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Peletier and Beza Part Company1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Natalie Zemon Davis*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto, York University
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Extract

Jacques Peletier and Theodore Beza were the best of friends the winter of 1547-1548. They and their circle spent hours together every day in the rue Saint Jacques in Paris. Then Beza abruptly departed for Geneva in October 1548, and the humanist Peletier remained behind in France. There ensued the following peculiar events, whose incongruity suggested to me that behind them lay a relation of great emotional and symbolic significance.

In February 1550, the first edition of Peletier's Arithmetic appeared with four dedicatory proems to Beza, whom he specifically identified as 'Prieur de Villeserve et Loniumeau'.2 This was more than a year after Beza had got rid of his benefices and left France.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1964

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References

2 L'Aritmetique de lacques Peletier du Mans, departie en quatre Livres, a Theodore Debesze. Avec privilege du Rot. On les vend a Poitiers a Venseigne du Pelican M.D. XLIX. I have used the 1552 edition of this work, but Miss Patricia Noble of the British Museum has been kind enough to check the first edition for me. The colophon reads ‘Acheve dTmprimer le 12 Febrier M.D. XLVIII.’ The 1548 is an error, however. The work was printed in Feb. .^1549 (i.e., 1550), as can be seen by the following evidence: (1) Peletier's ‘auLecteur’ at the end of this edition is dated ‘le 12 fevrier 1549’ (i.e., 1550); (2) in the second edition, published by the same printers, it says on the verso of the title page that the first printing was finished 12 February 1549 (i.e., 1550); (3) in his letter to Louis Meigret, dated 5 January 1549 (i.e., 1550), Peletier indicated that he was just publishing his arithmetic (Dialogue De VOrtografe e Prononciation Francoese departi an deus livres par lacques Peletier du Mans, Poitiers: Jean et Enguilbert de Marnef, 1550 [i.e., Jan. 1551], p. 37). The inference by Tchemerzine and other bibliographers of a 1548 edition is due to this error in the colophon.

3 Ortografe, pp. 108-109. For the dating of this paragraph, see infra, n. 62.

4 L'Aritmetique de lacques Peletier du Mans, departie en Quatre Livres, A Theodore De Besze, Reveue et Corrigee (Poitiers: Jean de Marnef, 1552), sig. ¶iir.

5 L'Aritmetique de Iaques Peletier du Mans, departie an quatre livres. Revile e augmantee par l'Auteur (Lyons: Jean de Tournes, 1554).

6 Dialogue de VOrtografe e Prononciacionfrancoese, departi an deus Livres,par Iaques Peletier du Mans (Lyons: Jean de Tournes, 1555), letter to Corbin on non-numbered pages following index.

7 E. Droz, ‘Notes sur Théodore de Bèze', Bibliotheque d'humanisme et renaissance XXIV (1962), 605.

8 Ortografe (1551), p. 45. All future references to the Ortografe are to the 1551 edition unless otherwise indicated. On the court case, Clement Juge, Jacques Peletier du Mans ﹛1517-1582): Essai sur sa vie, son oeuvre, son influence (Paris, 1907), pp. 42-43. On teaching Ortografe, pp. 40-41; Ortografe (1555), letter to Corbin. After several months of squabbling with his fellow rectors and administrators at the University of Bordeaux in 1573, he lost a job there as well (Juge, pp. 54-58).

9 Ortografe, pp. 45-46. Perhaps it was with the royal almoner Lancelot de Carle that Peletier had thought of going to Italy. De Carle had started a translation of Homer before Peletier published his translations of the first and second books of the Odyssey, a fact which Peletier mentioned in a poem to him in 1547 (Les Oeuvres poetiques de Iacques Peletier du Mans, Paris: Michel de Vascosan et Gilles Corrozet, 1547, sig. E ivr). De Carle went to Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1547 (Marcel Francon, ‘Introduction’ to Les Œuvres poetiques de Jacques Peletier du Mans, Rochecorbon, 1955, p. 32, n. 1).

