeurant en rue Merciere a fenseigne de la Doloire,
L'an de grace Mil cinq cents quarente & deux ; on the verso, mark of Dolet.

This description is taken from that of Nee de la Rochelle, corrected by one obligingly
furnished me by M. A. Durel, through whose hands a copy had passed.

According to Nee de la Rochelle (p. 122) this volume contains besides the Exportation, —
i. Traicte monstrant comme on se doibt apprester a la lecture des Escriptures sainctes & ce
qu'on y doibt chercher ; 2. Resolution d'une double sur ung passaige de la Saincte Escrip-
ture ; 3. Sermon de la Providence divine premierement faict en Grec par S. Jehan Chrysos-
tome et maintenant translate en Langue Frangoyse. The whole is preceded by an epistle
from Dolet to the Lecteur Chrestien. Nee de la Rochelle shows clearly that Dolet was not
the author of the book. A copy is in the catalogue of the Bib. Hohendorfiana (pt. iii. No.
253), (no doubt now in the Vienna Library), with the date by mistake 1552 instead of 1542.
A reprint was given A Lyon Par Balthasar Arnoullet, 1544 (i6mo, 48 pp.). (Bib. Arsenal.)
Du Verdier cites an edition given by Arnoullet, Lyon, 1554 (probably an error for 1544).

51. Brief discours de la Republique francoys desirant la lecture
des livres . de la Saincte Escripture luy estre loisible en sa langue
vulgaire. Le diet discours est en rime. Avec un petit traicte en prose
monstrant comme on se doibt apprester a la lecture des Escriptures
Sainctes, et ce qu'on y doibt chercher. A Lyon, ches Estienne
Dolet, 1542. i6mo.

Every writer who has noticed this book, including La Croix du Maine, Du Verdier,
Goujet, Niceron, Nee de la Rochelle, Brunei, Haag, and Boulmier, agrees in ascribing to it
the date 1544. But it is plain thai none of ihem except Du Verdier ever saw a copy, and the
date rests solely upon his aulhorily and lhal of La Croix du Maine. Now ihe book appears
in ihe calalogue of books censured by the Faculty of Theology of Paris between December
25, 1542, and March 2, 1542 (1543 N.S.) (D'Argentre, t. ii. pt. i, p. 135, No. 61, where
these words are added, ' qui temble de Dolet, a cause qifil a fait Tepitre pr eliminaire.'1) It must
therefore have appeared before the lasl date, and probably in 1542. In order to escape this
difficulty Brunei suggesls that ihe edilion of 1 544 referred lo by Du Verdier muslhave been a
reprinl of an earlier edilion of 1 542. This is no doubt possible, bul il seems more probable
lhal 1544 is an error for 1542 lhan lhal a second edilion, which has disappeared as com-
plelely as ihe firsl, should have appeared in 1544. Il again appears among ihe books of
Dolel, bul wilhoul dale, in the catalogue of 1551 (D'Argentre, p. 174).

Brunei, who is followed by Boulmier, says thai ihe Exhortation a la lecture des Sainctes
Lettres (No 50) is prinled at the end of the Brief Discours. They seem to have confused the
Exhortation with the Petit traicte en Prose above menlioned, and which Nee de la Rochelle
lells us expressly is one of ihose appended also lo ihe Exhortation.

52. Les prieres et oraisons de la Bible, faictes par les sainctz peres
et par les hommes et femmes illustres tant de PAncien que du
Nouveau Testament. [Mark with motto.'] Ches Estienne Dolet a
Lyon, 1542.

540 APPENDIX B

i6mo. Roman letters. 283 pp.

M. Douen (fctienne Dolet ,• ses opinions religeuscs, Paris, 1881, p. 37) gives an account of
this book from a copy in the possession of M. Gaiffe. See also Nee de la Rochelle (p. 48),
and the catalogue of books censured in 1551 (D'Argentre, t. ii. pt. i, p. 177), where the
date of Dolet's edition is not given, but where an edition of J. de Tournes of 1544 is cited.

53. Livre de la Compaignie des Penitens. Contenant 1'ordre de
recepvoir un Novice, matines de la Vierge Marie, 1'office du Dimanche,
lundy et jeudy, 1'office du mardy et vendredy, 1'office du mercredy et
sabmedy, Prime, Sexte, Tierce, None, Vespres et Complie de nostre
dame : Mutation de 1'office del'Advent : Psalmes des degrez : Psalmes
Penitentiaux : L'offices des morts : les offices des Mercredy Jeudy et
Vendredy sainct : Hymnes de 1'annee : Commemoration des Dimen-
ches & des Saincts. Lyon, Estienne Dolet, 1542.

i6mo. Gothic letters.

Du Verdier (art. Penitens); Proces, pp. 9 and 30; D'Argentre, t. ii. pt. I, pp. 133 and
134 (as Les heures de la Compaignie des penitens, and under that name ordered to be burned).
In the Supplement to Brunei, cited from the Cat. des Foires de Francfort as La compagnie des
penitens.

54. La Fontaine de Vye. Lyon, Dolet, 1542.

This book is mentioned among the ' Litres dampne's et reprou-ves ' printed by Dolet, with
preliminary epistles made by him ' excitati-v es a la lecture eficeux' in the pardon of June 1543
(Proces, p. 9), and in the decree of the Parliament of February 14, 1543-4, ordered to be
burned (Proces, p. 29 ; D'Argentre, t. ii. pt. I, p. 133). It was several times reprinted.

The book is included in the catalogue of those censured by the Faculty of Theology of
Paris, March 2, 1542-3, and by the Inquisition of Toulouse about 1549 ; but in a censure of
certain books by the Faculty of Theology of Paris, May 25, 1542 (D'Argentre, t. ii. pt. I,
p. 232), the book is censured not on account of its own demerits, but on those of a tract
printed at the end of it, ' Liber qui dicitur La Fontaine de Vie continet alium annexum im-
pressum et eodem contextu ut non possit alter sine altero haberi : in quo secundo libro cujus
titulus est Introduction pcur les enfant habetur quaedam Lutheri confessio . . . Ea Lutheri
confessio scripta est in eo libello circa finem.'

I have been unable to meet with a copy of the Latin original Fans fit*, the first
edition of which, according to Graesse ( Tresor de Lhtres rares), was printed in 1533. A copy
of an edition of 1538 is in Cat. Bib. Thuana.

55. Les Epistres Familiaires de Marc Tulle Cicero, pere d'elo-
quence Latine. Nouvellement traduictes de Latin en Francoys par
Estienne Dolet, natif D'Orleans. Avec leurs sommaires et arguments
pour plus grande intelligence d'ycelles. [Mark with motto.~\ A
Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

8vo. Roman letters. 416 pp. ; folios numbered 3-207 (2 and 3 each numbered 3), last
folio unnumbered. Signatures a-z, A-C fours. Reverse of title, Extraict du priiiileige.
4 pp. preface, Estienne Dolet au Lecteur. Each of the sixteen books is preceded by an ' argu-
ment,1 and in the margin are the Latin words with which the epistle begins in the original,
and in a few cases a note explanatory of the epistle. After the seventh book, on folios 140

BIBLIOGRAPHY 541

and 141, is an Epistle of Dolet to the reader explaining why he omitted the eighth book
(consisting wholly of the letters of Ccelius), and most of the other letters not written by
Cicero himself. The translation of the sixteenth book ends on the verso of folio 207. Then
follow two unnumbered pages ; on the first, Ce present CEu-vre fut acheue d'imfrimer le
XXVIII. d1 Apuril, 1542, a Lyon che's Estienne Dolet, pour Ion demeurant en rue Merciere a
fenseigne de la Dolouere dor. Lequel Dolet mesnte a este' traducteur de ces Efistres Jamiliaires de
Cicero. On last page, mark ; underneath, Dolet, Preserve may, etc.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

This, by far the most popular of the works of Dolet, was reprinted at least twenty-eight
times before the end of the sixteenth century, and five times in the seventeenth. Dolet
only translated the letters written by Cicero, omitting many in the last books, and nearly all
those written by his correspondents in reply. These were translated by Fr. de Belle Forest
in 1561, and with the Latin text, added in most of the subsequent editions. The following
is as complete a list as I have been able to make. Besides the twelve editions, copies of
which are in my possession, I have seen all those that are in the Bib. Nat. and the libraries
of Limoges, Orleans, Lyons, and Chatsworth. For the others I cite my authorities.

REPRINTS OF DOLET'S TRANSLATION ALONE OF THE
Epistres Familialres.

1542. Lyon, de Tournes. I2mo. (Nee de la Rochelle quoting Cat. MS. de la Bib. du

Roi.)

1542. Paris, P. Vidoue. (Brunei.)
1542. Paris, Jehan Longis (imprimeur Jehan Real). 8vo. (Nodier, 1091 — Didot(i883),

425.)

1542. Paris, N. Duchemin (imprimeur Jehan Real), 8vo. (R. C. C.)

(The two editions last cited are the same but with different title-pages. They were no
doubt a joint speculation of Longis and Duchemin. The same remark applies to the two
editions of 1547, to the two Paris editions of 1549, and probably to others.)

1543. Lyon, Frellon. i6mo. (R. C. C.)

1545. Paris, Nicolas Duchemin. 24010. (Bib. Nat.)

1545. Paris, Gilles Corrozet. i6mo. (Chatsworth Library.)

1547. Paris, Guillaume Le Bret. At the end on page 307, Imfrime' far Guillaume

Thibout. i6mo. (Chatsworth Library.)
1547. Paris, Jehan Ruelle. At the end on page 307, Imfrime' far Guillaume Thibout.

i6mo. (R.C.C.)

1547. Paris, Est. Groulleau. i6mo. (Graesse.)
1549. Lyon, Thibauld Payan. i6mo. (Limoges Library.)
1549. Paris, Guillaume Le Bret. At the end, Imfrime' far Maurice Menier. i6mo.

(Nee de la Rochelle.)
1549. Paris, Jehan Ruelle. At the end, Imfrime' far Maurice Menier. i6mo. (Bib.

Nat.)

1549. Lyon, Jean de Tournes et Guillaume Gazeau. i6mo. (R.C.C. — Bib. Nat.)
1549. Lyon, Gu. Rouille. I2mo. (Graesse.)

1559. Paris, Menier. i6mo. (Graesse.)

1560. Lyon, Thibaud Payen. i6mo. (R. C. C.)

1561. Lyon, Guillaume Rouille, but at end Imfrime far Francoys Gaillard. (R. C. C.)
1569. Chambery ? i6mo. (Boulmier.)

s. a. Paris, Buon. (Maittaire.)

542 APPENDIX B

REPRINTS INCLUDING THE TRANSLATIONS OF
FR. DE BELLE FOREST.

1561. Lyon, Jac. Cotier. i6mo. (Lyons Library.)

1566. Paris, H. le Be. izmo. (Brunei. — Maccarthy, 2323. — Didot (1884), 385.)

1569. Paris, Jacques D'Arbilly. i2mo. (Ne'e de la Rochelle, 128. — Artur, 1141.)

1569. Paris, Est. Anastace. I2mo. (Graesse.)

1572. Paris, Vincent Normen* et Janne Bruneau. i6mo. (R. C. C.)

1572. Paris, Buon. i6mo. (R. C. C.)

1573. Lyon, Loys Cloquemin et Estienne Michel. i6mo. (R. C. C.)
1579. Lyon, Loys Cloquemin. i6mo. (Lyons Library.)

1585. Lugd. apud Ant. Gryphium. i6mo. (Orleans Library.)
1585. Paris, Claude Micard. i6mo. (R. C. C.)

1591. Lyon, Rigaud, 'ex typis J. Roussin.' i6mo. (Baudrier, Bibliographic

Lyonnaise, 3^6 serie, p. 424.)

1592. Lyon, Jacob Stoer. i6mo. (Limoges and Grenoble Libraries.)
1618. Cologni (Geneva), Jacob Stoer. i6mo. (R. C. C.)

1623. Rouen, Bogard. I2mo. (Brunei.)

1624. Rouen, Richard 1'Allemand. (Bib. Nat.)

1624. Rouen, Manassez de Preaulx. i6mo. (R. C. C.)
1630. Rouen, Jean de la Mare. i6mo. (Nee de la Rochelle.)

56. La maniere de Bien traduire d'une langue en aultre.
D'advantage. De la punctuation de la langue Francoyse. Plus des
accents d'ycelle. Le tout faict par Estienne Dolet, natif d'Orleans.
[ Mark with motto.] A Lyon, dies Dolet mesme. M.D.XLII. Avec
privileige pour dix ans.

4to. Roman letters. 40 pp. Signatures a-e twos. Last page unnumbered, mark ;
underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.
R. C. C. — Bib. de 1' Arsenal.
The third edition given by Dolet, and an exact reprint of that of 1541.

57. La Plaisante et Joyeuse histoyre du Grand Geant Gargantua,
Prochainement reveu et de beaucoup augmentee par 1'autheur
mesme. [Woodcut representing men and boys singing from a music
book.] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542.

i6mo. Roman letters. Woodcuts. 288 pp. (last 6 pp. unnumbered), pp. 2-282, text of
Gargantua ; I p. Cest oeuvrefut imprime Fan de grace Mil cinq cents quarente& deux. A Lyon,
cAes Estienne Dolet, demeurant fours lors en la Rue Merciere a I'enscigne de la Dolouere D'or ; i
page, mark, not in border, but with Scabra dole on the margin of the axe ; underneath,
Dolet, Preserve may, etc. 4 pp. blank. Then follows : —

Pantagruel, Roy des Dipsodes, Restitue a son naturel : avec ses faictz & prouesses
espouuentables : composes par feu M. Alcofribas abstracteur de quintessence. Plus les
merveilleuses navigations du disciple de Pantagruel diet Panurge. A Lyon, ches Estienne
Dolet, 1542.

i6mo. Roman letters. Woodcuts. 352 pp. (last 2 pp. unnumbered), p. 2, Dixain de
M. Hugues Sale/ a fautheur de ce livre ; pp. 3-7, Prologue de Pautheur ; 8-231, text divided

BIBLIOGRAPHY 543

into xxxii. chapters ; 232-2 $1, Pantagrueline Prognostication; I p. blank and unnumbered;
253-350 Le -voyage et navigation que fist Panurge ; I p. blank ; I p. mark with Scabra dolo
on the margin of the axe ; underneath, Dolet, Preserve may, etc.
Bib. Nat. — R. C. C. (Pantagruel only).

