Étienne Dolet : the Martyr of the Renaissance, 1508-1546. A biography

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 originally 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 bibliographical 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 Bibliography 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.^ I have to thank Mr. W. Stebbing for the assistance he has rendered me in reference to some passages of Dolet's Latin compositions ; but my thanks are especially due to Mr. John Cree, without whose aid it would have been impossible —

^ M. Stryienski was also so good as to cause the documents comprised in the Proces (T Estienne Dolet, published by M. Taillandier in 1836, to be compared and collated with the originals, with the satisfactory 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.

RiBSDEN, WiN'DLESHAM,

August 1899.

PREFACE

TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

In offering to the public the result of the scanty leisure of the past eight years, I am fully sensible of its deficiencies, but the difficulty of the task which I have undertaken may perhaps be admitted as an extenuating circumstance, if it does not altogether relieve me from censure.

England possesses hardly any materials for writing the life of a French scholar of the first half of the sixteenth century. Rich as the British Museum is in many departments, it is singularly deficient in the French and Franco- Latin books of this period. But if this is generally the case, it is especially so in reference to Etienne Dolet, whose own works are among the rarest writings of the time, and the other contemporary authorities for his life are only one degree less so.^ Of many of the books cited in this volume, which I have had to refer to, and in some cases to read through, more than once, no copies are to be found in England. Of some, a copy does not even exist in the

P Since this sentence was written, the British Museum has added largely to its collection of books printed by Dolet. 1899.]

b

X ETIENNE DOLET

Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, and the obstacles in my way have therefore been great, when for the purpose of solving a difficulty, of verifying a reference, or of acquiring a new fact, a journey to Paris, Lyons, or Toulouse has been needful. But I can at least say, without fear of contradiction, that this book adds much to what has been hitherto known about the life and works of Etienne Dolet, that it supplements in many important particulars the lives which have already appeared of him, that it contains a much more nearly complete list than has before been given of the books printed by him, and that it presents for the first time to the English reader any account whatever of the man.

The name of Etienne Dolet is all but unknown in this country. A meagre and always inaccurate account of him in our general biographical dictionaries, a few notices by Jortin in his Life of Erasmus and in his Tracts^ and by Greswell in his View of the Early Parisian Greek Press, two or three references, appreciative though (almost inevitably) not quite correct in the writings of Mr. [Sir] Walter Besant, a page full of inaccuracies in a recent history of French literature, form, with the articles in the Gentleman's Magazine (which I proceed to notice) almost the whole of the references to Dolet in English books. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1794 will be found some interesting letters on his life, his writings, and his opinions, arising out of the notice of him in Jortin's tracts, and though they contain no new information, yet being written with fairness and good feeling, they will be read with interest, an interest which will be extended

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION xi

to translations, though of no great literary merit, of two odes of Dolet,^ which will be found in vols. Ixii. and Ixiv. But I do not know of any reference to Dolet or any account of him in an English book which has not many inaccuracies.

It cannot be expected that this biography will attract many readers. Its only interest is in its subject-matter, and there are few who will care to wade through a somewhat long record of the life of a scholar and printer of the sixteenth century, who was not directly connected with and did not play any important part in the political or religious movements of the time ; but there are probably some whose interest in the history of literature, or whose sympathy with the unhappy fate of a man of learning and talent, will induce to turn over the pages of this narrative.

In his native country the name of Dolet is better known. It has been the special subject of two books, of many articles and essays, and of innumerable references, yet all of them wanting in accuracy and leaving much to be desired. The only really original biography which has as yet appeared is that of Maittaire, who has devoted to Dolet more than a hundred pages of the third volume of his Annales Typographici. He has there collected every passage which he could find in the writings of Dolet where the latter speaks of himself, and every other reference known to him in any contemporary author, and his pages have always been and must continue to be the basis of all subsequent biographies of Dolet. But the work of Maittaire is only a collection of extracts and remarks heaped together

^ One of these odes is on the death of Erasmus {see post, p. 250), the other is addressed to Vida.