10 Ortografe, pp. 47-50. Though the privilege for his Arithmetic, his Orthography, and the Discours non plus melancoliques que divers (to which he contributed several essays) are all dated March 1547 (i.e., 1548), he continued to work on them, for many months afterward. The first ten pages of book 1 of the Orthography and the final version of book n were surely written after September 1548.

11 ‘A monsieur de Saint Gelais', Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Nvv . In the ‘Aus Francoes’ (at the back of his 1554 Aritmetique and at the back of his L'algebre de Iaques Peletier du Mans, departie an deus Livres, Lyons: Jean de Tournes, 1554), his defense of his many accomplishments is a semihysterical reaction to criticism of his orthography. In the L'Art poetique (Lyons: Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Gazeau, 1555), p. 4, however, we read a confident assertion that ‘un homme bien ne, doet avoer plusieurs occupacions, qui secondet les unes aus autres’ (in direct quotations from Peletier's works, I am reproducing his spelling, but omitting his special accents and marks). Also see his discussion of the utility to the poet of encyclopedic learning (ibid., pp. 216-217).

12 The Orthography is, of course, in dialogue form with a fair statement of his opponents' views. See also the second and fourth proems in the Arithmetic (ff. 27v-20r, 80v-81v; all page references to the Arithmetic are to the 1552 edition unless otherwise specified).

13 Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Kiiir-Kviv.

14 Ibid., sig. Kii. Cf. Francon, pp. 52-54.

15 Letter to Jean Peletier, dated from Lyons, 8 Tuly [1557?], Iacobi Pektarii Cenomani, In Euclidis Ekmente geometria Demonstrationum Libri sex (Lyons: Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Gazeau, 1557), sig. pIr-p2v. Jacques had also disappointed another older brother who had wanted him in his youth to go into law, the study of which Peletier found a complete waste of time (ibid.). Jean Peletier was nine years older than Jacques. Doctor of theology, he was sent by the king to the Council of Trent. He was promoted grand master of the College of Navarre in the mid-i550S. Renowned as a scholastic, he wrote Latin and French works, the latter never published (La Bibliotheque du sieur de La Croix du Maine, Paris, 1584, p. 256).

16 Art poctique, p. 50.

17 Ortografe, pp. 47-50.

18 On Badius’ association with the group, see Mile Droz, p. 601. On Corbin, letter to Corbin, Ortografe (1555): their friendship began at Paris, and Peletier said that Dauron and Martin were Corbin's friends. Jean Paul Dauron, whom Peletier always referred to as the Sire Dauron, has not been previously identified. He was a native of Marseilles and a friend of Oronce Fine, the royal lecturer in mathematics. In 1550, Fine dedicated to him a work describing his new quadrant (De universale quadrante sinuumve organo liber singularis, Paris, 1550, sig. 2rv). Dauron was often called away from Paris by his patron Guillaume Pelissier, bishop of Montpellier (Ortografe, p. 50).

19 Ibid., p. 48.

20 Letter to Melchior Wolmar, Confessio christianae fidei et ejusdem collatio cum papisticis haeresibus. Per Theodorum Bezam Vezelium ([Geneva], Jean Bonnefoy, 1560, sig. jviir). I have ordinarily followed the translation of Baird, H. M. in Theodore Beza, the Counsellor of the French Reformation 1519-1605 (New York, 1899), pp. 355367.Google Scholar

21 On his attitude toward wealth and prestige, see his letter to Corbin; his Oratio Pictavii habita inpraelectiones mathematices (Revue de la Renaissance v, 1904, 291).

22 Ortografe, pp. 48-49. Peletier had probably cast Beza's horoscope and found it favorable, 'a man happy in the gifts of Nature, and Fortune'—which would increase his hopes for Beza's future. Moreover, Beza had turned 28 in June 1547. Since 28 was a perfect number, this made it an auspicious year. See the horoscope Peletier cast for Henri n and his comments about the age 28 (Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Lvr).