58. Les (Euvres de Clement Marot de Cahors, valet de chambre
du Roy. Augmentees d'ung grand nombre de ses compositions
nouvelles, par cy-devant non imprimees. Le tout songneusement
par luy mesmes reveu et mieulx ordonne comme 1'on voyrra cy
apres. [Mark with motto.'} A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542.
Avec privileige du Roy pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Roman letters. 648 pp. (Folios numbered but with many errors.) Signa-
tures a-z, A-R fours, s two. ff. 2. 3, Epistle of Marot to Dolet ; 4 (a), Latin odes of N.
Bourbon and N. Berauld. Last page mark of Dolet ; underneath, Estienne Dolet, Preserve
may, etc. •

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

59. L'Enfer de Clement Marot de Cahors en Quercy, valet de
chambre du Roy. Item aulcunes Ballades et Rondeaulx appartenants
a largument. Et en oultre plusieurs aultres compositions du diet
Marot, par cy-devant non imprimees. [Mark with motto.'} A
Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 64 pp. (Last three unnumbered, pagination full of mistakes.)
Signatures A-D. pp. 3, 4, Estienne Dolet a Lyon Jamet ,• pp. 5-61, L'En/er and the other
poems ; I p. unnumbered, Cest tesrvre fut imfrime fan de grace Mil cinq cents quarante et
deux. A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, demeurant pour lors en Rue Merciere a fenseigne de la
Dolouere D'or. (My copy ends here, but there clearly should be another folio, on the verso
of which no doubt would be the mark of Dolet.)

R. C. C.

60. L'Amie de Court. Nouvellement inventee par le Seigneur
de la Borderie. [Mark with motto. .] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet,
1542.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 40 pp. Signatures A, B fours, c two. pp. 3, 4, Preface of Dolet
dated May 5, 1542 ; 5-36, L'Amie de Court ; 37, A Fung de ses amys ; 38, Enigme ; I folio
(wanting in my copy, but the recto would no doubt be blank, and the verso would have the
mark of Dolet as in the edition of 1543).

R. C. C.

I cannot point to any copy of this or the next article except my own (formerly Didot's).

61. La Parfaicte Amye. Nouvellement composee par Antoine
Heroet diet la Maison neufve. Avec plusieurs aultres compositions
du diet Autheur. [Mark with motto.] A Lyon, ches Estienne
Dolet, 1542. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 96 pp. Signatures A-F fours, pp. 3, 4, Preface of Dolet

544 APPENDIX B

dated June i, 1542 ; 3-63 (39 repeated), La parfaicte amye ; 64-79, L Androgyne de Platan.
Noievellcment traduict de Latin en Francoys far Antoine Heroet diet la maison neufve. Last
page mark ; underneath, Dolet, Preserve moy, etc.
R. C. C. (First folio in MS. facsimile.)

62. Du Mespris de k Court : & de la louange de la vie Rusticque.
Nouvellement traduict d'Hespaignol en Francoys. [ Mark of Dolet
with motto.'] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avecq privileige
pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. 176 pp. Signatures A-L fours, pp. 3-5, Dedication of the translator, Antoine
Alaigre, to G. Du Prat, Bishop of Clermont, dated May i, 1542 ; p. 6, Au Lecteur ; 7, 8,
Table j 9-170, text j 2 pp. blank ; I p., Ce present ceu-vre fut acheve d' Imprinter, a Lyon fan
de grace mil cinq cents quarante 6? deux. Ches Estienne Dolet, demeurant pour Ion en rue
Merciere a la Dolouere D'or ; I p. mark of Dolet 5 underneath, Dolet, Preserve moy, etc.
(Should be another blank folio.)

R. C. C. — Roanne Library.

This is probably the first edition of the translation of Alaigre, though another edition
also appeared in the same year at Lyons from the press of Pierre de Tours. It was
reprinted the following year by de Tournes (R. C. C.), and also by Fr. Juste.

63. Cry de la guerre ovverte entre le roy de France et I'Empereur
Roy des Hespaignes. Et ce a cause des grandes, execrables, et
estranges injures cruaultez et inhumanitez, des quelles le diet
Empereur a use envers le Roy et mesmement envers ses ambas-
sadeurs : a cause aussi des pays, qu'il luy detient et occupe indeument
et injustement. Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542.

Sm. 410. 4ff. Mark of Dolet on the last page.

Potier, 1974. — Cat. of St. Goar (Frankfort, 1877), No. 1520. In the Supplement to
Brunei a copy is cited as sold at the Conod sale.

A copy of an edition of this manifesto of Francis I., printed by Poncet le Preux, Paris,
s. a., which MM. Deschamps and Brunet state to be a re-impression of that of Dolet, is in
the Bib. Nat., but it seems to me probable that that of Poncet le Preux is the original. In
this edition the manifesto is dated Ligny, 10 July 1542. Le Long (Bib. Hist, de la France)
cites this manifesto under the date 1542, but as in 8vo and without the printer's name.

64. Discours contenant le seul et vray moyen par lequel ung
serviteur favorise & constitue au service d'ung prince, peult conserver
sa felicite eternelle, & temporelle, & eviter les choses qui luy pour-
royent 1'une ou 1'aultre faire perdre. [Mark with motto.'] A Lyon,
ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avecq Privileige pour dix ans.

8vo. Roman letters. Signatures A, B fours, pp. 3-6, A Monseigneur de f Estrange,
Estienne Dolet humble salut ; 7-31, text. Last page mark; underneath, Dolet, Preserve
moy, etc.

R. C. C.

Du Verdier attributes the authorship of this book to Dolet, but it appears from the
dedication that he was not the author. Dolet says that the discourt ' est plein de prudence

BIBLIOGRAPHY 545

accompagnee d'une telle ardeur envers la loi de Dieu que bien cognoissoit ct bien observait
1'autheur de cet ouvrage.'

65. La Chirurgie de Paulus .fllgineta. Nouvellement traduicte
de Grec en Francoys. [ Mark with motto.'] A Lyon, ches Estienne
Dolet, 1542. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 208 pp. Signatures a-n.

R. C. C. — Bib. de Bordeaux.

This is a reprint of the first part of the volume of translations made by P. Tolet,
originally printed by Dolet in 1540. Brunei erroneously states that it includes the
Opuscules of Galen. This is an error ; reprints of the Opuscules were given separately by
Dolet. (See the two following articles.)

66. Des Tumeurs oultre le coustumier de Nature. Opuscule
nouvellement traduict de Grec en Latin : et de Latin en Francoys.
[Mark with motto.] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avec
privileige pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 32 pp. pp. 3-26, text ; 6 pp. unnumbered ; ist, Ce present
Opuscule a este' traduict par Maistre Pierre Tolet, medecin de r hospital de Lyon. Et par luy aussi
a este traduict haultre opuscule de Galien intitule' De la maniere de curer par phlebotomie ; 2nd,
blank ; 3rd, mark ; underneath, Do/etus, Durior, etc. 3 last pages blank.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

This Opuscule, as well as the next article, had before been printed by Dolet in 1540 with
La Chirurgie of Paulus yEgineta.

67. De la Baison de curer par evacuation de sang. Autheur
Galien. CEuvre nouvellement traduict de Grec en Latin : et de
Latin en Francoys. [Mark with motto.'] A Lyon, ches Estienne
Dolet, 1542. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 64 pp. Signatures A-D fours. pp. 3-54, text; 55-63, Petits
traictes propres a la medicine. Autheur Galien (Des Sangsues. De revulsion. Des -ventouses.
De scarification). Last page unnumbered, mark ; underneath, Doletus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

Again separately reprinted a Lyon ches Sulpice Sabon pour Antoine Constantin sans date.
(Yemeniz, 781), 1545 was subsequently impressed on the unsold copies. See Baudrier,
Blbl. Lyon, 2tne Serie, pp. 30, 36.

68. Deux Livres des Simples de Galien. C'est asscavoir, Le
cinquiesme, Et le neufviesme. Nouvellement traduicts de Latin en
Francoys par Monsieur Maistre Jehan Canappe, Docteur en Medicine.
[Mark with motto. ~\ A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1542. Avec
privileige pour dix ans.

8vo. Italic letters. 164 pp. (p. 89 repeated and last but one numbered 162). 3-6, Le
translateur au lecteur. Last page mark ; underneath, Doletus, Duricr, etc.
R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

2 N

546 APPENDIX B

Reprinted at Lyons in 1570 by Durelle for Rigaud. Baudrier, Bibl. Lyon, 3me Serie, p.
265.

69. Prologue & chapitre singulier de tres excellent Docteur en
medecine & Chirurgie Maistre Guidon de Cauliac. Le tout nouvelle-
ment traduict & illustrede commentaires par Maistre Jehan Canappe,
Docteur en Medecine & lecteur public des Chirurgiens a Lyon.
\_Mark with motto.~\ Ches Estienne Dolet a Lyon, 1542. Avec
privileige pour dix ans.

8vo. Text of Guidon Roman letters, Commentary of Canappe Italics. 128 pp. Sig.
A-H fours, pp. 3-6, preface of Canappe. Last page mark ; underneath, Do/etus, Durior, etc.
R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

70. Le Livre des Presaiges du Divin Hyppocrates divise en troys
parties. Item La protestation que le diet Hyppocrates faisoit faire a
ses disciples. Le tout nouvellement translate par Maistre Pierre
Vernei, Docteur en Medecine. \_Mark with motto. ,] A Lyon ches
Estienne Dolet, 1542.

Sm. 8vo. Italic letters. 40 pp. Signatures A B, fours, c two. p. 3 (unnumbered), La
we d * Hyppocrates ; pp. 4-6, La protestation et jurement du Divin & Maistre des Medecins
Hyppocrates ; 7-38, Translation of the Presaiges, ending on p. 38 with Imprime a Lyon par
Estienne Dolet, pour Ion demeurant en Rue Merciere a Fenseigne de la Doloire. L'an de
grace Mil cinq cents quarante & deux. I page blank, last page mark ; underneath, Doletus,
Durior, etc.

R. C. C.— Bib. Nat.

Brunei is in error in only giving to this book 38 pp. '_y compr'u fembleme de Dolet.'' It
should consist, as above stated, of 40 pp. The book is a reprint of a volume printed at
Lyons in 1539 by Pierre de Saincte Lucie, some copies of which have JNicolas Petit on the
title-page as the bookseller, others Jehan Mousnier. One of these with Petit's name is in my
possession.

71. Tables Anatomicques du corps humain universel ; soit de
rhomme ou de la femme. Premierement composees en Latin par
Maistre Loys Vasse"e ; et depuis traduites en Francoys par Maistre
Jehan Canappe. [Mark with motto.'] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet,
1542. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

8vo. Italic letters. 248 pp. (carelessly numbered, last p. numbered 309). Signatures
A-O^. pp. 3-10, An epistle headed Maistre Jehan Canappe Docteur en Medecine au lecteur
Chirurgien salut. It is dated Lyon ce premier jour de Juillet Pan de Salut mil cinq centi
quarante & ung.

R. C. C.— Orleans Library.

It was reprinted by Angelier, Paris, 1544 (Bib. Mazarine), and again by M. Fezendat (for
J. Foucher), Paris, 1555 (Bib. de Rouen). Du Verdier mentions a reprint by Jean de
Tournes, Lyon, 1552.

La Croix du Maine erroneously treats as two distinct books L?Anatomie du Corps humain
and Lei tables anatomiques. He is also in error (as is La Monnoye) in stating that the author of

BIBLIOGRAPHY 547

the original is Jean and not Loys Vassee. Jean and Loys Vassee or Vassaeus were con-
temporaries. Jean was of Meaux, Louis of Chalons. Each wrote on medical subjects, but
Louis is the author of the Tabulae.

M.D.XLIII.

72. 0. Ivlii Caesaris Commentarii. Quae in hac habeantur
editione sequens pagina demonstrabit. [Mark with motto.] Lug-
duni, apud Steph. Doletum, 1543.

8vo. Italic letters. 656 pp. 64 pp. prelim, comprising the prefaces of Secundus and
Aldus, the usual plates and maps, nomina locorum, and Index rerum. pp. 1-524, text of Caesar
and Hirtius. 67 pp. unnumbered, Index ; i p. mark ; underneath, Do!etus, Durior, etc.

R. C. C. — Brussels Library. — Orleans Library.

An exact reprint page for page of the editions given by Seb. Gryphius, but badly and
carelessly printed with a coarse type, and on coarse paper.

73. Observationes in Terentii Comoedias nempe Andriam : et
item Eunuchum. Steph. Doleto Gallo Aurelio Autore. [Mark
with motto.] Lugduni, apud eundem Doletum, 1543. Cum
privilegio ad decennium.

8vo. Italic letters. 176 pp. (17 unnumbered at end). Sig. A-L. Last page mark ;
underneath, Do/etus, Durior, etc.

An exact reprint of the edit, of 1 540.
R. C. C. — Bib. Nat. — Brit. Mus.

74. Les Questions Tusculanes de M. T. Ciceron. CEuvre
tresutile & necessaire pour resister a toute vitieuse passion d'esprit ;
& parvenir au mespris, & contemnement de la mort. Nouvellement
traduict de Latin en Francoys par Estienne Dolet, natif D'Orleans.
[Mark with motto.] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1543. Avec
privileige pour dix ans.