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without any order or arrangement, and being written in Latin has attracted few readers other than professed scholars. In 1779, Nee de la Rochelle printed his Vie de Dolet, a work of merit and interest. It is, however, a very brief and dry narrative, being little more than Maittaire's materials arranged and translated into French, together with an enumeration of a few books printed bv Dolet which were before unknown. Nee de la Rochelle admits that he has made great use of the researches of Maittaire ; indeed he says that: he has only endeavoured to advance further a labour which the latter had commenced.

To Maittaire and Nee de la Rochelle I must acknowledge the greatest obligations. Much as I hope to have added to what is contained in their books, I should probably have found it hopeless to attempt a biography of Dolet without the assistance of the great number of facts collected by the one and arranged by the other. But neither of them was able to offer any sufficient explanation, or even to give any accurate information respecting the trials, the sentences, or the death of Dolet ; and it was reserved for M. Taillandier to discover in the criminal registers of the Parliament of Paris the letters of remission and pardon granted to Dolet by Francis I. in 1543, which throw a flood of light upon these matters, and which with some other pieces were printed by Techener in 1836 under the title of Proces d' Estienne Dolet, with an Avant Promos of much interest by M. Taillandier.

In 1857, M. Joseph Boulmier (who in 1855 had written an article on the same subject in the Revue de Paris)

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION xlii

published his Estienne Dolet, sa Vie^ ses CEuvres, son Mar tyre (Paris, Aubry) ; and perhaps some apology is needed for a new biography of Dolet, when one has so recently been written by a Frenchman. Of M. Boulmier and his book I wish to speak with all respect ; I have read and re-read it with much interest, and with much sympathy for the enthusiasm of the writer, who sees in his hero he Christ de la pensee libre . . . Promethee contre Jupiter ! His book is (as he himself calls it) a dithyramb^ displaying on every page an exaggerated admiration for his hero, which renders him entirely blind to his faults. He sees in Dolet a man of the noblest character and the loftiest genius, and avows that he writes as an advocate and that Dolet is his client, and he warns his readers at the outset that they are not to look for an impartial history from him. But M. Boulmier does not seem to me to admit as fully as might have been expected his indebtedness to Nee de la Rochelle, from whose pages much of his work is transcribed.^ He has added little to the narrative of his predecessor, except what is afforded by the Proces. His list of the books printed by Dolet is certainly the most nearly complete that has hitherto appeared. He has added five (which had, however, previously appeared in Brunet) to those mentioned by Nee de la Rochelle, but, except in one or two instances, he cites no authorities for the existence of the books, but has contented himself with copying the titles from the Vie de Dolet or from Brunet's Manuel.

1 I am glad to be able to say that in his translations from the writings of Dolet, M. Boulmier seems to me to have been successful. They are sufficiently faithful, and are marked generally by vigour and elegance.

xiv ETIENNE DOLET

In addition to these books, the account of Dolet and his works contained in the Bibliotheques of Du Verdier and La Croix du Maine, in Niceron, in Goujet, and in Bayle, his life by Didot in the Noiivelle Biographie Generale, those in La France Protestante of MM. Haag, and in Les Hommes Illustres de rOrleanais^ all furnish important details. Every one of these books is, however, full of inaccuracies, and in no one of them is any attempt made to offer a sufficient or satisfactory explanation of his misfortunes and fate. His own writings must always be the foundation of every narrative of his life. They are full of autobiographical matter, and I believe that a lengthened and repeated study of those of his writings that I have been able to meet with, and of many other contemporary or nearly contemporary books which will be found cited in this book (and of several of which only a single copy is known), has enabled me to add much hitherto unknown, which seems to me to be of interest, bearing upon Dolet's life, and to explain at least in part what has hitherto appeared inexplicable. But in addition to printed books, I have been fortunate enough to find in the manuscript correspondence and poems of Jean de Boyssone - preserved in the public library of Toulouse, a mine of interest and information respecting Dolet and his

^ The lite of Dolet in Les Hom?nes Illustres de P Orleanais is based on a MS. life by Dom Gcrou, contained in the Orltfans Library. The MS. is, however, merely a compilation from printed and well-known sources.