23 Beza, letter to Andreas Dudith, Theod: Bezae poemata [Geneva, 1576], p. 5. On Peletier's attitude toward the pursuit of glory, see Aritmetique, sig. ¶iiir, Art poetique, p.90. On his attitude toward Beza's poems, Ortografe, pp. 48-49.

24 Ibid., pp. 47-48.

25 Art poetique, p. 4; Euvres poetiques de Iaques Peletier du Mans, Intilulez Louanges … (Paris: Robert Coulombel, 1581), f. 47r.

26 This conflict is fully described in the letter to Wolmar. In the 1569 letter to Dudith, op. tit., p. 8, he said he became affianced four years before he left France; in his will of 1566, he said it occurred in 1546 (P. F. Geisendorf, Theodore de Bize, Paris, 1949, p. 27, n. 1). The date of dedication of the 1548 Theodori Bezae Vezelii Poemata is on f. 2v.

27 Arimetique, sig. ¶vv.

28 Mile Droz, p. 604. On Beza's religious thought up to the autumn of 1548, see Henri Meylan, ‘La conversion de Beze ou les longues hesitations d'un humaniste chretien', Genauan.s. vn (1959). Jean Martin, who was to publish in 1551 his translation of Sebon, Theologie naturelle de Raymond Sebond (J.Coppin, Montaigne, traducteur de Raymond Sibon, Lille, 1925, p . 15) must have made interesting contributions to these discussions.

29 Ortografe, pp. 48-49.

30 Letter to Wolmar, sig. jviir ; Geisendorf, p. 27. Also n. 71 infra.

31 Francis Molard, ‘Quand Theodore de Beze a-t-il rompu avec l'eglise romaine', Bull, de la Soc. de I'histoire du protestantisme francais XXXVII (1888), pp. 55-56; Geisendorf, p. 29.

32 Ortografe, p. 109.

33 Ibid.

34 There is concealment in this paragraph of the Ortografe (pp. 108-109), intended to protect Peletier from prosecution (see infra, p.203). Peletier's description of his own reaction, however, is not fabricated; if he had been planning to conceal, he would simply have denied any advance knowledge of Beza's departure. Moreover, his description is perfectly in keeping with everything else we know about his attitude toward Beza in 1547-1548.

35 Letter to Wolmar, sig. jviiv; Baird, p. 364.

36 Les Recherches de la France d'Estienne Pasquier (Paris, 1608), p. 868.

37 Letter to Wolmar, sig. jviiv-jviiir; Meylan, pp. 122-123.

38 For Beza's work up to 1547, see Mile Droz, pp. 402-412, 585-594. Peletier's translation of Horace's Ars poetica, with its revolutionary preface on the use of the vernacular, had already appeared in 1541 (B. Weinberg, ‘La Premiere edition de la traduction d'Horace par Jacques Peletier', BHR, XIV, 1952, pp. 297-300). His edition of Gemma's Arithmeticae practicae methodus facilis (Paris: Thomas Richard, 1545, i.e., 1546, as Peletier's letter to the reader is dated February 1545) was also a reform project, for this was the best Latin arithmetical text written to that date. It successfully combined pure and commercial arithmetic in ‘a simple and easy method'. Though an edition had been printed in Paris in 1543, it was so riddled with errors that Peletier prepared a new one with his annotations (note to the reader, Arithmeticae practicae, Paris, 1549, f. 77r).

39 Aritmetique, Proem 1 and Proem iv; Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Aiiiv-Aivr; Ortografe, pp. 128-129, 136-137; Discours nonplus melancoliques que divers, de choses mesmement qui appartiennent a nostre France … (Poitiers: Enguilbert de Marnef, 1557), pp. 19-20. I attribute several of the essays in the Discours to Peletier for the following reasons: (1) the Marnefs obtained the privilege for the work on 7 March 1547 (i.e., 1548), the same date as the privileges for the Orthography and the Arithmetic; (2) some of the orthography is distinctly Peletier's, e.g., Meilheure, oreilhes, ailheurs terroer (p. 20), ans, blans (p. 50); grammariens (p. 18); (3) there is a similarity of themes between many of the essays and Peletier's concerns at that period. On the reasons for publishing these essays anonymously, see Enguilbert de Marnefs preface. Cheneviere shows that chapter xx comes from Vinet's works and suggests other chapters written by him (A. Cheneviere, Bonaventure des Periers, Paris, 1886, pp. 245-246). Cf. Juge, pp. 322-324.