8vo. Roman letters. 240 pp. Sig. a-p fours. 13 pp. prelim, unnumbered, Epistle to
the king, i p. Huictain. pp. 1-224, Translation of the first three books of the
Tusculans, ending (on p. 224) with Fin du Troysiesme I'rure.

Dole Library.

Reprinted at least five times : —

1544. Paris, J. Ruelle. i6mo. (R. C. C.)

1544. No place or printer's name. ,i6mo. (Lyons Library.)

1545. Paris, Guillaume Le Bret. i6mo. (R. C. C. — Bib. Maz.)
1545. Paris, Benoit Prevost ? i6mo. (Orellius, Onomasticon Tullianum.}
1548. Paris, J. Ruelle. i6mo. (R. C. C. — Bib. Nat.)

(1549). Lyon, Sulpice Sabon pour Antoine Constantin. Sm. 8vo. (R. C. C. —
Brit. Mus.) This edition had originally no date, but 1549 was subsequently impressed
on the unsold copies. Baudrier, Bill. Lyon. 2me Serie, pp. 31-37.

None of these reprints contain Dolet's preface, or anything more than the first three
books.

548 APPENDIX B

75. La Maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en aultre,
D'advantage de la Punctuation de la langue Francoise ; plus des
Accens d'icelle. Le tout faict par Estienne Dolet, natif D'Orleans.
\_Mark with motto.] A Lyon, ches Dolet mesme, 1543.

An exact reprint in every respect of the edition of 1541.

Sunderland, (uncut) 4007 ; jTiz — Bib. Hohendorfiana, part ii. No. 203.

76. Les G-estes de Francoys de Valois Roy de France. Dedans
lequel CEuvre on peult congnoistre tout ce qui a est£ faict par les
Francoys depuis 1'An Mil cinq cents treize jusques en 1'An Mil
cinq cents quarante & troys. Premierement compose* en Latin
par Estienne Dolet ; et apres par luy mesmes translate en Langue
Francoyse. \_Mark with motto.'} A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet,
1543. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

4to (but much smaller than the edit, of 1 540). Roman letters. 96 pp. Sig. A-F fours.
Pp. 2-74 same as in the edition of 1540, except that on p. 74 a paragraph is added glorifying
France and its invincibility ; 75"94j Le tiers li-vre (continuing the history for the years 1539,
1540, 1541, 1542. Unnumbered page, Au lecteur (as in edit, of 1540). Last page mark;
underneath, Dolet, Preserve moy, etc.

R. C. C. — Bib. Nat.— Brit. Mus.

For the subsequent reprints of this book see ante, p. 526.

77. Les (Euvres de Clement Marot de Cahors, Valet de Chambre
du Roy. Augmentees d'ung grand nombre de ses compositions
nouvelles, par cy-devant non imprimees. Le tout soigneusement
par luy mesmes reveu & mieulx ordonne comme Ton voyra cy apres.
[Mark without border or motto, but with the words Scabra dolo on the
edge of the axe.] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1543. Avec
privileige du Roy pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Roman letters. 760 pp. (folios numbered 2-304 and 1-76). On the verso of
last folio (76) mark of Dolet ; underneath, Dolet, Preser-ve may, etc.

Lyons Library.

It escaped the notice of Brunei that twenty psalms are contained in the second part of
this volume, and there seems every probability that they appeared for the first time in this
edition. No previous edition of the works of Marot contained more than thirty psalms,
and it is doubtful whether the edition of the psalms alone, dated 1543, was printed before
this.

78. L'Amie de Court. Nouvellement inventee par le Seigneur
de la Borderie. [ Mark with motto.~\ A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet,

1543-

8vo. Roman letters. 40 pp. Sig. A, B fours, c two. Recto of last leaf blank, verso
mark ; underneath, Dolet, Preserve moy, etc.
Dole Library.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 549

79. La parfaicte Amye. Nouvellement composee par Antoine
Heroet, diet la Maison neufve. Avec plusieurs aultres compositions
du diet Autheur. [Mark with motto.] A Lyon, ches Estienne
Dolet, 1543. Avec privileige pour dix ans.

Sm. 8vo. Roman letters. 96 pp. numbered 2-94 (48 being repeated and last p. un-
numbered). Sig. A-F fours. Last page mark ; underneath, Dolet, Preserve may, etc.

Bib. Nat. (Imperfect, wanting the two preliminary pages containing Dolet's preface). —
Dole Library.

80. Du Mespris de la Court & de la Louange de la vie Rustique.
Nouvellement traduict d'Hespaignol en Francoys. [Mark with
motto.'] A Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1543. Avec privileige pour
dix ans.

8vo. Roman letters. 112 pp. Sig. A-G. Last page mark ; underneath, Dolet, Preserve
may, etc.

Dole Library.

Erroneously cited by De Bure (followed by Nee de la Rochelle and Boulmier) as of the
year 1545.

M.D.XLIV.

81. Le Second Enfer d'Estienne Dolet, natif d'Orleans. Qui
sont certaines compositions faictes par luy mesmes sur la justification
de son second emprisonnement. A Lyon, 1544. Avec privileige
pour dix ans.

Very small 8vo or i6mo. Roman letters. 104 pp. unnumbered. Signatures A-T
fours, G two. (G n by mistake printed r n.) Reverse of title, Au lecteur. Apres Ttnfer tu
trou-veras deux dialogues de Plato scaitoir, etc. ; 4 pp., Estienne Dolet a ses meilleurs amys humble
salut, ending with Escript en ce monde ce premier jour de May fan de la redemption humaine mil
cinq cens quarante et quatre ; 44 pp. the Enfer. Then (on D u) Deulx Dialogues de Platan,
Philosophic Di-vin et supernaturel, Sca-voir est L'ung intitule Axiochus <%ui est des miseres de la
•vie humaine et de timmortalite de Fame. Et par consequence du mespris de la mart. Item ung
aultre, intitule Hipparchus qui est de la convoitise de t Homme touchant la lucratifve. Le tout
notrvellement traduict en langue Franc oyse par Estienne Dolet, natif D'Orleans, 1544. Reverse,
Estienne Dolet a ceulx de sa nation, ' Ce st asses -vescu en tentbrcsj etc. ; 5 pp. Dolet Au Roy
Treschretien ; 24 pp. and part of 25, Translation of Axiochus headed Du mespris et contemnc-
ment de la mart. At the end of the 25th page and on the 18 following pages translation
of Hipparchus, De la convoitise et affection de gaigner ; 3 pp., Aulcuns Diets et sentences notables
de Platan ,• I p. blank.

Bib. Mazarine.

MM. Deschamps et Brunei (Manuel du Libraire, Supplement, torn. ii. col. 1017) are in
error in stating ' II rien existe qu'un seul exempt, qui faisait partie du cabinet Cigongne (No.
776 du catal.) et que possede aujourd'hui le due d'Aumale,' there being as above stated a
copy in the Bibliotheque Mazarine (No. 21994) from which the above description is taken.

Immediately after the appearance of the book it was reprinted at Troyes (see ante, p.
457). The following is the description of this edition : —

550 APPENDIX B

Le Second Enfer d'Estienne Dolet, natif D'Orleans. Qui sont
certaines compositions faictes par lui mesmes, sur la justification de
son second emprisonnement. \_Mark of N. Paris, a boy falling from
a tree.] A Troyes, par maistre Nicole Paris, 1544.

Very small 8vo. Roman letters (rather larger than those of the Lyons edition). 64 pp.
I, 2, unnumbered, also last p. unnumbered. Signatures A-D fours. Reverse of title, Au
lecteur, Apres fenfer de Dolet, tu trou-veras une epistre en rhhhme fran^oise faicte et composee far
Clement Marot, et par lui envoy ee a Monseigneur le Daulphin qui est tfung mesme argument ; car
par icelle il prie le diet seigneur, qu'il luy plane tant faire en-vers le roy son fere que par son may en
le diet Marot retourne en France a-vec sa premier liberte. Item plusieurs aultres belles compositions
pleines de grand profict, et de singulier recreation pour tesperit de FHomme ,• pp. 3-6, Estienne
Dolet a ses meilleurs et principaulx amys humble salut ; 7-48, The Enfer ; 49-63, Seven poems
of Clement Marot, the first being the Epistre en-voyee a Monseigneur le Daulphin. Last page
unnumbered ; mark of N. Paris. [Then follow according to Brunet, 46 pages, numbered
49 to 95, containing Deux dialogues de Platan . . . scavoir est tung intitule Axiochus . . .
item un autre intitule Hipparchus. Le tout traduict par Estienne Dolet, 1544.]

Bib. Nat.

A second copy is in the Versailles Library, and a third from which the description in
Brunet is taken, was formerly in the collection of M. de Lurde, No. 97, and afterwards in
that of the Baron de Ruble (Supplement to Brunet, torn. ii. col. 1018). A third copy,
formerly existing in the public library of Troyes, and for many years supposed to be unique,
has now disappeared (Recherches sur f etablissement et Vexercise de t imprimerie a Troyes, par
Corrard de Breban, 3me edit., Paris, 1873). This copy, however, like that in the Bib. Nat.,
did not contain the Dialogues.

Having regard to the following facts, (i) that on the reverse of the title-page of this
edition the poems of Marot are indicated as forming part of the volume, but that no mention
is made of the Dialogues 5 (2) that the number of pages, i.e. 47, occupied by the Dialogues
is the same in each ; (3) that the pagination is inconsistent with the presence of both the
compositions of Marot and the Dialogues j and (4) that the mark of Nicole Paris appears
at the end of the poems of Marot, but not at the end of the Dialogues which form the
concluding part of the book, I am led to the conclusion that Nicole Paris printed only the
Second Enfer, the Epistre, and other compositions of Marot, and that with the copy of the
Baron de Ruble, a copy of the Dialogues from the edition of Lyons is bound up.

A copy of an edition under the same date as the three above mentioned, but with one
remarkable peculiarity, was in the collection of the Marquis de Ganay. (Sold at his sale in
1 88 1, No. 109 to M. Durel for 1000 fr.) It was first mentioned by M. Aime Martin in
his Rehabilitation (p. 19), and has since been more clearly described in Brunet (art. Dolet),
and in the Supplement of MM. Deschamps and Brunet. The title is precisely the same as
that of the edition of Lyons, with Lyon as the place of the impression, but on the last page
is the mark of Nicole Paris. According to the Supplement to Brunet it is a small octavo,
95 pp., round letters, different from those of the Lyons edition, and the same as those of
the edition of Troyes. Having had no opportunity of seeing the Marquis de Ganay's copy,
I cannot speak with any certainty, but I think it probabje that this is a copy of the Troyes
edition with the title-page of that of Lyons.

There have been two modern reprints of the Second Enfer and the Dialogues, the first
given by Techener in 1830, preceded by the Rehabilitation of M. Aime Martin.

i. Le Second Enfer d'Estienne Dolet, Natif d'Orleans. Qui sont certaines compositions
faictes par luy mesmes sur la justification de son second emprisonnement. A Lyon,
1544. Avec Privilege pour dix ans.

Of this only 120 copies were printed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 551

2. Le Second Enfer d'Etienne Dolet, suivi de sa traduction des deux Dialogues Plato-
niciens, L'Axiochus et 1'Hipparchus. Notice Bio-bibliographique par un Bibliophile.
Paris, a la librairie de 1' Academic des Bibliophiles 10, Rue de la Bourse, 10. Bruxelles,
Librairie Europeenne de C. Muquardt, Place Royale, 1868. (237 copies only
printed.)

Besides what is stated on the title, this volume contains a reprint of the Cantique (with
the mark of Dolet on the false title), and of the epitaph beginning Mart en Dolet, et
far feu consume.

82. Les Louanges du sainct nom de Jesus par Victor Brodeau,
plus une Epistre d'ung pescheur a Jesus Christ faicte par le diet
Brodeau. A Lyon, chez Estienne Dolet, 1544.

Small 8vo (or i6mo). Gothic letters. 64 pp. On the 64th page the mark of Dolet.
Brunei, Supplement, vol. i. col. 176, and vol. ii. col. 992. A copy in which the title
was wanting is there cited as sold at the sale Desbarreaux-Bernard. The only other
authority cited by MM. Deschamps and Brunei, and the only one known to me, is the
catalogue of books censured in 1551, where it appears ex libris Victor Brodeau, as ' Une
epitre du Pecheur a Jesus Christ, imprimee a Lyon par Dolet ' (D'Argentre, vol. ii. pt. i. p.
173), from which it would seem either that Dolet only printed the Epitre and not the
Louanges, or that the former only, and not the latter, contained matter for censure. Two
editions of the book are cited in Brunei : one, Lyon, chez Sulpice Sabon pour Ant. Con-
stantin (1540); the other, Lyon, Oliver Arnoullet, 1543. I have found the following in
the Bib. Mazarine : —

Les Louanges de Jesus nostre Saulveur CEuvre tres excellent Divin et elegant. Com-
pose par Maistre Victor Brodeau, secretaire el valel de chambre du Treschrestien Roy
de France Francoys premier de ce nom : et de et haulte Princesse La Royne de
Navarre, soeur unique du d Seigneur. Avec Les Louanges de la Glorieux Vierge Marie.
Nouvellement Imprime veu & corrige Lan de la Nativite Jesus Christ M.D.XL.
(Small 8vo or i6mo. Gothic letters on coarse paper. 44 pp.)

83. L'Enfer de Clement Marot de Cahors en Quercy, Valet de
Chambre du Roy. Item aulcunes Ballades & Rondeaulx appar-
tenants a 1'argument. Et en oultre plusieurs aultres compositions du
diet Marot par cy-devant non imprimees. [Mark with motto.] A
Lyon, ches Estienne Dolet, 1544. Avec privileige du roy.

