The Style of Paris

George Huppert

Description

The voices of liberty, equality, religious tolerance, reason, and enlightenment heard in renaissance Paris.

" . . . impressive and challenging reevaluation of the sixteenth-century origins of the Enlightenment." —Sixteenth Century Journal

In this book, George Huppert introduces the reader to a group of talented young men, some of them teenagers, who were the talk of the town in Renaissance Paris. They called themselves philosophes, they wrote poetry, they studied Greek and mathematics—and they entertained subversive notions concerning religion and politics. Classically trained, they wrote, nevertheless, in French, so as to reach the widest possible audience. These young radicals fostered a succession of disciples who expressed confidence in the eventual enlightenment of humankind and whose ideas would bear fruit two centuries later.

1. Portrait of a Discrete Philosophe
2. In Monsieur Brinon's Garden
3. A School for Scandal
4. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
5. Historical Research in the Service of Philosophy
6. Optimi Auctores
7. Dangerous Classes
8. Ex Tenebras Lux
9. The Republic of Letters
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Europe
• History
• General
• History of Europe
• General officer
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 mai 1999
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253028136
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Style of Paris
The Style of Paris
RENAISSANCE ORIGINS of the FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT

GEORGE HUPPERT
Indiana University Press
BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
www.indiana.edu/~iupress
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© 1999 by George Huppert All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced orutilized in any form or by any means, electronic ormechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by anyinformation storage and retrieval system, without permissionin writing from the publisher. The Association of AmericanUniversity Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutesthe only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimumrequirements of American National Standard for InformationSciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed LibraryMaterials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Huppert, George, date The style of Paris : Renaissance origins of the French Enlightenment / George Huppert. p.    cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-33492-6 (cl : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-21274-X (pa : alk. paper) 1. Paris (France)—Intellectual life-16th century. 2. Learning and scholarship—France—Paris-History-16th century. 3. Philosophy, Renaissance—Influence. 4. Intellectuals—France-Paris—History-16th century.  I. Title DC715.H95   1999 001.2′094436—dc21            98-27645
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Je dy qu’il est permis àtout home habile et bien verséen avant ce qu’il luy semble tel passage etqu’il voudra sans le respect de l’un ou del’autre: car comme en une ville libre les languessont libres, aussi entre la République desdisciplines liberales, les iugemensdoyvent estre aussi libres.
—Pierre Brun, Defence (Lyon, 1587), 63
Mien, tien—Ce chien est à moi,disaient ces pauvres enfants; c’est là maplace au soleil—Voilà le commencementet l’image de l’usurpation detoute la terre.
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 295
CONTENTS
1 Portrait of a Discreet Philosophe
2 In Monsieur Brinon’s Garden
3 A School for Scandal
4 Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
5 Historical Research in the Service of Philosophy
6 Optimi Auctores
7 Dangerous Classes
8 Ex Tenebras Lux
9 The Republic of Letters
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
The Style of Paris
1 Portrait of a Discreet Philosophe