40 Ortografe, p. 117, p. 128; Aritmetique, Proems III and IV; Algebre, p. 3.

41 ‘Cette mienne Aritmetique, laquelle ie t'avoie promis … ami Debesze’ (Aritmetique, sig. 1fivv). Beza may have been unhappy, however, about Peletier's intention of including problems on lending money at interest (ff. 82v, 8ar). On Beza's attitude toward usury in the 1540s, see ‘In foeneratores', a poem which he did not publish in his 1548 Poemata (F. Aubert, J. Boussard, H. Meylan, ‘Un Premier recueil de poesies latines de Theodore de Bcze', BHR xv, 1953, 179-180) and which is more emotional and less sophisticated in its attack on usury than his short ‘In Foeneratores’ of the 1590s (Poemata, [Geneva], 1597 [for 1598], pp. 278-279). On Beza's more lenient attitude toward interest in the 1560s, see R. M. Kingdon, ‘The Economic Behavior of Ministers in Geneva in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century', Archiv fiir Reformationsgeschkhte l (1959), 38.

42 Ortografe, pp. 54-55, 78, 94, 97, 128, 134, 212. Peletier put his own arguments in Dauron's mouth. In Beza's mouth he put arguments which he had actually upheld in their conversations and arguments which supported his cause and which, Peletier believed , Beza would have deduced himself (pp. 6, 110-112). I think the latter refers to arguments in the Ortografe in which Beza opposes all improvements. Beza was willing to make a few changes (preface to Abraham sacrifiant, infra, p. 214).

43 In his De Francicae linguae recta pronunciatione tractatus (Geneva: Eustace Vignon, 1584), Beza said that there were a number of silent letters that could be eliminated from French, but some were still necessary for distinguishing words or for indicating their etymology. In short, though making a few concessions, he still did not adopt Peletier's principle of relating orthography to pronunciation. See C. L. Livet, ha Gratnmaire francaisc et lesgrammairiens du XVI’ siecle (Paris, 1859), pp. 510-529.

44 Ortografe, p. 104. Compare with his more mature discussion of indifferent works in La confession defoi du chretien par Theodore de Bize, ed. M. Reveillaud in La Revue réformée VI (1955), 40-45.

45 Ortografe, pp. 54-55, 96. For the criticism leveled against Beza when he first left France, see Correspondance de Theodore de Beze, ed. H. Aubert, F. Aubert, and H. Meylan (Geneva, 1960, Travaux d'humanisme et Renaissance XL, XLIX) I, #13.

46 Weinberg, pp. 294-298. Also see his poem ‘A un poete qui n'escrivoit qu'en Latin', where he stated and answered arguments about the vernacular, and his ‘A un Poete escrivant obscurement’ (Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Liiir, Mir).

47 Ortografe, pp. 67-68, 78-79.

48 Aritmetique ff. 27v-28r.

49 Ibid., Proem n. At the end of his life, Peletier was not so optimistic about the printing press. I plan to return to this subject in another article. It is interesting to relate Peletier's ideas on right method to the material given by Father Ong in chapter XI of his Ramus, “Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).

50 Ortografe, p. 128. He also spoke of taking the ‘government’ of language away from the lawyers with their jargon and patterning speech and writing after the style of the royal court (pp. 210-211). His formulation in the mid-i550s was somewhat clearer: ‘It is necessary above all that a piece of writing be praiseworthy to the learned; and that, at the same time, it give to the least learned at first glance some apprehension of beauty and some hope of being able to understand it’ (Art poetique, pp. 49-50).