8vo. Roman letters. 64 pp. Signatures A-D fours. A reprint of the edition of 1542.
On p. 53, Huictaln faict a Ferrare, ending Qu'ilx ne -vouldroyent, que je feusse loing tfelle.
Immediately below is ihe signalure D 3 and the word Le as catchword for the next page ;
then follow (clearly by mistake) seven .lines beginning (Presque periz) les lettres £f Lettres,
and ending Bacchus aussi sa tonne vigne y plants, followed by the catchword Par. These
seven lines and catchword are a repetition of the last seven lines and catchword of p. 28,
which are here by mistake repeated. Last page, mark } underneath, Dolet, Preserve
moy, etc.

Bib. Nal.

84. Les psalmes du royal prophete David, traduictz par Clement

552 APPENDIX B

Marot. Avec aultres petits Ouvrages par luy mesme. Lyon,
Estienne Dolet, 1544.

i6rrio. 172 and 46 pp.

Bib. de Berlin. (Clement Marot et le Psautier Huguenot, par 0. Douen, vol. i, p. 449,
vol. 2, p. 508.)

Cantica Canticorum en Francois.

This title appears in the catalogue of books censured in 1551 under the heading Ex
Libris Stephani Dolet, and (no doubt on the authority of this catalogue) is inserted in the
list of Dolet's books given by La Croix du Maine and Du Verdier, and from them has passed
into Le Long's Bib. Sacra and the lists of Nee de la Rochelle and Boulmier. But I can find
no other trace of its existence, and I think it probable that the author of the catalogue has
taken Les Cantiques given in Dolet's edition of Les Psalmes du Royal prop/iete David (No. 45)
for a translation of the Cantica Canticorum.

Exposition de 1'evangile de notre seigneur J. C. selon S. Matthieu
translated de latin en francoys et nouvellement imprimee. 1540.

8vo. Gothic letters.

On the authority of the Catalogue des Li-vres de M. M.\arechal\ (Paris, Techener, 1850),
No. 14, where this book appears as having on the title A Lyon ekes Estienne Dolet, I
included it in the first edition of the present work, in the catalogue of books printed by
Dolet. M. Douen in his Etienne Dolet j ses opinions religeusts (Paris, 1881) has however
remarked that these words do not appear on the title, and upon examining the copy in the
Mazarine Library to which M. Douen refers, I agree with him that there is no ground for
attributing it to Dolet. According to M. T. H. Dufour (Le Cate'chisme Francois de Calvin,
p. CCLXXV), a licence was granted by the Council of Geneva on the I2th of March, 1540, to
John Michel to print this book.

Exposition sur la premiere Epitre de S.Jean, divisee par sermons.

The title of this book is inserted in the catalogue of books censured March 2, 1542
(1543), and in 1551 (D'Argentre, torn. ii. pt. i, pp. 134, 174), in the latter of which it is
included among those ex libris Stephani Dolet. It is also mentioned by La Croix du Maine
among the works of Dolet, and accordingly I inserted it in the first edition of this book
among the volumes printed by Dolet, but I am again indebted to M. Douen for a correction.
He has called my attention to a copy of the book in the Mazarine Library, which is
certainly not printed by Dolet, but as M. Douen thinks is the work of J. Michel of
Geneva, though the name of the printer does not appear.

Cantique d'Estienne Dolet, prisonnier a la Conciergerie de Paris
sur sa desolation et sur sa consolation. Dolet. Imprime L'an

M.D.XLVI.

Such is the title of the Cantique given by Brunet, Boulmier, and the editions given by
Guiraudet in 1829 and by Techener in 1830. Brunet describes the original of this Cantique
as ''fort rare,' and Boulmier as ' excessiiiement rare ' ; neither of them indicate where a copy
is to be found, and it is clear that no edition of 1546 ever existed. It was first printed by

BIBLIOGRAPHY 553

Nee de la Rochelle in his Vie de Do/et, p. 142, with the following title and note : ' Cantique
d'Estienne Dolet, prisonnier en la Conciergerie de Paris 1'an 1546 sur sa desolation et sur sa
consolation : en vers.

' Ce petit ouvrage est sans contredit le plus rare de tous ceux de Dolet ; car personne que
je sache, n'en parle ; et j'avoue que je ignorerois son existence sans M. Guillaume Debure,
qui ayant appris que je travaillois a la vie de Dolet, m'a offert obligeamment la copie manu-
scrite qu'il en possedoit. Je ne crois fas qu'ij ait jamais eie'impnme ; c'est pourquoi je vais
1'annexer a cet article arm que les Curieux jouissent aussi du sacrifice de M. Debure, et pour
empecher que ce Cantique ne se perde a 1'avenir. . .

' L'anciennete de cette copie se prouve par 1'ecriture, qui est absolument semblable a celle
d'un manuscrit date de 1535 que je possede ; aussi je ne crains point d'en garantir
1'authenticite.'

It has been since four times reprinted : —

1. By Guiraudet, Paris, 1829. izmo. Guiraudet was the first to put in imprint Ian
1546, which has since been followed in the other re-impressions and in other books.

2. By Techener, 1830. ( 1 20 copies only.)

3. In M. Boulmier's Estienne Dolet.

4. With the Second Enfcr, Paris and Brussels, 1868.

INDEX

TAis Index does not extend to the Appendices

Accursius, F., 50, 74, 130, 156, 162

Achaia, 61

Achillini, A., 25

Adam, Melchior, 203

Adrian, Cardinal, 258

Adrian VI., 66

^gineta, Paulus, 397

./SLmilius, Paulus, 123, 124, 366

Agen, 122, 199, 201

Aglionby, Edward, 305

Agricola, Rudolph, 259, 455, 456, 461

Agrippa, 480

Aix, Parliament of, 465

Albenas, Poldo de, 94

Albigenses, the, 51, 52, 75, 76, 406

Alboin, 200 .«

Alciat, A., 50, 82, 84, 85, 134, 155, 158,

227, 258

Aldeguier, J. B. A. d', 78
Aldi, the, 175, 327
Aldus, the elder, 44, 65, 280, 328, 329, 334,

456

Aleander, J., 202, 210
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 25
Alexander the Great, 485
Alfonso of Poictiers, 402
Allegre, A., 399
Amaseo, Romulo, 19, 70, 258
Amsdorf, N., 227
Andre, Jean, 429, 442
Andrelini, Fausto, 118, 119
Aneau, Barthelemi, 167, 168, 345, 369
Angeliacus, Mathurinus Almandinus, 118
Angleberme, Pyrrhus, 260
Anne of Austria, 407

Antonio, Dom Nicolas, 31

Apelles, 44

Aphrodisias. See Alexander

Apollo, 359

Appianus, Hortensius, 258, 290

Apuleius, 62

Aquinas, Thomas, 22

Aquitaine, 125, 127, 129, 130, 132

Aretin, Leonard, 354

Aretin, Pierre, 12

Arianism, 5 1

Ariosto, 345

Aristippus, 15

Aristophanes, 485

Aristotle, 22, 25, 26, 124, 216, 252, 293,

354

Arlerius, Antonius, 312
Arnault. See Borie
Arneys, Antoine, 411
Arnold of Villeneuve, 30, 31, 32
Arnollets, the, 291
Asola, 23

Asulanus, Francis, 65
Athenagoras, 125
Aubespine, C. de L', 465
Aubigne, Merle D', 388, 408
Aulnaye, F. H. S., De 1', 32
Aulus Gellius, 280, 282
Aumale, Due d', 171
Ausonius, 51
Averroes, 25
Avignon, Papal Vice - Legate of, 465,

466
Axiochtts, translation of the, 363, 445, 452-

456, 460-462, 463

556

ETIENNE DOLET

Babou, Cardinal Philibert, 476

Bachelin-Deflorenne, MM., 291

Bacon val, Nicole, 415

Bade, Josse (Badius), 65, 141, 198, 204, 334

Baduel, Claude, 399

Baif, J. A., 275

Baif, Lazarus, 30, 260, 263, 264 ; Dolet

charged with plagiarism from, 274-288
Baillet, A., 453, 454
Baillet, Second President, 395
Baldus, 130
Bandiera, A., 270
Barbarus, Hermolaus, 257
Barbier, A. A., 364; Anonymes, 270, 271,

272

Barbous, J., 317
Bardili, Professor, 26
Barezzi, B., 269
Barma, Roger de, 35
Barre, Chevalier de La, 4
Barroo, Claudius, 187
Barthelemy, Charles, 402, 403
Bartholus, 50, 74, 130, 156, 162, 175
Basle, 241, 270, 271, 282
Bastard d'Estang, Vicomte de, 113
Baudichon de la Maison Neuve, 241, 408,

4I3.430
Baudrier, le President H. L., 41, 207, 208,

338> 352> 36z, 378, 431, 44i, 4?i

Bayle, Pierre, 9, 81, 213, 214, 222, 305,
428, 479

Beatrice, Duchess of Milan, 199

Beaucaire. See Peguillon

Beaulieu, Eustorg de, 174

Beauteville, 84, 85

Beauvau, Bertran de, 504

Becanis, Vidal de, 408

Beda, Noel, 16, 146, 149, 150, 174, 186,
201, 230, 232, 234, 389, 429, 491

Bellay, Joachim du, 167, 353

Bellay - Langey, Cardinal Jean du, 39, 41,
230, 232, 233, 235, 268, 340, 366, 379,
380, 381, 382, 495

Bellay-Langey, Guillaume du, 30, 354, 366

Belle-Forest, Frangois de, 361

Bellievre, Matthieu, 415

Bellievres, the, 423

Bembo, Cardinal, paganism of, 5, 7, 22,
266 ; at Padua, 21, 35 ; characteristics,
21-24; defends Pomponatius, 26 ; friend-
ship with J. de Pins, 67, 72 ; a Ciceronian,
199 ; made a Cardinal, 266 ; other refer-
ences to, 71, 258, 285, 294, 313, 354, 486

Berauld, Nicolas, Dolet studies under, 15, 16;
other references to, 151, 234, 260, 312, 500

Bering, Godefroi, 342

Berjeau, J. P., 170

Bernard of Comminges, 60

Bernard, Simon, 361

Bernard VI., Count of Comminges, 60

Berne, 168, 304, 305, 413 ; the lords of,
241, 413, 430, 467

Beroaldo the elder, Filippo, 62, 63

Beroaldo the younger, Filippo, 62

Berquin, Louis de, 4, 230, 363, 400, 425,
430, 462, 474

Bertrandi, Jacques, 369

Bertrandi, Jean, 59, 136, 162, 323, 324,
395, 422, 426

Besant, Sir Walter, 372

Bessarion, J., 124

Beza, Theodore, ode on Dolet, 8, 476 ;
Ephtola Passa-vanti, 423-428 ; other refer-
ences to, 168, 231, 304, 305, 407, 433,
468, 497

Bianchini, Bartholomeo, 63

Bible, French translation of the, 170, 171,
399, 400, 416

Bigot, Guillaume, 82, 285, 393

Bindonis, A. de, 65

Binet, J., 482

Bladus, A., 286

Blois, 45 j Treaty of, 64

Bochetel, Bernard, 479

Bode, Herman, Unto Dhsidentium, 400, 416

Boetie, Etienne de la, 121

Bois, Jacques du, 260

Boleyn, Queen Anne, 318

Bologna, 63, 64, 225

Bologna, University of, 19, 62, 70, 99, 281

Bonnivet, Seigneur de, 64

Bordeaux, 121, 125, 298, 299 ; Parliament
of, 53, 120, 121, 122, 125, 128

Borderie, Seigneur de la, 399

Bording, Jacques, at Toulouse, 59 ; sketch
of his life, 70 ; coolness between him and
Dolet, 142 } correspondence with Dolet,
71, 142, 143, 145, 149, 187, 188 ; other
references to, 69, 103, 140-149, 174, 186,
500

Bordoni, Benedetti, 201

Borie, Frangois Arnault, Seigneur de la, 116

Bosio, Otho, 75, 109, 258

Bossuet, J. B., 4, 5, 490

Boston, Dean, 318

Bouhier, President, 115, 318

INDEX

557

Boulmier, Joseph, references to his Estienne
Dolet, 8, 9, 33, 41, 59, 83, 95, 96, 100,
106, 174, 182, 210, 224, 272, 275, 357,
364, 369, 378, 396, 441, 453, 454, 484,

493, 495> 502

Bourbon, Cardinal de, 120, 405

Bourbon, Constable de, 264

Bourbon, Nicolas, present at the banquet
given to Dolet, 312 ; estrangement between
him and Dolet, 318-321 j other references
to, 151, 168, 260, 290, 313, 314, 315,
342, 496, 500

Bourg, Jean de, 415

Bourgeois de Paris, Journal (fun, 207, 231,

413

Bourges, 50, 155, 219, 221, 297, 321

Bourges, Clemence de, 174

Bouysson, Hugues, 84

Boville, Charles, 354

Boyssone, Jean de, his law lectures, 50, 59 ;
arrest of, for heresy, 80, 86 ; character-
istics, 8 1, 82, 84-86 j Rabelais' opinion of,
8 1 ; his MS. correspondence and poems,
82, 83 ; trial and recantation of, 86-88 ;
visits Italy, 88 j Dolet's intimacy with,
89 ; competitor and judge at the Floral
Games, 95; epigrams of, 97, 117; en-
gaged in a law -suit, 296, 297 ; visits
Lyons, 297 ; appointed a member of the
Council of Savoy, 324 ; after-life of, 392-
395 ; correspondence of, with Dolet, 138,
160, 161, 163, 164, 178, 179, 186, 187,
1 88, 218, 219, 221, 240, 302, 321 ; other
references to, 67, 68, 69, 74, 79, 80-89,
91, 93, 94, 103, 106, 109, no, 120, 125,
134, 175, 217, 236, 260, 265, 284, 294,