- For an account of these, see p. 82. The correspondence includes five letters written by, and four to Dolet, in addition to those which the latter printed in the Orationes Dua. Many others of the letters either refer directly to Dolet or to persons and things of interest in connection with his life.

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION xv

friends. Two hasty perusals of these manuscripts and the extracts which I have made have certainly not exhausted all matters of interest, and it has been a source of regret to me that I have been unable to have constantly at hand, or to consult without long journeys, these manuscripts, as well as the unique copies of several books which exist at Lyons, Bordeaux, Orleans, Dole, Roanne, and elsewhere.

Many books printed and edited, and some entirely written by Dolet, have wholly perished, and no trace of any copy can be found. Of others a single copy exists in some public library in France ; of some I myself possess the only copy known, while there remain several in the possession of collectors in France, which no opportunity has been afforded me of seeing. In the Bibliographical Appendix to this volume, perhaps the part of the most real value, there is contained at least a more nearly complete and a more accurate list of the books printed by Dolet than has previously appeared. Nee de la Rochelle mentions fortynine, M. Boulmier fifty-three. In this book the number is brought up to eighty-three, of fifty-one of which I have seen and indicate the locality of copies, and of each of the remaining thirty-two the authorities on which it is inserted in the list are given.

On two points an explanation, and perhaps an apology, is needed. Of several of the friends and contemporaries of Dolet, notably Jean de Boyssone, Jean de Pins, and Matthieu Gripaldi, I have given what may be thought unnecessarily long accounts, while I have neglected others of far more importance. It would have been easy for me greatly to have increased the size of this book (already too xvi ETIENNE DOLET

large) by notices of and digressions on Marot, Rabelais, and other eminent persons, whose lives were to some extent connected with that of Dolet, but while I have endeavoured to neglect nothing which can have any real bearing upon my hero and his history, I have sought to avoid whatever could easily be found elsewhere, and accordingly such notices only are given of those with whom Dolet came in contact as are necessary for the proper understanding of the narrative, except as to persons where the common books of reference supply either no information, or none that is adequate. In these cases I have ventured to insert detailed notices of some length.

Had I endeavoured, after the fashion of many modern writers of biography, to interweave with the life of Dolet the general history of literature and scholarship in France during the period in question, I might have made a more popular book, but it would have been one with no special raison d'etre^ and for writing which I had no special qualifications.

The other point on which an excuse is needed is that learned men are sometimes spoken of by their French, sometimes by their Latinised names. This has not arisen trom carelessness. I should have preferred uniformly to cite them by their native names, and I have generally done so. There are, however, a few persons {e.g. Villanovanus, Scaliger, Zazius, Nizolius) who so usually style themselves by their Latinised names, that any others would seem strange and affected ; and it has sometimes happened that, for the sake of harmony, other writers are with them referred to by their Latinised names.

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION xvil

To the chronology of the life of Dolet I have given great attention. Every account of him which has hitherto appeared contains errors as to dates, some of which will be found to be specifically noticed and corrected, but in no case has a date been inserted in this book without careful consideration, and wherever it is found to differ from that given by any other writer cited, the change has not been made until after much thought. It would have considerably lengthened the book had I in every case expressed the reasons which had induced me to differ from my predecessors in matters of chronology. Every one acquainted with the history of this period will know the great difficulty in ascertaining the years of events which are dated in January, February, or March. I cannot hope that I have always been successful in arriving at a right conclusion, but if any errors of chronology are found, at least they do not arise from carelessness. The dates given in this book are always, unless otherwise expressed, new style^ the year being treated as beginning on the first of January.