T HE YEAR IS 1546. Monsieur d’Aramon, the French ambassador to the Court of the Turkish Sultan, sets out from Paris in late December, heading for Venice, where he will arrive in February to prepare for his voyage to Constantinople. This is no simple matter, since is accompanied by large quantities of baggage and by a sizeable staff which includes specialists of various sorts whom we would describe as military, cultural and scientific attachés.
Aragon, himself a military man, is experienced in matters concerning the Levant trade and Turkish diplomacy, having served both in Venice and in Constantinople previously. This new posting, however, involves a diplomatic mission of unusual scope: he is to encourage Suleiman the Magnificent to invade Hungary. In view of the importance, it is not surprising that the ambassador is provided with generous resources. In Venice, he is lodged, together with his staff, in the palatial residence of the French ambassador, while arrangements are made to charter three galleys which are to carry the French party to Ragusa, the next stop on their itinerary. 1
Among the experts in entourage there can be found, at various times, the cartographer Nicholas de Nicolay, the topographer and archeologist Pierre Gilles, the geographer André Thevet, and the botanist Pierre Belon. These men were not on the payroll, nor were they at his orders. The experts who accompanied were there because their own powerful patrons had arranged, informally, for them to join the expedition, perhaps at the King’s suggestion, in any case with the approval. Gilles was in the service of the Cardinal d’Armagnac, patron was the Cardinal de Lorraine, while Belon was a protégé of the Cardinal de Tournon, who was in the habit of surrounding himself with a phalanx of young intellectuals of very high caliber. 2
Belon served as the apothecary, among other things. His instructions called for him to take advantage of the expedition to look around in the Turkish universe in a leisurely way, collecting specimens and observing whatever might be of use to European pharmacists. Upon his return to Paris almost three years later, having collected a mass of material, would settle down in his splendid abbey of St. Germain des and start writing a number of books, making good use of his field work. 3
For the moment, treated Aramongs party as a handy support network. He dropped in, both in Venice and, later, in Constantinople, when it suited him, but he felt free to go his own way for months at a time. He crossed to Ragusa in one of Aramon’s galleys, but, once there, in March of 1547, he took leave from the ambassador, who was to proceed toward his destination by land, and chose to team up with another French apothecary, by the name of Pillars, on an exploration of the Dalmatian coast south of Ragusa. Early spring in the Adriatic is a seductive setting and was particularly interested in marine biology. There were dolphins to observe at sea and interesting flora and fauna on the islands, on Corfu, Dante, Cythera. Braving dangerous seas and escaping capture by pirates, landed on Crete, which was a Venetian colony. Here he stayed for some time, investigating all sorts of things which he was to report on in his books upon his return.
It is Pierre who is the subject of this portrait. His travels were to take him to “Greece, Asia, Judaea, Egypt, Arabia and other foreign countries.” This was an itinerary remarkable enough for a European of his generation, although not unique, since pilgrims and merchants, not to mention apothecaries from Dijon and clock makers from Paris, come to our attention, here and there, along the way. As long as stayed within the world of Italian dependencies in the Eastern Mediterranean, he was not on totally unfamiliar ground. Later, in Egypt, Syria, or the Anatolian hinterland, he would be more of an oddity, but it was not the fact that he found himself in unusual surroundings that should be most surprising to the reader of his reports. It is the point of view that is a revelation.
In one book in particular speaks to his readers in so candid and surprising a fashion that it is possible to reconstruct something close to his philosophy from occasional and discreet clues. The book in question was first published in Paris in 1553, under the title Les Observations de plusieurs & choses memorable trouvées en Greet, Aside, Iudée, Egypt, pays estranges. 4 Unlike Belongs other works, which are straightforward technical treatises concerning plants and animals, written in Latin for a specialized readership of natural scientists, his Observations are written in French and are designed to appeal to a broader audience. Even so, there were sufficient botanical and zoological data included in the book to warrant a Latin version of it.
The original French version would have appealed to readers interested in exotic travels. The wrote with authority about the landscape, the economy, and the social conditions of the countries he visited. He was also a writer of genuine talent. His style, bold and fresh, was a reflection of the stance in the culture wars of his time. He was writing his Observations from within a particular set of assumptions which he shared with a number of other young intellectuals in Paris. These assumptions are the subject of my inquiry.
To call on Pierre Belon as the lead witness may seem an odd way of proceeding, since Belon may be thought of as, at most, a marginal fellow traveler of the group of young men who called themselves and whose outlook I choose to call that of the style of Paris— stile de Paris, modus parisiensis —after the new and fashionable college curriculum which was at the center of their philosophical stance. It so happens that the apothecary, the naturalist, was also with a sharp point of view on such topics as freedom of thought, social equality, and religious toleration, concerns close to the heart of writers better known to historians of literature, writers like Etienne de La Boëtie or Michel de Montaigne, who, like Belong, described themselves as philosopher.
Belon was a mature thinker, close to thirty years old, when he set out on his voyage, just about the time when La Boëtie, who was not quite eighteen then, could have written the first draft of his provocative diatribe against tyranny. He would have been revising it a few years later when published his Observations . By then, the well-known botanist and the young law student would have been moving in the same circles. La ëtie Voluntary Servitude , however, was to circulate only in manuscript for another twenty years. This was how the younger Montaigne came to know of it. 5
As for Montaigne, although he would not be ready to record his own observations on human nature for some years, he had already absorbed the lessons of