295, 298, 299, 300, 301, 303, 305, 310,
311, 317, 322, 323, 342, 408, 415, 500

Boyssone, Jean, Seigneur de Beauteville, 84

Bragmardus, 424

Breslay, Gui de, 35, 187, 188, 234, 260, 295,

296, 297, 500

Brice Germain, 260, 313, 496

Bri^onnet, G., 301

Britannus, Robert, 299, 415

Brodeau, Victor, 347

Brunelleschi, the Duomo of, 43

Brunet, J. C., 182, 272, 285, 291, 361, 385

Brutus, 198

Buchanan, G., 496, 497

Bude, Guillaume, letters from and to Dolet,
142, 148, 153, 187; dedication of Dolet's
Commentaries to, 252, 262 ; other refer-

ences to, 8, 9, 12, 17, 30, 38, 65, 140-156,
168, 176, 185, 186, 188, 198, 199, 204,
206, 230, 232, 233, 234, 249, 253, 255,
259, 260, 267, 280, 285, 310, 311, 312,
354. 367. 368, 37°, 486, 498

Bull Unigenitus, the, 488

Bunel, Pierre, 27, 29, 30, 32, 75, 76, 81,
85, 106, 109, 151

Buonamici, L., 20, 89, 258

Bure, Guillaume de, 68, 470

Burgaud des Marets, H., 32, 185

Bursault, , 79

Buyer, Barthelemy, 170, 171

Cabrieres, 466

Caesar, 14, 44, 47, 154, 248, 276, 280, 354,

438,485

Cagnati. See Cousin
Cahors, 67, 303
Calanconius, Jacobus, 187
Calas, Jean, 4, 56

Calepin, A., 243, 248, 283, 287, 288, 384
Calogiera, A. M., 157
Calvin, Jean, 7, 16, 22, 157, 168, 266, 303,

304, 305, 321, 400, 411, 412, 416, 468,

476, 479> 487> 488, 489, 490, 491, 498
Calvus, Franciscus, 158
Cambrai, war of the League of, 19, 42
Camerarius, J., 211
Camerarius, J., (II.), 223
Camillo, Giulio, 35, 36, 89, 146, 147, 150,

151, 156-159, 227, 282
Campensis, J., 364
Can Grande, 122, 200
Canappe, Jean, 181,290, 397, 399
Cantiuncula. See Chansonette
Carcassonne, 402
Carey, Henry, 318

Carlstadt, , 489

Carondelet, Ferric, 63

Carpentras, College of, 70

Carpi, Albertus Pius, Prince of, 281, 282,

286

Carvaialus (Caravajal), Ludovicus, 226
Casaubon, Life of, 498
Cassander, Thomas, 187
Castel, Pierre du, 181, 187

Castellanus, , 218

Castelnau, Antoine de, 85
Castiglione, Baldasar, 292
Catel, G. de, 94
Cathari, the, 51
Catharin, Ambrose, 218

558

ETIENNE DOLET

Catullus, 137, 215

Caturce, Jean de, trial and burning of, 76-80 ;
other references to, 54, 59, 68, 74-87, 91,
106, 107, 108, no, 136, 186, 265, 408

Caxton, William, 170

Chalan, Annemond, 415

Chambery, 81, 84, 324, 392, 393, 394, 395

Champier, Symphorien, 167, 168, 169, 181,
260

Chansonette, Claude, 260

Charles V., 240, 241, 242, 264, 399

Charles VIII., 330

Charron, Pere Etienne Leonard, 68

Chassaigne, Geoffrey de, 122

Chatel, Tanneguy du, 112

Chatigny, M., 345

Chesnaye, , de la, 333

Chevallier, Francois, 115, 116

Chiere, 303

Chinon, topers of, 192

Chomard, , 322

Choul, Guillaume du, 167, 251, 263, 323

Christian III., 70

Cicero, 7, 13, 14, 15, 17, 22, 26, 35, 45, 47,
62, 68, 69, 71, 102, 104, 105, 127, 147,
150, 154, 155, 157, 188, 196-228, 236,
243, 246, 247, 248, 250, 254, 256, 258,
265, 268, 269, 294, 296, 334, 354, 358,
359. 36°. 361, 362, 384, 398> 451, 454.
45S» 475, 483, 485. 487

Ciceronians, the, 13, 14, 16, 27, 28, 71, 101,
126, 127, 142, 187, 195-228, 266, 385,

394

Claudin, A., 118

Clausanus, Joannes, 134, 161, 164, 187
Clement, Jacques, 55
Clement V., 61

Clement VII., 66, 181, 266, 379, 489
Clenard, N., Imtitutiones and Meditatknes

Graces, 398, 455
Cleon of Daulia, 30
Clugni, Benedictine order of, 505, 506
Codreus, Urceus, 62, 63
Cognatus. See Cousin
Coligny, Cardinal Odet de, 135, 324
Colignys, the three great, 16
Colin, Jacques, 292, 347
Colines, Simon de, 178, 271, 280, 315, 317,

335

Collins, J. C., 493
Colomies, J., 115

Colonia, Pere de, 169, 239, 291, 301
Columella, 248

Comines, Philippe de, 365, 366, 367

Comminges. See Bernard

Compaing, Guillaume, 262, 306, 307, 314,

373. 4i5. 434, 435. 4&3, 498
Compaing, Jehan, 463
Constantinople, 43
Contarini, Cardinal, 21, 22, 26
Cop, Guillaume, 259
Cop, Jean, 146, 150, 260
Coras, Jean de, 50
Cordiere, La Belle. See Labe
Cornaro, Catherine, 23
Cornaro, Luigi, 24
Corneillan, Pierre de, 6 1
Corvinus, Matthias, 199
Cottereau, Claude, 59, 182, 187, 318, 326,

34°. 34i. 342, 343. 344. 345, 34&, 347,

348, 379.J97

Court, Benoit, 167, 169, 177, 291, 292
Cousin, Gilbert, 13, 223, 224-228, 480
Cousin, Jehan, 9
Coutances, 118

Cranmer, Archbishop, 3 19, 489
Crapelet, G. A., 232, 233
Craston, J., 455
Crawford, Lord, 171
Cremieu, 242
Crespin, J., Grand Martyrologe, 388, 411,

413

Crinitus, P., 257
Crito, Archagatus, 185
Cromwell, Thomas, 3 19
Cujas, Jacques, 50, 406

Cureau, , 9

Cursius, P., 222
Curtius, Quintus, 248
Cuspidius, 189
Cyprus, 60 ; Queen of, 23

Daffis,Paul, 88

Dampierre, J., 312, 313, 496

Dampmartin, Guillaume, 83, 117, 118, 135,

136, 139, 163

Danes, Pierre, 151, 260, 312, 437
Daniel, Fran£ois, 321
Daniel, Pere, 231

Dauphin, death of the, in 1536, 290
Dayde, Frere Jean, 407
Dayde, Raymond, 55
Delminio. See Camillo
Democritus, 132
Demosthenes, 20, 105, 354, 485
Despautere, Jean, 259

INDEX

559

Des Periers, Jean Bonaventure, 168, 237,

*5i> 371,453
Devaulx, Jacques, 440, 442, 457, 458, 459,

464

Diagoras, 480
Didot, Ambrose Firmin-, 171,252,330, 331,

341

Dijon, Parliament of, 53, 395

Doges, Palace of the, 44

Dole, Public Library of, 362

Dolet, Charles, 505

Dolet, Christofle, 9

Dolet, Claude, 326, 343, 344, 346, 392,
444, 502-506

Dolet, Claude Louis, 505

Dolet, Etienne, a child of the Italian Ren-
aissance, 7, 12 ; birth of, 7 j family and
parentage, 8, 9 ; fate of his father, 10 ;
early education, n ; at Paris, 12 ; a
Ciceronian, 13 ; studies under Berauld, 15 ;
commences the Commentaries, 17 ; at Padua,
24 ; influence of Pomponatius on, 26 ;
writes epitaph and odes on death of Vil-
lanovanus, 33-35 ; life at Padua, 35-37 ;
made Secretary to Jean de Langeac, Am-
bassador to Venice, 38 ; attends Egnazio's
lectures at Venice, 45 ; love affair of, 46 ;
enters University of Toulouse as law
student, 49 ; introduced to Jean de Pins,
69 ; correspondence with Pins, 71, 72,
1 80 ; correspondence with Hording, 71,
145, 149 ; first acquaintance and friend-
ship with Boyssone, 89 ; competitor at
Floral Games, 91, 95 j chosen orator by
the French students of Toulouse, 100 ;
his orations, 101 et seq. ; makes enemies,
ill; odes against Drusac, 116, 160 ;
friendship and correspondence with Le
Ferron» 120, 126-134 ; determines to
leave Toulouse, 134; writes to Langeac,
it. 5 is arrested, 135; letter of Pins to
Minut in favour of, 136 ; correspondence
with Boyssone, 138, 160, 161, 163, 179,
218, 219, 221, 240, 302, 321; released
from prison, 139 ; coolness with Bording,
142 ; reconciliation effected through Pins,
ib. ; correspondence with Bude, 143, 148,
153 ; his opinion of Giulio Camillo, 150,
158 ; leaves Toulouse hastily during ill-
ness to avoid arrest, 159 ; banished from
Toulouse, 163 ; sets out for Lyons, ib. j
again attacked by illness, 164 ; arrives at
Lyons, ib. ; his reception by Gryphius,

178 ; publication of the orations, epistles,
and poems, 182 ; intimacy with Rabelais,
189, 378-386 ; determines to devote his
life to literature, 195 ; displeased with the
Ciceronianuf of Erasmus, 203 ; visits Paris
to obtain license for publication of the
Commentaries, 204, 229, 234 ; publishes
his dialogue De Imit. Cic. adv. Erasmum,
209 ; incurs the hatred of Scaliger, 212,
475 j his personal appearance and manners,
224; returns to Lyons, 2355 editor and
corrector for the presses of Gryphius,
Juste, and Gabiano, 235, 236, 290, 293 ;
begins to print the Commentaries, 237 ; ode
of, to Pompone de Trivulce, 239 ; obtains
permission to print the Commentaries, 242 ;
description of, and extracts from, the
Commentaries, 242-272 j attacks the Sor-
bonne, 265 ; prints his Formulae Latinarum
locutionum, 269 ; is charged with plagiarism,
273-288 ;' issues his De Re Hawaii and
answers the charge of plagiarism, 276 ;
first charged with atheism, 284 ; prints
his De Imit. Cic. adv. Sabinum, ib. ; his
fondness for music and swimming, 294 ;
his friendship with Voulte, 298 - 300 ;
attacked in the streets of Lyons, and
commits homicide, 306 ; escapes to Paris
to avoid arrest, 307 ; obtains royal pardon,
310-312 ; banquet given in his honour,
312 ; returns to Lyons and is re-arrested,
313, 314 ; estrangement of Voulte,
314-317 ; loses the friendship of Sussan-
neau, 317; his friendship with N. Bour-
bon and termination of the same, 318-
321 ; marries, 325 ; sets up as printer and
obtains license, 332 ; his mark and
motto, 333 ; takes the part of the
journeymen printers, 335, 398, 463 ; his
partnership with Helayn Dulin, 338 ;
prints his Cato Christianas, 340 ; Carmina,
341 ; birth of a son, 343 ; prints his
Genethliacum and jl-vant Naissance, ib. ;
plans his Orateur Fran$oys, 353 ; issues
La Maniere de bien traduire, 354 ; his
translations of Cicero, 358-363 ; trans-
lation of the Psalms, 364 ; intention of
writing a history of France, 365 j prints
his Francisci Valesii Fata and Les Gestes,
368, 369 ; his friendship with Marot and
Rabelais, 370-386 ; Marot's letter to,
374 5 his editions of Marot's works, 375,
376 ; his quarrel (?) with Marot, 376,

560

ETIENNE DOLET

377 j termination of his intimacy with
Rabelais, 378-386 ; ordered to withdraw
the Cato Christianus and Carmina from
sale, 392 ; removes to the Rue Merciere,
396 ; activity of his press, ib. ; issues
heretical books, 399, 400 ; arrested, 414 ;
charged with heresy, 415 ; his trial, 417-
420 ; sentenced to death, 42 1 ; appeals to
the Parliament of Paris, ib. ; obtains the
royal pardon, 433-436 ; liberated, 437 ;
recommences printing, 438 ; again ar-
rested, 439 5 escapes from prison, 440-42 ;
writes the Second Enfer in Piedmont, 444 ;
again enters France, ib. ; the Second Erifer,
446-452 ; his translation of the Axiochui
and Hipparchus, 452 ; re-arrested, 456,
459 j tried before the First President,
459 ; composes his Cantique, 469 ; is
finally sentenced to death, 470 j M.
Baudrier's opinion of the sentences on,
471 ; the sentence carried out, 472-475 5
epitaphs on, 476-477 ; opinions and char-
acter of, 478 ; his descendants, 502

Dolet, Francois, 505

Dolet, Jacques, 502, 505

Dolet, Jean, 505

Dolet, Leon, 502, 504

Dolet, Louise, wife of Etienne, 326, 338,

343, 346, 392, 444, 457, S°2, 5°3
Dolet, Martinus, 9
Dolet, Mathieu, 9
Dolet, Michel, 505
Dolet, Paul, 505
Dolet, Pierre, 505
Dolet. See Doulet
Domenichi, Ludovico, 157
Dominicans, Order of, 53, 47, 408
Donadeo, 281
Doneau, H., 125

Doribus, Nostre Maistre. See Orry
Dorpius, Martin, 259
Double, L., 495
Douen, O., 493, 494, 495
Doulet, Guillaume, 9
Drusac, Gratien du Pont, Sieur de, 83, 96,