51 Such as Brefve exposition de la table oufigure contenant les principauspoinds de la religion Chrestienne (Geneva, 1560).

52 He and Calvin first wrote their works against Castellion's ideas on predestination in Latin because ‘les matieres qui sont la traittees estant hautes, il y avoit danger que les simples gens qui sont curieux de les veoir, ne le prinssent autrement qu'il ne faut'. Only when their opponents wrote in French did they answer in French with warnings to the simple 'de manier ces matieres avec une humble reverence’ (preface of Badius in the 1559 Response de lehan Calvin, et Theodore de Besze, quoted in F. Gardy, Bibliographie des oeuvresde Theodore de Béze, Geneva, 1960, Travaux d'humanisme et Renaissance x u , p. 56).

53 Correspondance, I, #42, #43, #44.

54 De haereticis a civili magistrato puniendis libellus … Theodore Beza Vezelio auctore (Geneva: Robert Estienne, 1554), pp. 118-121. Beza was here replying to Castellion's assertion that theologians should not have recourse to the magistrate to defend their science any more than a physician or professor of the arts.

55 Letter to Wolmar, sig. jviiv.

56 Mile Droz, p. 603.

57 Ortografe, p. 83.

58 Peletier said in the Ortografe that he left Paris a year and a half after he resigned his post at the University of Paris (pp. 45-46). Since Juge gave the date of Peletier's resignation as 18 March 1547 (p. 43), it has been assumed that Peletier left Paris in mid-September 1548. A look at the documents upon which Juge based this assertion (B.N., MSS. Fonds Latin, 10, 986) reveals his error. On 18 March 1547 ‘avant Pasques'—i.e., 18 March 1548, new style—the Parlement called Jean Hugues as Peletier's substitute for the rights in the rectorship of the College of Bayeux. Hugues had already appeared in this capacity on 2 June 1547 (ff. 50v∼51r). Thus the document does not give the precise date of Pelet i e r ‘ s resignation. We must fall back on Peletier's own statement in the Orthography, which locates it around the time of his funeral oration (late February?) and of Francis' illness (beginning early March). Thus Peletier could have left Paris in August 1548. He may have gone to Poitiers on a visit early in 1548 to make preliminary arrangements with the Marnefs and he may have gone there in the autumn of 1548 before going down to Bordeaux. Peletier did not see Louis Meigret's translation of Lucian, Le Menteur, until after he had left Paris (Ortografe, p. 1). Dr. C. A. Mayer has kindly checked this work for me and reports that it contains no date other than the 1548 on the title page.

59 Ortografe, p. 108.

60 Correspondance, #16, Beza to Claude d'Espence (May 1550), in which he referred to a letter written a year and a half earlier ‘ad hominem mihi amicissimum', a letter which had circulated in France and which had mentioned Geneva.

61 Ortografe, pp. 108-109. Italics mine.

62 Note that Peletier referred to Beza's Poemata as published ‘dernierement', which, together with the dates of Beza's letters to France, locates the composition of the paragraph in late 1548 or early 1549. Thus the reference to visiting Wolmar, I believe, refers to remarks made by Beza in 1547-1548 about his hopes, rather than to Beza's actual visit to Wolmar in August-September 1549 (Cf. Mile Droz, p. 603, n. 1).

