Jacques Auguste de Thou

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Jacques Auguste de Thou

Jacques Auguste de Thou (Thuanus) (8 October 1553, Paris – 7 May 1617, Paris) was a French historian, book collector and president of the Parlement of Paris.

Life

Jacques Auguste de Thou was the grandson of

Bishop of Chartres (1573–1598). With this family background, he developed a love of literature, a firm but tolerant piety, and a loyalty to the Crown.[1]

At seventeen, he began his studies in law, first at Orléans, later at Bourges, where he made the acquaintance of François Hotman, and finally at Valence, where he had Jacques Cujas for his teacher and Joseph Justus Scaliger as a friend. He was at first intended for the Church; he received the minor orders, and on the appointment of his uncle Nicolas to the episcopate succeeded him as a canon of Notre-Dame de Paris.[1]

During the next ten years he seized every opportunity for profitable travel. In 1573 he accompanied

conseiller d'état. He served faithfully both Henry III and Henry IV, because they both represented legitimate authority.[1]

Jacques Auguste de Thou, president of the parliament of Paris

He succeeded his uncle Augustin as président à mortier (1595), and used his authority in the interests of religious peace. He negotiated the Edict of Nantes with the Protestants, while in the name of the principles of the Gallican Church he opposed the recognition of the Council of Trent.[1]

After the death of

King Louis XIV and Cardinal Richelieu, as an accomplice with Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis of Cinq-Mars
in 1642.

Coat of arms

Statue of de Thou by Jean Barnabé Amy on the facade of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris

Argent, a chevron between three flies sable.[2]

Works and library

His attitude exposed him to the animosity of the League party and of the Holy See, and to their persecution when the first edition of his history appeared. This history was his life's work. In a letter of 31 March 1611, addressed to the president Pierre Jeannin, he described his labours.[1]

His materials were drawn from his rich library, one of the glories of Europe,[3] which he established in the Rue des Poitevins in the year 1587, with the two brothers, Pierre Dupuy and Jacques Dupuy, as librarians.[1][4] It was one of the finest libraries developed during the Renaissance era.[5]

His object was to produce a scientific and unbiased work, and for this reason he wrote it in Latin, giving it as title Historia sui temporis. The first 18 books, embracing the period from 1545 to 1560, appeared in 1604 (1 vol. folio), and the work was at once attacked by those whom the author himself calls les envieux et les factieux.[1]

The second part, dealing with the first wars of religion (1560–1572) including the

Jesuit Father Machault from accusing him of being "a false Catholic, and worse than an open heretic" (1614); de Thou, we may say, was a member of the third order of St Francis. As an answer to his detractors, he wrote his Mémoires, which are a useful complement to the History of his own Times.[6]

To de Thou we also owe certain other works: a treatise De re accipitraria (1784), a Life, in Latin, of

Papyre Masson, some Poemata sacra, etc.[7]

Editions

Three years after the death of de Thou, Pierre Dupuy and Nicolas Rigault brought out the first complete edition of the Historia sui temporis, comprising 138 books; they appended to it the Mémoires, also in Latin (1620). A hundred years later, Samuel Buckley published a critical edition, the material for which had been collected in France itself by Thomas Carte (1733). De Thou was treated as a classic, an honour which he deserved. His history is a model of exact research, drawn from the best sources, and presented in an elegant and animated style; unfortunately, even for the men of the Renaissance, Latin was a dead language; it was impossible for de Thou to find exact equivalents for technical terms of geography or of administration.[7]

As the reasons which had led de Thou to forbid the translation of his monumental history disappeared with his death, there was soon a move to make it more accessible. It was translated first into German. A

Pierre Du Ryer (1657), but it is incomplete.[7]

In the following century the

Michaud and Buchon.[7]

For his life may be consulted the recollections of him collected by the brothers Dupuy: Thuana, sive Excerpta ex ore J. A. Thuani per F.F.P.P., Paris, 1669 (F.F.P.P.=Fratres Puteanos, i.e. the Dupuy brothers; reprinted in the edition of 1733), and the biographies by J. A. M. Collinson (The Life of Thuanus, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), and Heinrich Düntzer, (Jacques Auguste de Thou's Leben, Schriften und historische Kunst verglichen mit der der Alten, Darmstadt: Leske, 1837).[7]

See also Henry Harrisse, Le Président de Thou et ses descendants, leur célèbre bibliothèque, leurs armoiries et la traduction française de J. A. Thuani Historiarum sui Temporis (Paris: Librairie H. Leclerc, 1905).[7]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Bémont 1911, p. 882.
  2. ^ Laurent Granier. "Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553-1617)". Coat of Arms of Great Names of History. 2000. http://www.laurentgranier.com/coat-of-arms-of-great-names-of.html?lang=en
  3. ^ Lloyd, L.J.(1947). "Books from the Library of Jacques-Auguste de Thou." Book Handbook:1-2.
  4. ^ Kinser, Samuel (1966). "The Sunderland Copy of Jacques-Auguste de Thou's History of His Time The Book Collector 15 no 4 (winter): 446-453.
  5. ^ Kinser, Samuel (1968). "An Unknown Manuscript Catalogue of J.A. De Thou." The Book Collector 17 no 2 (summer): 168-176.
  6. ^ Bémont 1911, pp. 882–883.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Bémont 1911, p. 883.

References

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bémont, Charles (1911). "Thou, Jacques Auguste de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). pp. 882–883.
  • Goyau, Pierre-Louis-Théophile-Georges (1912). "Jacques-Auguste de Thou" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

External links

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