113-117, 118, 139, 160, 162, 163
Dryden, J., 493
Dubourg, Chancellor, 429
Dubourg, Councillor, 406
Duchat, J. Le, 30, 31, 78, 386
Duchatel, Pierre, 290, 300, 301, 312, 315,

323, 327, 368, 432, 433, 435, 436> 437,
464, 468, 489, 500

Ducher, Gilbert, 260, 274, 290, 314, 496
Duchesne, Pere, 267
Dudleys, the, 318
Dulin, Helayn, 326, 338, 339
Dupetit-Thouars, L. M. A., 223
Dupreau, G., 480
Durand, Guillaume, 341, 369, 399
Duranti, the President, 54
Du Verdier, A., 68, 81, 115, 116, 118, 125,
174, 364, 428, 453, 454, 480

Eck, J., 489

Egnazio, Giovanni Baptista, 27, 44, 45, 59,
89, 258

Elena, 46

Elvamus, C., 290

Elzevirs, the, 327

Entommeures, Brother Jean des, 191

Epaminondas, 485

Epistemon, 81

Erasmus, Desiderius, his admiration for
Cicero, 14 ; his opinion of Berauld, 15 ;
attends the lectures of Musurus at Padua,
20 ; his letter to J. de Pins, 67 j com-
parison of, with Bude, 141 ; the Encomium
Morief, 191 ; his opinion on wine, ib. ;
his Ciceronianus, 196 ; attacked by J. C.
Scaliger, 201 ; Dolet's attack on, 203-205,
208-211, 224 j his reply to Cursius, 222 ;
printer's error in his Futua Christiana, ib. ;
letter of Odonus concerning, 224 j Dolet's
ode on his death, 250 ; Dolet's comparison
of, with Longolius, 256 ; French transla-
tions of his books, 363, 400 ; on the
alleged repentance of Berquin, 474 j other
references to, 2, 3, 6, 12, 16, 36, 37, 48,
68, 119, 127, 168, 176, 202, 212, 213,

217, 2l8, 219, 220, 222, 226, 249, 253,
259, 263, 266, 267, 280, 282, 283, 285,

294, 3X3, 362, 398, 4i6, 474, 486, 498
Erb, Matthias, 420
Estampes, Duchess d', 446, 449, 464
Estienne, , Charles, 262, 263, 264, 274, 275,

276, 279, 280, 281, 283
Estienne, Francis, 275
Estienne, Henry, 172, 328, 357, 423, 425,

426, 433

Estienne, Paul, 328, 329
Estienne, Robert, 168, 172, 176, 178, 243,

244, 245, 249, 264, 274, 275, 280, 283,

284, 287, 288, 313, 328, 329, 335, 384,

432
Estiennes, the, 168, 176, 327

INDEX

561

Estoile, Pierre de 1', 260

Etaples, Lefevre d', 260, 399, 416, 491, 492

Eunapius, 62

Faber, Michael, 323 t

Fa her Stapulensis. See Etaples

Fabricius, Arnold, 187

Facciolati, J., 28, 268, 270

Faciot, Jean. See Voulte

Farges, 304

Farget, Pierre, 170

Farnese, Cardinal Alexander, 286

Faure, Louis du, 406

Fausto, Vittorio, 65

Faye, Estienne, 415

Fenelon, F. de Salignac de la Motte, 5

Fermo, ^ertachino de, 175

Ferret, Emile, 168, 206, 258

Ferrier, Arnoul du, 82, 84, 88, 125, 405,

406

Ferrier, Augier, 83
Ferron. See Le Ferron
Ferroniere, La Belle, 464
Ficinus, Marsilius, 259, 455, 456
Fine, Oronce, 260
Finet, Simon, 59, 99, 102, 163, 182, 185,

187

Floral Games of Toulouse, 90 et seq.
Florence, 43, 44, 167
Florentine Chapel at Lyons, 167
Florian, ballad of, 94
Floridus. See Sabinus
Foix, Gaston de, 201
Foix, Odet de, 264
Fontainbleau, 65, 66
Fontaine, A., 291
Fontaine, Charles, 167, 347
Fontenay, Abbey of, 185
Fontette, Ferret de, 505
Foulques, Bishop of Toulouse, 52
Fournier, Claude, 181, 208, 290
Fournier, Hugues, 169, 208
Fournier, Humbert, 169, 208
Fourviere, Academy of, 169
Francis I., 8, 9, 63, 64, 65, 66, 105, 106,

122, 135, 146, 150, 157, 158, 174, 182,

2l6, 2l8, 222, 227, 229, 230, 231, 232,

233, 235, 238, 240, 241, 242, 252, 262,
264, 296, 309, 312, 327, 331, 332, 336,
337, 339, 347, 362, 365, 366, 367, 368,
369, 375, 379, 384, 399, 4°4, 4*°, 4*4,
425, 429, 43°, 431, 432, 433, 435, 436>

437, 438, 444, 44&, 447, 448, 449, 45 1>
456, 457, 464, 467, 468, 489, 491

Freher, Paul, 125

Frellons, the, 172

Fresnoy, Lenglet du, 377, 378

Freux, Andre Le, 482

Froben, J., 252, 334

Froissart, J., 366

Frusius. See Freux

Fuchsius, Leonard, 259

Gabiano, Scipio de, 293

Gadagne, Thomas de, 301

Gagnius, J., 290

Gaignat Sale, the, 237

Gaillard, Jeanne, 174

Galen, C., 271, 397

Galland, Claude, 377

Galland, P., 437

Garamond, Claude, 329

Garde, Jehan de la, 429

Gargantua, 172, 189-194, 380-386, 399

Gamier, , 506

Garum, the, 372, 380

Gascons, Marie, 94

Gaullieur, E., 298, 482

Gauteret, Jehan, 408

Gay Science, Academy of the, 91 et sey., 97

Geneva, 168, 241, 304, 305, 329, 331, 332,

336, 388, 412, 439
Gentilis, Valentine, 305
Germany, the Lutheran princes of, 241
Gerou, Dom, 496
Gesner, C., 172, 272
Gesner, J. M., 244
Gibbon, E., 197
Gigas, Joannes, 220, 482, 496
Gilbert, Jean, 118
Gilles, Pierre, 260
Girardie, Pierre, 55
Giraud, Louise, wife of fitienne Dolet. See

Louise Dolet
Glareanus, Henricus, 259
Goclenius, Conrad, 210, 259
Goezmann, E. L. V. de, 408, 409
Gondi, Antoine de, 174
Gondi, the, 166
Gonsalvo of Toledo, 169
Gonthier, Jean, of Andernach, 270, 271
Gorgias, 124

Gossin, Raymond de, 408
Goujet, Abbe, 46, 81, 114, 115, 116

2 O

562

ETIENNE DOLET

Gourmont, Jerome, 452, 453

Gouttes, Jean des, 290, 345

Gouvea, Andre de, 299

Gouvea, Antoine de, 168, 437, 496

Gramond, President de, 50

Gramont, Cardinal Gabriel de, 135, 324

Grapaldo, F. M., 118

Gratius, Ortuinus, 267

Gray, T., 497

Grenier, the brothers, 56

Grenoble, University of, 395

Greyff, Michael, 175

Gripaldi, Matthieu, 302-305, 317, 323

Grotius, H., 304

Gruter, J., 215, 282

Grynaeus, Simon, 259

Gryphii, the, 172, 327

Gryphius, Sebastian, message from Boyssone
to, 161 j number of editions printed by,
171, 172; scholarship of, 172; visit of
Dolet to, 175, 178 j notice of, 175 ; im-
portance of his press, 175-178 ; Dolet's
friendship with, 178 ; Dolet as editor and
corrector of the press for, 179, 214, 22 1,
235, 290, 331; prints the Orationei of
Dolet, 182 ; Rabelais as editor for, 189 ;
prints the Dial, de Imit. Cic., 209 ; obtains
licence to print the Commentaries, 242 ;
prints the Commentaries, 251 ; his Latin
Bible, ib. ; prints the De Re Na-vali, 276 ;
books from the press of, 291 ; assists
Dolet in commencing business as a printer,
333 ; dedication of the fourth book of
Dolet's Carmina to, 342 ; his edition of
Marot, 375 ; other references to, 183, 187,
204, 226, 234, 236, 248, 252, 275, 280,
282, 286, 288, 292, 297, 300, 317, 319,
332, 334, 335, 34*, 372, 396, 500

Guevara, A. de, 399

Guibal, Georges, 81, 83, 84, 86, 117,219,
296, 393

Guiffrey, Georges, 291, 375

Guillet, Pernette du, 173, 345

Guillot. See Compaing

Guingene, P. L., 62

Guise, Duke of, 394, 395

Guises, the, 406

Guttanus. See Gouttes

Guyenne, 125

Guyenne, College of, 298, 299

Gyllius, P., 455

Haag, MM., 360

Hallam, Henry, 26, 187, 243

Hammonius, Chrysogonus, 175, 183, 185,

187

Hannibal, 485

Harlai, President de, 405, 406, 426
Harlais, the, 423
Harsy, Olivier de, 293
Henrietta Maria of England, 4
Henry II. of France, 404, 405, 406, 410
Henry IV. of France, 330
Henry VII., Emperor, 200
Henry VIII., 135, 209
Hercules, 200, 423
Herissant, L. T., 270, 271
Herminjard, A. L., 15
Herodotus, 354
Heroet, Antoine, dit La Maisonneuve, 347,

399

Hervet, Gentian, 298, 299
Hesse, Eobanus, 259
Heulhard, A., 385
Heuman, C. A., 222
Hipparchus, translation of the, 363, 446,

452, 453, 456, 46o
Hippocrates, 178, 189
Hirtius, 276, 280
Hoefer, Dr., 223
Hohendorf library catalogue, 452
Holbein, J., 252
Homer, 188, 252, 354, 485
Hopital, Michel de 1', 85, 260, 489
Horace, 15, 105, 137, 150, 151, 236, 248,

486

Houssaye, Amelot de la, 9
Huet, Bishop, 34, 188, 216, 217
Hugh, Bishop of Cahors, 67
Huguenots, the, 4, 54, 372
Hungary, King of. See Corvinus
Hungary, Marie, Queen of, 222
Hunniadae, the, 199
Hunsdon, Lord. See Carey
Hutten, Ulric von, 99, 259

Imitatione Christi, De, French translation of,

363,4H
Innocent IV., 61
Inquisition, the, 50, 53, 55, 75, 76, 77, 78,

80, 87, 88, 122, 176, 177, 241, 400, 401-

421

Isaure, Clemence, 92, 93, 94, 95
Isocrates, 485

Jamet, Lyon, 376

INDEX

563

Jannet, P., 32

Janot, Denis, 453

John XXII., 67

Joly, P. L., 420

Jortin, Dr., 492, 493

Josephus, 67, 68, 109

Julius II., 266

Junius, Florent, 472, 473, 474

Juste, Framjois, 177, 290, 292, 293, 331,

381, 386
Justes, the, 291
Juvenal, 105

La be, Louise, 173, 174, 345

La Coste, 466

Lacroix, P., 495

La Deviniere, vine-dressers of, 192

Laethmatius, Herman, 472

La Faille, G., 78, 79, 84, 88, 91, 101, 296,

301
La Monnoye, B. de, 29, 30, 31, 32, 123,

453i 454

Lamothe-Langon, E. L. B. de, 55, 115, 116,
407, 409

Lampridio, Benedetto, 20, 24, 157, 258

Lando, Hortensio, 13, 36, 189, 225, 226

Langeac, Francis de, 40, 158, 187

Langeac, Jean de, account of, 38-40 ; ap-
points Dolet his secretary, 38, 41 ; assist-
ance of, to Dolet, 48, 134 ; urges Dolet to
study the law, 48 5 letters of Dolet to,
134, 187 ; retires from public affairs,
195 ; Dolet dedicates his Dial, de Imit. Cic.
to, 204; other references to, 42, 44, 45, 47,
60, 154, 186, 251, 263, 267, 398, 495, 500

Langey. See Bellay

Languedoc, 4, 5, 51, 52, 60, 402, 403, 404,
406

La Reole, 118

La Rouane, prison of, 362, 421, 440

Larousse, , 505

Lascaris, Jean, 65, 173, 328

Lasius, B., 270

Lateran, Council of, 122

Lateranus, , 290

Latimer, Bishop, 318

Latomus (Masson), J., 219, 220

Laurentius, , 202, 210

Lautrec. See Foix

Lectoure, 118

Le Duchat. See Duchat

Le Ferron, Arnoul, contemporary of Dolet
at Toulouse, 59 ; sketch of his life, 120-

125 ; appointed Councillor of the Parlia-
ment of Bordeaux, 121 ; his intimacy
with J. C. Scaliger, 122 j as historian,
123, 366 ; authorities for his life, 125 ;
correspondence of, with Dolet, 126-134,
187 j other references to, 49, 101, 102,
103, in, 186, 187, 188, 202, 212, 213,
214, 236, 500

Le Ferron, Jean, 120, 122, 128

Le Gendre, L., 124

Le Laboureur, J., 8, 479

Le Long, J., 505

Le Maistre, the President Gilles, 405, 406,
426, 434

Lemnians, the, 276

Le Moyne, Pasquier, 347

Leo X., 5, 21, 23, 64, 66, 266

Leoniceni, Nicolas, 258

Lepidus, Joannes, 187

Le Puy en Velay, 164

Le Roy, Nicolas, 321, 322

Le Tellier, Chancellor, 4

Lewis V. of Bavaria, 199, 200

Limasol, 60

Limoges, 160, 195 ; Cathedral of, 39, 40 j
Bishop of. See Langeac

Limoux, 76, 77

Linacre, Thomas, 259

Liseux, Isidore, 476

Lisieux, College of, 70

Livy, 14, 47, 154, 248, 369

Lizet, Pierre, First President, imprisons Jean
Morin, 237, 429 ; his character, 422-425 ;
as a theological writer, 426 ; Beza's satire
on, 427 ; his death, 428 ; orders the burn-
ing of Dolet 's books, 443 ; presides at the
final trial of Dolet, 459, 462 ; pronounces
sentence, 470 ; other references to, 186,
232, 389, 422 et ieq., 442, 450, 452, 460,