63 On Sauvage's movements, see Mile Droz, p. 609 and infra, p. 212.

64 Poemata (1548), ff. 58v—59r. This is clearly a heterosexual poem, in which the importance of the sexual contact between man and woman is, if anything, stressed. That Claude de Sainctes based his assertion of Beza's homosexuality on this poem (Geisendorf, p. 23) shows only the limits of de Sainctes’ thought and experience. There is perhaps a sign of homosexual feeling in Beza's letters of 1539 (he was then aged 20) to Maclou Popon, especially the poem to him of Dec. 1539 (Correspondance, #5). That any homosexuality here was latent and unconscious is shown by the fact that these thoughts occurred to Beza in a dream, that he offered them to Popon without guilt, and that he was not upset when Popon married (ibid., #9, where he congratulates Popon on his marriage, while stating that he prefers his wife Philology). Only when he was sexually mature did Beza look back at that poem with discernment, modify it, and replace Popon's name more appropriately with that of Candida (in the Poemata of 1548, ff. 39v-40r). Beza's feeling for Popon is common to many adolescents. That Beza was slow in sexual maturation is not “Surprising when one remembers, for instance, that he was removed from his mother and his wet nurse before he was three to be brought up by his uncle in Paris and that his mother died as a result of an accident sustained on the trip taking him from Vezelay to Paris—which facts Beza duly recounted in his autobiographical letter to Wolmar (sig. jiiv-jiiir). The Poemata of 1548 indicate a Beza heterosexual in feeling (I leave aside the question of fornication about which Claude de Sainctes also made his accusations, since here one has no evidence but psychological conjecture). The character of Beza's sexual conflict in 1547-1548 concerned, not homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, but the extent to which he should be committed to and emotionally involved with a woman.

65 Letter to Corbin, Ortografe (1555); Aritmetique, sig. ¶rv. The poem to Peletier appears in the 1550 as well as the 1552 edition of the Arithmetic. Rene de Sainte Marthe was the brother of the poet Charles de Sainte Marthe. He wrote a poem in honor of Marguerite de Navarre, published at the end of Charles’ funeral oration for Marguerite ( Rutz-Rees, C., Charles de Sainte-Marthe, New York, 1910, pp. 27, 193, 199).Google Scholar Peletier also made friends in Bordeaux in 1549 (see Art poetique, pp. 98, 100).

66 Such as his patron in early 1554, Charles de Cosse, Comte de Brissac, and his friends in the Lyons area Maurice Sceve and Pontus de Tyard.

67 Peletier's contacts with de Tournes are evident in the pages of A. Carrier, Bibliographic des Editions des De Tournes, imprimeurs lyonnais (Paris, n.d.) for the years 1553, 1554, and 1555. The Marot edition of 1553 shows signs of Peletier's orthography; and de Tournes here spelled his name ‘Ian', as he did in the 1554 Protestant Bible and several Other works in those years (pp. 353, 360, 362-364). Peletier's estimate of de Tournes: 'homme de toute diligance et de nule epergne an choses de son etat’ (letter to Corbin, Ortografe, 1555). On Peletier's teaching Jean 11 de Tournes, see Juge, pp. 51-52. Peletier changed his residence in Lyons in the spring of 1555 (Artpoetique, p. 5). It seems likely to me that up to that time, his Lyons residence was at de Tournes’ house.

68 Letter to Corbin, Ortografe (1555); Ortografe (1551), p. 44. Also he had failed to get a teaching post at Bordeaux in 1549 because ‘the troubles in Aquitaine disturbed us all' (Jugé, p. 51).

69 Juge, p. 61; Henri Chamard, Histoire de la Pleiade (Paris, 1940), III, 324-330; André Boulanger, L'Art poätique de Jacques Peletier du Mans (1555) (Paris, 1930, Pubs, de la faculté des lettres de l'Univ. de Strasbourg fasc. 53), p. 33. Perhaps Maurice Bressieu got this information from Ronsard, at whose house he was hving the next year (Mauricii Bressii ... Metrices astronomicae libri quatuor, Paris, 1581, p. 84). Peletier responded that Bressieu's accusation was a calumny, that when he had been living in Savoye near Geneva in 1569- 1572, he had not set foot in the city and that, anyway, he never thought he would have to discuss the rules of his life with any man (Juge, p. 61; Boulanger, p. 29, n. 79).

70 Œuvres completes de P. de Ronsard, ed. P. Laumonier (Paris, 1914-1919), n, 20 (italics added). In his De constitutione horoscopi, Peletier said he had wandered Hke Ulysses ‘ut mores hominum multorum urbesque viderem’ (Boulanger, p. 28, n. 76).