I cannot conclude this preface without acknowledging the obligations I am under to M. Baudrier, President of the Court of Appeal of Lyons. With a kindness and a generosity which have made me for ever his debtor, M. Baudrier placed at my disposal the interesting chapter (still unfortunately in manuscript) on Dolet which he had written, part of a contemplated work on the Lyonese printers of the sixteenth century, his list of the books printed by Dolet, his copy of Nee de la Rochelle's Vie de Dolet, with the author's manuscript additions and corrections, and he has assisted me in many other ways. I should have been entirely ignorant xviii ETIENNE DOLET

of the existence of two books in my Bibliographical list, and should have been unable to see copies of two more, had it not been for his kindness. If M. Baudrier, having devoted many years to the subject of the books printed at Lyons in the sixteenth century, had felt unwilling to offer information collected with much expenditure of time and labour to a stranger, whose use of it would to some extent forestall the President's own work, I could neither have felt surprise nor had cause of complaint. I have from time to time expressed in the notes to this book the specific obligations I am under to M. Baudrier.^

There are in existence two woodcuts of the sixteenth century purporting to be portraits of Etienne Dolet. Of these, one is exactly reproduced on the title-page of this volume. It appears in the first edition of La Prosopographie of Du Verdier (Lyon, 1573"). The book was printed only twenty-seven years after Dolet's death, by Anthony Gryphius (the son of his old friend Sebastian), who as a youth must frequently have seen Dolet ; and at the time it appeared, there must have been many persons living at Lyons who well remembered him. The baldness and the prematurely aged appearance of the face agree with the description given by Odonus hereinafter quoted, written when Dolet was only twenty-seven years of age, but when he was taken by Odonus for near forty .^

\} M. Baudrier died on June 17, 1884. His son, M. Julien Baudrier, is now engaged in giving to the public the valuable collections made by his father relating to Lyoncsc printers. Three volumes have already appeared, but I am sorry to say they do not include either Dolet or Gryphius. 1899.]

2 In the edition of 1605, though much augmented in many respects, the portrait and notice of Dolet are omitted.

2 No indication is given by M. Boulmier of the source of the portrait

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION xix

The other portrait is one engraved by Tobias Stimmer for Reusner's Icones (Basileae, 1589), and is certainly a mere fancy sketch, bearing no resemblance to that of Du Verdier.

At the end of this book will be found the mark of Dolet referred to as within a floriated border. The initial letters of the different chapters are with one exception reproductions of the woodcut initials used by Dolet. A, D, L, O are from his De Officio Legati^ G, N, T from his De Imit. Cic. adv. Floridum Sabinum^ B and H from the De Ant. Statu Burgundia of Paradin, I is an initial letter of Seb. Gryphius copied from one in his edition of the Adagia Erasmi (1529, fol.).

which is prefixed to his Estienne Dolet ; but in the advertisements of the book it was described as grave d^apres r original de la Bibliotheque Itnperiale. But no such portrait of Dolet is to be found in the Bibliotheque. M. Boulmier's portrait is more or less a fancy portrait, clearly based on that of Du Verdier, but much altered, especially in the expression, and arranged in a fancy border. Indeed, the late M. Aubry, the publisher of the book, informed me that such was the case, and that he had adapted the border from another portrait of the sixteenth century.

Darley Dale,

Contents

CHAPTER

I. Orleans and Paris .....

III. Venice ........

CHAPTER I Orleans and Paris

' There are but two events in history : the siege of Troy and the French Revolution.' — Lord Beaconsfield.

' Le mondc est vide depuis les Romains.' — St. Just.

FIE Renaissance was at once the precursor and the parent of the Revokition ; a voice crying in that wilderness which mediasval Christianity had made of the world, crying against asceticism and against superstition ; pleading for a restoration of the true, the real, the natural ; proclaiming, though sometimes 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

B 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 intellectual progress, intense hatred of hypocrisy, bigotry, superstition and ignorance, are to be found in both.

The revival of letters had produced a contempt for medieval 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 mediaeval method of thought. It examined things as they are, and opinions according to their absolute truth or falsehood, 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 medieval 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

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 Huguenots, 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 favourable 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 of joy on sealing with his own hand the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and then repeated the Nunc Dimiltis — 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.^