47*» 491

Locatus, Umbertus, 403
Longinus, 62
Longis, J., 293
Longolius, Chr., 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 27, 28,

29, 30, 32, 35, 36, 67, 71, 72, 89, 104,

105, 187, 196, 198, 203, 204, 249, 256,

260, 267, 285, 475, 486
Longueville, Jean d Orleans, Cardinal de, 135
Lorraine, Cardinal of, 234, 299, 300, 405,

446, 449
Louis XL, 366
Louis XII., 330
Louis XIV., 4

564

ETIENNE DOLET

Louis XVI., 330

Louvain, 70

Loyola, Ignatius, 410

Lucan, 369

Lucca, 167

Lucian, 480

Lucretius, 45, 177, 258, 480, 491

Lut, Breghot du, 175

Luther, Martin, 6, 7, 75, 86, 89, 106, 209,
265, 294, 303, 487, 489, 490

Lutherans, the, 76, 80, 102, 107, 206,
233, 265

Lyevin, Valentin, 408

Lyons, city of, 165 et seq. ; distinguished
literary men living at, 167 ; the early
printers of, 170 j first French book printed
in France printed at, ib. ; early editions
of the Bible printed at, 171 ; cultivated
women of, 173 ; May -day custom of
printers of, 238 j disputes between master
and journeymen printers of, 335-338 j
other references to, 160, 161, 163, 164,
165-194, 195, 207, 208, 214, 218, 220,
222, 225, 242, 278, 284, 290, 296, 297,
298, 299, 300, 301, 306, 307, 308, 309,
310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 317, 318, 319,
325» 33*. 332> 339. 362, 37*, 373, 375.
37»» 388, 393. 396, 4", 4i7. 43°. 437,
439, 440, 444, 447, 456, 457, 458, 503,
504

Lysias, 485

Macaulay, Lord, 239

Machard, A., 476

Macho, Julien, 170

Macrin, Salmon, 27, 30, 151, 168, 260, 290,

301, 312, 313, 342, 370, 486, 496
Madamaxum, Jean, 393
Maffei, B., 20

Maine, Guillaume du, 151, 260, 486
Maine, La Croix du, 81, 115, 167, 364,

378, 428, 452, 453, 454, 479
Maittaire, Michael, 9, 41, 96, 97, 217, 272,

284, 285, 349, 453, 454, 496
Malingre, C., 505
Manardus, Joannes, 258
Mansancal, Jean de, 323
Mansion, Colard, 170
Manuel, Don Juan, 66
Manutii, the, 176
Manutius, Aldus. See Aldus
Manutius, Paulus, 29, 187, 224, 281
Mareault, Charlotte, 463

Mareault, Jehan, 463

Marguerite de Valois, 173, 219, 221, 229,
237, 241, 264, 297, 311, 447, 449

Marignan, battle of, 64, 369

Marmeisse, Abbe, 40

Marot, Clement, first prints his Enfer, and
complete works at Lyons, 172 ; present
at banquet given to Dolet, 313 ; his
friendship with Dolet, 370-377 j ode, and
letter of, to Dolet, 374 ; Dolet's editions of
his works, 375, 376, 386 ; subsequent
quarrel (?), 376-379 ; his Enfer, 444 ;
other references to, 83, 167, 168, 174, 235,
239, 251, 263, 268, 290, 291, 301, 312,
3'9, 34i. 345. 347. 384. 386, 399, 439.

457, 497. 5°°
Marthe. See Ste. Marthe
Martial, 51, 376
Martial de Paris, 291
Martin, Aime, 446, 449, 453
Martin, Henri, 190, 230, 231, 465, 488
Masch, A. G., 171

Masinissa, 200

Mastino, 200

Maubert, the Place (Paris), 49, 53, 207, 231,

458, 470, 499, 506
Maumont, Jean, 187

Maur, Jean, 97, no, 118, 119, 300

Maurolet, Jean, 63

Maussac, the President de, 203, 213

Maximilian, Emperor, 200

Maynier. See Oppede

Mazarine Library, the, 446

Meaux, 467, 468

Medici, Cardinal Giulio de. See Clement

VII.

Mege, A. du, 81, 83
Melanchthon, Philip, 211, 219, 220, 259,

313, 391, 400, 416, 486
Mellier, Guillaume, 290
Menage, Gilles, 32, 217
Menapius, G., 220, 263

Mendoza, , 432

Merbelius, , 202, 210

Merciere, Rue (Lyons), 396, 399, 440, 441

Merindol, 465, 466

Metellus, J., 157

Meuschemus, J. G., 63

Michelet, J., 189, 379

Milan, Duchess of. See Beatrice

Milan, Duke of. See Sforza

Millanges, Simon, 125

Milton, John, 497

INDEX

565

Minard, the President, 405, 406

Minut, Jacques de, Dolet acquires the friend-
ship of, 59 ; orders Dolet's release from
prison, 139 j letters of Dolet to, 187 ;
funeral oration and odes on death of, 317,
322 ; other references, 136, 138, 152,
161, 162, 187, 188, 218,295,296,300,
303, 323

Mirabel, 84, 85

Miziere, Fran$ois, 378, 379

Moissac, Abbey of, 65

Moles, the, 423

Moliere, J. B. P., 2, 3

Moliniar, Guillaume, 93

Monstrelet, E. de, 366

Montaigne, Michel de, 2, 121

Montauban, 118

Montbrun, 69

Montchal, Charles de, 53, 407

Montecuculi, Sebastian, 290

Montfort, Simon de, 52

Montius, , 474

Montmaur, 85

Montmirel, Huissier de, 459

Montpellier, 70, 189, 192, 345

Mopha. See Gripaldi

More, Le. See Maur

More, Sir Thomas, 36, 37, 209, 210, 249,

259. 3 '9.489
Moreri, L., 81, 123

Morin, Jean (Lieutenant-Criminel), 201
Morin, Jean (printer), 237, 429
Morley, John, 488
Morone, Cardinal, 21

Morosina, , 266

Morrhius, G., 455

Moulin, Antoine du, 290, 369, 377

Moulins, 327, 332, 392, 450

Muret, M. A., 496, 497

Murmellius, J., 398

Musurus, Marcus, 21, 65, 328, 329

Mycillus, Jacobus, 259

Nantes, Edict of, 4, 5, 55, 467

Naude, G., 213

Navagero, Andrea, 45, 258, 284

Navarre, Queen of. See Marguerite

Naxos, Dukes of, 43

Nebrissensis, Antonius, 259

Nee de la Rochelle, references to his Vie de
Dolet, 41, 100, 174, 210, 224, 235, 236,
270, 272, 275, 285, 346, 349, 361, 364,
446, 452, 453, 454, 455, 470, 502, 504, 505

Neufville, 27

New Testament, French translation of the,

170, 171, 399,416

Niceron, Abbe, 8 1, 214, 224, 305, 501
Nicolas V., 5

Nigroni, Francesca, daughter of Ternio, 70
Nimes, Reformed Church at, 94
Ninivita, Codes. See Despautere
Nizolius, Marius, 147, 150, 248, 258, 264,

269, 270, 274, 283, 287, 288, 384
Nocera, 223
Noel, Eugene, 192, 193
Norreys, Henry, 318
Noulet, J. B., 94
Nourry, Claude, 177, 189, 292
Nourrys, the, 291
Noyon, Peace of, 19
Nozeray, 223

Odoni, Caterina, 224

Odonus, Joannes Angelus, 13, 28, 183, 222,

223, 224-228, 234, 236, 284, 317, 318,

480
Old Testament, French translation of the, 170,

i?i> 399' 4i6

Olivet, French Bible of, 400

Olivier, Chancellor, 397, 465

Olivier, Jean, 397

Omphalius, Bernard, 268

Omphalius, Jacobus, 161, 162, 259, 268

Oporinus, Joannes, 259

Oppede, Baron d', 465, 466, 467

Orbessan, Marquis d'Aignan d', 53, 407

Oresme, Nicole, 503

Orkhan, 6 I

Orleans, 7, 8, 9, n, 12, 15, 105, 153, 234,
309

Orleans, Duke of, 446, 449, 457

Orry, Matthieu, Inquisitor General, his life
and character, 408-412 ; Dolet arrested
by his order, 414 ; Dolet's trial before,
415-421 j denunciation of, by Dolet, 431 ;
makes application to burn Dolet's books,
443 j other references to, 266, 400, 401,
468, 471

Osman, the Sultan, 61

Oswen, Jhon, 305

Otho. See Bosio

Ovid, 44, 137, 291, 354.485

Oxford, University of, 58

Pac, Matthieu, 80, 106, 109, 295, 300
Padua, and University of, 19 et seq., 38, 39,

202

566

ETIENNE DOLET

44, 45, 49, 85, 88, 89, 134, 154, 155,
157, !59» l84, 209, 210, 242, 303, 304,
378

Pagnac, Maurice de, 61

Pagnini, Sanctes, 167, 172, 177, 301

Paleario, Aonio, his opinion of Padua, 20 ;
on G. Camillo's theatre, 157 ; his poem
on the immortality of the soul, 176 j
other references to, 22, 215

Paludanus, Carolus, 260

Pamiers, See of, 65, 67

Panciroli, G., 155

Pantagruel, 80, 8l, 172, 189-194, 380-385

Panzer, G. W., 175

Papadopoli, N. C., 28, 303

Parentucelli, Tommaseo, 12

Paris, 9, 15, 17, 144, 146, 156, 161, 167,
168, 170, 206, 229 et seq., 309, 310, 311,
312, 313, 439; Parliament of, 53, 232,
234, 237, 395, 4°5> 4°6, 414, 422, 428,
429, 43°, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 439,
442, 443, 446, 449, 45°, 457, 45s*, 459,
462 ; University of, 58, 62, 70, 201, 330

Paris, Nicole, 326, 457, 503

Parmentier, M. (bookseller), 317

Parmentier, M., 505

Pasquier, Etienne, 496

Passavant, Benedict, 427

Pafiniana, the, 475

Pattison, Mark, Life ofCasaubon, 498

Paul III., 21, 22, 266, 467

Paul IV., 404

Paumier, Archbishop, 412

Pavia, and University of, 19, 27, 28, 50, 85,

134, !55, *59
Pazzi, the, 166
Pedro II. of Aragon, 60
Peguillon, Beaucaire de, 366, 423
Pelagius, 22
Pellechet, Mile., 171
Pellisson, the President, 394, 395
Peregrinus, 33

Pericaud aine, A., 170, 175, 239
Periers. See Des Periers
Perion, Joachim, 456
Pernetti, J., 291
Perottus, Nicolas, 280
Perron, Dame du, 174
Perrot, fimile, 29, 30, 206, 260
Petrarch, 24, 329, 354
Petronius, 369

Peyrat, Jean de, 168, 292, 314, 414, 430
Philelphus, F., 209, 257

Philip the Bold, 402

Philip the Fair, 402

Philip V., 67

Philologus, Jonas, 270, 27 1

Philomorus, 319

Philomusus, Jonas, 270.

Pichon, Baron, 452

Pico de la Mirandola, 62, 257

Pinache, Pierre, 10, 101, 102, 103, 104,
105, 107, no, in, 126, 127, 129, 130,
X37» X39, J52, 212, 266

Pinas, Counts of, 60

Pindar, 24, 485

Pins, Gaillard de, 62

Pins, Gerard de, 6 1

Pins, Jean de, his ancestry, 60 ; life and
character of, 62-69 > n's writings, 65 ;
charged with heresy, 67 ; opinion of
Erasmus concerning his Latin style, 68 ;
correspondence of Dolet with, 71, 72,
180, 187 ; friendship between Dolet and,
73 ; letter of, to Minut on behalf of Dolet,
136 ; seeks to reconcile Dolet and Bording,
142 j death of, 322 ; other references to,
59, 76, 106, 109, 120, 143, 144, 145,
147, 152, 153, 161, 162, 180, 186, 188,
196, 260, 267, 300, 307, 310, 314, 321,
322, 323, 398, 492, 500

Pins, Odo de, 60, 62

Pins, Roger de, 6 1

Pins et de Montbrun, Marquis de, 69

Pinus, Bartholomseus, 68

Piochetus, P., 290

Pirckheimer, B., 456

Pius, Albertus. See Carpi

Pius IV., 54

Pius V., 403

Placards, affair of the, 206, 231, 241, 381,
388

Plancus, 165

Plato, 22, 252, 262, 293, 347, 354, 445,
446, 451, 452, 453, 455, 456, 460, 461,
462, 498

Platter, T., 270

Plautus, 14, 248, 282, 485

Pliny, 248, 276, 280, 283, 480

Plutarch, 124

Pluto, 313

Pocraeus, Franciscus, 312

Poggio Bracciolini, J. F., 2, 209

Poictiers, University of, 62

Poitiers, Jean de, 9

Pole, Reginald, 21, 29, 89, 168

INDEX

567

Politianus, Angelus, 44, 176, 257, 280, 364

Polybius, 369

Pompey, 485

Pomponatius, P., 20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 494

Pomponius, 360

Poncher, Estienne, 63

Pont, Gratien du. See Drusac

1'ontanus, Jovianus, 258

Pope, A., 185, 488

Portes, C. B. F. Boscheron des, 120, 125

Postel, Guillaume, 452, 453

Poyet, Chancellor du, 324, 394

Prat, Cardinal du, 63, 64, 65, 66, 121, 182,

422, 423, 426, 491
Prateolus. See Dupreau
Prefond, Girardot de, 271
Prevost, Eustace, 187
Printers, the, of the sixteenth century, 327-