71 Aritmetique, sig. ¶iiir. In a preface published in Basel in 1563, during Peletier's other pro-Protestant phase, he gave a short Latin version of this same proem. Here he said of medieval philosophers that ‘in Theology, they taught not piety, but the show of piety, excessive controversy, and dispute about opinions'. One could hardly recognize the true shape of religion in all of this (Jacobi Peletari medici et mathematici Commentarii tres, Basel: Oporin, 1563, preface to ‘De dimensione circuli’). This probably reflects what Peletier had thought years earlier and could now say in Protestant Basel. Even then these are not extreme sentiments.

72 Ortografe, pp. 190-193. There is one problem concerning clerics in the Aritmetique: a church with 12 canons and 20 chaplains who share together 3500 ecus per year, so that for each 5 ecus received by a chaplain, a canon will receive 7 (f. 847). It is hard to know whether Peletier had any satirical intentions here.

73 Poemata (1548), f. 7v.

74 Art poetique, pp. 14, 65.

75 Les Cent Psalmes de David, qui restoient a traduire en rithme francoise, traduictz par maistre Ian Poictevin Chantre de Saincte Radegonde de Poictiers (Poitiers: Nicolas Peletier, 1551; colophon 15 Nov. 1550; privilege, 14 April 1550). Douen says the work was printed with identical title in both 1550 and 1551 (O. Douen, Clement Marot et le Psautier huguenot, Paris, 1879,1, 456-457). In a poem to Marguerite de Navarre (written before her death in December 1549), Poictevin signed himself ‘ J e a n Poictevin’ (Vingt et deux octonaires de Psalme cent dix-neuf… [Paris? Guillaume Thibaut?], p. 2). For Jean I de Tournes’ spelling, see Carrier, 1553-1554, passim. For Jean Martin, cf. the translation of Sebastien Serlio's work on Architecture, book n, ‘mis en langue francoise par Iehan Martin’ (Paris, J. Barbe, 1545), with book v, ‘traduict en Francois par Ian Martin' (Paris: Vascosan, 1547). Given Peletier's interest in music at this period (Aritmetique, Proem II, Discours, ch. 21), it is likely that he also knew in Poitiers Philibert Jambe-de-Fer, who set some of Poictevin's translations to music in 1549 (Douen, II, 18). If this is so, it suggests another influence upon Jambe-de-Fer's composition in the 1550s of music for Horace's Odes (see Peletier's translations, Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Hiiiv-Hviiv). Jambe-de-Fer, of course, composed music in the early 1560s for the psalm translations of Marot and Beza.

76 Les Cent Psalmes, sig. *iii, p. 313.

77 Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Kviv.

78 Algebre, p. 123. See the valuable discussion of Peletier's Neoplatonism in A. M. Schmidt, La Poisie scientifique en France au seizieme siede (Paris, 1938), pp. 22-43.

79 Ibid., p. 9. Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Lvr.

80 Aritimetique, sig. ¶iiir.

81 The only astrological reference that I note in Beza's early poetry is ‘O Ciel cruel, estoilles conjurees, A empescher voz faveurs esperees’ in his ‘Complainte au nom d'une dame, sur le respas de feu Monsieur d'Orleans’ (Mile Droz, p. 406), and, as Mile Droz suggests (p. 412), he was here writing in the manner of Marguérite of Navarre. His critique of judicial astrology appears in Epistolarum theologkarum Theodori Bezae Vezelii liber unus (Geneva: Eustache Vignon, 1573), pp. 182-188. Whatever influence the position of the stars may have on physical constitution and temperament, Beza thought that better information could be collected on such matters from physicians than from casting horoscopes. Astrology has no predictive value for future events. Of course, Beza raised theological objections to astrological determinism.