33 i, 334, 387, 3g8
Printers of Lyons, trade disputes of the,

335-338, 398, 463
Printing, attempted suppression of, in France,

230, 232, 233, 238
Prodicus, 461

Psalms, French translation of the, 364, 399
Pythagoras, 252

Quaritch, B., 291

Ouintilian, 270, 271

Rabelais, Frangois, his place in the Renais-
sance, 2, 190 j his reference to Simon
Villanovanus, 27, 30-32 ; to the martyr-
dom of Caturce, 80 ; praises Boyssone, 8 1 j
his correspondence with Boyssone, 82 j at
Lyons, 168, 181 ; intimacy with Dolet,
189, 191, 371-3865 as editor for Gry-
phius, 189 j his Gargantua and Pantagruel,
172, 189, 193 j imaginary conversation
between Dolet and, 192 ; present at the
banquet given to Dolet, 313; his quarrel
with Dolet, 378-386 ; his reference to
Matthieu Orry, 408 ; other references to
3. *7, 39, 79, 82, 83, 98, 122, 147, .178,
185, 187, 190, 191, 194, 260, 268, 274,

294, 3 '3, 3^9, 345, 370, 399, 424, 5°°
Ramel, General, 56
Ramus, Pierre, 357, 437
Rathery, E. J. B., 32, 185
Ravenna, battle of, 200
Raymond VI., 60
Raymond VII., 58
Raynier, Jean, 369

Recared, 51

Regis or Le Roi, Guillaume, 170

Regnard, Jean, 124

Renaissance, the, 1-7, 12, 177, 190, 230

Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 410, 411

Reuchlin, Johan, 259

Reutlingen, 175

Revergata, F., 399

Revilliod, G., 331, 332, 333

Rhenanus, Beatus, 259

Rhodes, Island of, 61

Rhodiginus, Coelius, 257, 280

Rhomanus, P., 319

Riccius, Bartholomaeus, 258, 264, 283, 287,

288

Riccoboni, A., 28
Richer, Christopher, 274, 275, 278, 320,

323, 486

Rieux, See of, 65, 66, 67
Rigauds, the, 172
Rihel, J., 269
Rochette, Francois, 56
Rochette, Louis, 54, 408
Roffet, E., 291
Rolleau, Abbe de, 506
Romanus Aquila, 175
Romorantin, Edict of, 406
Ronsard, P. de, 345
Rosarius, Sebastian, 157
Rostagno, Jacques, 187, 209
Rostock, 70
Rouilles, the, 172
Roussel, G., 301
Rousselet, C., 314, 496
Roussillon, 408

Rubella, , 320

RueL, Jean, 260
Ruelle, J., 362, 431

Sabellicus, M. A., 44, 257

Sabinus, Franciscus Floridus, charges Dolet
with plagiarism and impiety, 281-284, 389,
480, 481, 483; Dolet's reply, 2845
answer of, 286 ; as a bibliophile, it. j other
references to, 136, 220, 274, 287, 307, 453

Sabon, Sulpice, 362

Sadolet, Cardinal, 3, 21, 22, 67, 70, 168,
172, 176, 199, 258, 285, 313,340,486,
489, 490, 492

St. Ambroise, Seigneur de. See Colin

St. Andre, Francois de, 405, 406, 426, 434,
436

St. Augustine, 22, 86, 228, 487

568

ETIENNE DOLET

St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 54

St. Catherine of Sienna, 63, 68

St. Cyprian, 236

St. Gelais, Mellin de, 290, 292, 347, 371

St. Jerome, 51, 427, 487

St. John of Jerusalem, Order of, 23, 60, 61

St. Leger, Mercier de, 378, 379

St. Louis, 402

St. Mark, Venice, Church of, 43

St. Maur des Fosses, Abbey of, 381

St. Roch, 65, 68

St. Victor, Abbey of, 423, 426, 427

Sainte Barbe, College of, 298

Sainte Marthe, Charles de, his ode on Dolet
and Tolet, 346 ; dixain of, at the end of
La Maniere, 357 ; ode to Dolet, 497 ;
other references to, 167, 299, 345, 468,
491, 492, 500

Salel, Hugues, 136, 347, 390, 486

Sallust, 47, 154, 198, 248, 354, 485

Salmasius, C., 497

Salvarolo, Federigo Altan di, 157

Salviati, F., 167

Sannazar, A. S., 177, 215, 258, 313, 354,
486, 497

Sanuto, Marino, 65

Saragossa, 57

Sarrazin, Philibert, 122

Savonarola, J., 6, 167

Savoniano, Hieronymo, 29

Savoy, Duke of, 336, 388

Scaliger, Joseph, 203, 213, 497

Scaliger, Julius Caesar, Huet's opinion of
his poetry, 34, 188, 216, 217 ; praises
Pinache, 102 ; his friendship with Le
Perron, 122, 123, 126 ; charged with
heresy, 122 j his opinion of Le Ferron's
History, 124; expresses friendly feelings
towards Dolet, 126, 128 ; his compli-
mentary letter to Gryphius, 177 ; criticism
of, on Dolet's poetry, 188 ; his ancestors,
199-201 j attacks Erasmus, 201 j Erasmus
attributes his oration to Aleander, 202 j
his hatred of Dolet, 212, 267 ; causes of,
212-215 ; his insults to Dolet's memory,
215, 216, 475, 476 ; criticisms on his
poetry, 217 ; other references to, 49, in,
127, 172, 186, 203, 209, 210, 2H, 226,
234, 236, 482, 497

Sceve, Claudine, 174

Sceve, Guillaume, ode of, to Dolet, 187 ;
letter of Dolet to, 204 ; editor for Gry-
phius, 236 j other references to, 30, 82,

83, 167, 189, 209, 221, 231, 260, 290,
297, 300, 301, 315, 317, 319, 322, 500

Sceve, Maurice, 167, 168, 174, 189, 251,
263, 290, 297, 319, 323, 345, 347, 394,
486, 500

Sceve, Sibylla, 174

Schelhorn, J. G., 123, 213

Scipios, the, 485

Second, Jean, 168

Segnault, Pierre, 459

Seguier, the President, 405, 406, 426

Selve, Jean de, 422

Seneca, 22

Sens, 459, 468

Sermet, Pere Hyacinthe, 55

Servetus, Michael, 31, 56, 84, 168,266, 304,
411, 412, 468, 490

Servius, 360

Severt, Jacques, 474, 475, 479

Sforza, Francesco, Duke of Milan, 155

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 488

Sidonius Apollinaris, 51

Simon of Villeneuve. See Villanovanus

Simon, Richard, 401

Sleidan, J., 231, 429

Smalcalde, League of, 467

Socrates, 252, 354, 460, 461

Solar Sale, the, 171

Solomon, King, 252

Solon, 22

Somerset, , 489

Sonnet, Claude, 187

Sophocles, the Antigone of, 397

Sorbonne, the, 58, 168, 169, 172, 176, 230,
232, 233, 234, 237, 238» 264, 265, 380,
381, 382, 389, 390, 415, 432, 439, 461

Spalding, Professor, 119

Spencer, Lord, 171

Strappado, the, 23 1

Strasburg, University of, 224

Stryienski, C., 457, 459

Sturm, J., 45, 70, 157, 268, 269, 284

Sucquet, Carolus, 259

Suetonius, 44, 368, 397, 498

Sulpicius Severus, 41

Sussanneau, Hubert, editor and corrector for
Gryphius, 172 ; his opinion of Dolet's
ability, 236 ; Dolet loses the friendship of,
3175 other references to, 81, 118, 168,
268, 318, 321, 500

Swift, Dean, 185

Sylvius, Jacques, 354

Sypontinus. See Perottus

INDEX

569

Taboet, J., 394, 395

Tacitus, 15

Taillandier, A., 232, 306, 414, 459, 478

Tarbes, Bishop of. See Gramont

Tartas, Jean de, 298, 299

Techener, J., 3 50

Terence, 14, 24, 47, 154, 248, 265, 285,

397, 438- 485

Themistocles, 485

Thierry, A., 5 r

Thomasinus, , 144

Thomasius, J., 274

Thou, J. A. de, 8 1, 84, 366, 367, 406, 423

Thous, the de, 423

Thrasymedes, 30

Thucydides, 354

Tibullus, 137

Tolet, Pierre, 181, 345, 369, 397, 399

Tollin, A., 57, 84

Tolozan, Louis, 239

Tomasini, J. F., 28, 33

Tonstal, Cuthbert, 259

Torquemada, Thomas de, 55

Toulouse, the Inquisition at, 50-54, 402-404,
407, 408 ; University of, 58, 74-89, 98
et icq., 217, 295, 301 ; spread of heresy at,
75-80 ; floral games of, 90-97 ; the
historians of, 91 ; the Seneschal of, and
his Lieutenant-General, 111-113; other
references to, n, 39, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87,
88, 89, 143, 152, 155, 159, 160, 162,
163, 174, 179, 180, 183, 184, 194, 196,

207, 212, 214, 2l8, 219, 220, 221, 227,

234, 240, 284, 294, 297, 300, 302, 303,

309, 321, 322, 323, 393, 394,409
Touraine, Claude of. See Cottereau
Tournes, Jean de, 172, 331, 332, 333, 396,

453

Tournes, the de, 172, 332
Tournon, 290
Tournon, Cardinal de, 8, 168, 239, 314,

3*7, 333, 342, 4io, 4", 433, 436> 447,

450, 465, 467, 491
Tours, Guillaume Michel de, 359
Toursaint, Bernard, 29
Toussain, Jacques, 151, 260, 312
Toussain, Pierre, 420
Trebatius, 360
Trechsel, Gaspard, 331
Trechsel, J., 173
Trechsel, Melchior, 331
Trie, Guillaume, 411
Trivulce, G. J. de, 238

Trivulce, Pompone de, 238, 239

Trivulce, Theodore de, 238, 239

Trivulces, the, 168

Troyes, 326, 457, 458, 459, 503, 504, 506

Tubingen, University of, 304

Tudeschi, Nicolas de, 175

Tulle, Bishop of. See Duchatel

Uffenbach, Z. C. von, 213
Ulpian, 82, 221, 276, 283

Vaissette, Dom Joseph, 9 1

Valence, 303, 382

Valla, Laurentius, 2, 209, 244, 257, 283,

397

Vallambert, Simon, 496
Vallee, Briand de, 122
Valliere, Louise de la, 4
Valliere Sale, the la, 171, 237
Valois, Duke of. See Francis I.
Vandel, Guillaume, 415
Vandy-sur-Aisne, 298
Vanini, J. C., 55
Vascosan, M., 123
Vaudois, the, 406, 465, 466, 467
Vauzelles, George de, 207, 208
Vauzelles, Jean de, 207, 208
Vauzelles, Ludovic de, 208
Vauzelles, Matthieu de, 207, 208
Venice, 26, 38 et se%., 47, 60, 64, 65, 76,

173, 281

Veracius, Honoratus, 342, 454, 455
Verdets, the, 56
Vergerio, P. P., 304
Vernei, Pierre, 399
Verona, 120, 121, 122, 125, 201
Verulanus, Sulpicius, 399
Vesalius, A., 20, 378
Vida, Hieronymus, 177, 215, 258, 313, 486

497

Vidal, Arnaud, 92

Vienne, 337, 411, 412

Vignier, Nicholas, 504

Villanovanus, M. See Servetus

Villanovanus, Simon, Dolet the scholar of,
27; account of, 27-31; death of, 32;
Dolet's epitaph and odes on, 33-35 ; one
of the interlocutors in Dolet's Dial, de
Jmit. Gr., 36, 37, 209, 210 ; Dolet charged
with purloining his Commentaries from,
240, 274, 384; other references to, 21,
38, 89, 104, 105, 154, 187, 203, 215,
249, 256, 260, 480, 484, 500

570

ETIENNE DOLET

Villanueva (Catalonia), 32

Villaret, Fouques de, 61

Villedieu, Alexander de, 318

Villeneuve. See Arnold. Villanovanus

Villeneuve, Humbert de, 169

Villeneuve (Montpellier), 32 ; (Provence),

it.

Villiers, John de, 60
Vinet, A., 5

Vinhalibus, Antoine de, 94
Viret, P., 427
Virgil, 24, 188, 216, 248, 276, 280, 285,

354, 398

Visagier. See Voulte

Vives, Ludovicus, 259

Volaterranus, R., 257, 280

Voltaire, F. M. Arouet de, 2, 3, 5, 54

Voulte, Jean, his references to Dolet's father,
10, 1 1 ; his epigrams on the Floral Games,
97 ; his epigram on the Vauzelles, 208 ;
on the ability and learning of Dolet, 234 }
notice of, 298-301 ; desirous of assisting
Dolet, 309, 310, 312; present at the
banquet given to Dolet, 312; estrange-

ment between Dolet and, 314-317 ; death
of, 317 ; his quarrel and reconciliation
with Bourbon, 320 ; other references to,
69, 81, 83, 118, 161, 169, 236, 260, 268,
290, 295, 296, 302, 303, 305, 307, 311,
313, 318, 319, 321, 322, 323, 496, 500
Vulteius. See Voulte

Weiss, N., 425
Westheim, B., 271
Winter, R., 270
Wurtemburg, Duke of, 304

Xenocrates, 456
Xenophanes, 124
Xenophon, 200

Yemeniz Sale, the, 292, 293, 352, 453

Zazius, Ulric, 222, 259
Zell, Ulric, 170
Zeno, 124
Zuichemus, Viglius, 259

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