82 James Hutton, ‘The “Lost” Cohortatio pacificatoria of Jacques Peletier du Mans', BHRxxa (1960), 311.

84 Art poetique, p. 89.

85 Compare Peletier's ‘Do not think your spirit incapable of perfection … be possessed by an invincible will’ (ibid.) with Erasmus’ statement: ‘With true courage you should resolve to lead a perfect life and never waver from that resolution. The human spirit has never forcefully imposed upon itself a command which it failed to obey’ (quoted by H. Bornkamm, ‘Faith and Reason in the thought of Erasmus and Luther', in Religion and Culture, Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, ed. W. Leibrecht, New York, 1959, p. 134). Contrast Beza's view in the Confession dufoi, part m, art. 13, part iv, art. n . It is Satan who assaults us with the idea that we must love God perfectly and our neighbor as ourselves. Such perfection is impossible and men must realize that it's impossible.

86 E.g., Discours non plus melancoliques, p. 112; Aritmetique, sig. Ddivv.

87 Cohortatio, p. 307.

88 Aritmetique, sig. ¶iiir. He was considering which of the church fathers was most outstanding.

89 Letter to Jean Peletier, In Euclidis elementa, f. iv.

90 Juge, p. 15. The quotation from Scaligeriana (Cologne, 1695) given by Juge (p. 61, n. 1) reflects the truth about Peletier: ‘Pelittarius … varius et inconstans in Religione.' 1558-1562 seems like a Catholic period, as does the last decade of his life.

91 Cohortatio, p. 309; condemnation of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day in Oratio Pictavii [Revue de la Renaissance v, 301).

92 Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Aivr. On Beza's attitude toward peace, see Mile Droz, p. 411.

93 Art poetique, p. 92; Cohortatio, p. 309.

94 Ortografe, p. 109.

95 Ibid., p. 41. The 1549 edition of the Arithmeticae practicae methodus with Peletier's Annotationes was printed by Thomas Richard; some copies (e.g., Univ. of Michigan) name him as publisher, some (e.g., Columbia Univ.) Guillaume Cavellat. It includes a section on usury, which did not appear in Peletier's 1545-1546 edition and which was based on Gemma's 1547 Antwerp edition. The Feb. 1546 letter to the reader from Peletier remained. Cavellat also published an edition in 1550 (Univ. of Michigan). Whether Peletier came briefly to Paris to make arrangements for these publications I do Ttot know. On the Bordeaux post, see Francon, p. 357, andjuge, p. 51. He left Bordeaux some time after 4 Sept. 1549.

96 Ortografe, dedication; Aritmetique, sig. Ddivv.

97 Peletier gave the spelling Villeserve, following the local pronunciation, though modern spelling makes it Villeselve. Loniumeau for Longjumeau was his reformed spelling. The only indication of the date of composition of the proems is Peletier's comment in Proem I, ‘Cette mienne Aritmetique, laquelle ie t'avoie promis i a quelque temps, ami Debesze …', which sounds as though it were written after Peletier's departure from Paris. Peletier's ‘Au lecteur’ was signed Poitiers, 12 Feb. 1549 (i.e., 1550).

98 Annates et Chroniques de France … iadis composees par feu maistre Nicole Gilles, … Depuis additionnees selon les modernes Hystoriens, iusques en Van Mil cinq cens quarante et neuf. he tout nouvellement reveu et corrigee … par Denis Sauvage de Fontenailles en Brie … (Paris, Jean de Roigny, 1549). Privilege to Galiot du Pre given by the Parlement of Paris 9 July 1549; colophon: printing finished at Paris 17 August 1549 by Rene Avril for Galiot Du Pre and Jehan de Roigny. Dedication to Antoine, Due de Vendomois, by Sauvage, dated Paris, 1 July 1549 (sig. aiir). To the readers from Sauvage, dated Paris, 1 July 1549 (sig. a ii). Mile Droz has described his work in Lyons, where he pubhshed under the name of Seigneur du Pare, Champenois (p. 609). It would be interesting to know what happened at Sauvage's trial before the Parlement of Paris in April!

99 ‘Lettre-Preface a l'Abraham-Sacrifiant', reprinted from the Geneva, 1550 edition in Correspondance, I, 200-202. Peletier on sonnets: Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Gviir-Hiiir, and Art poetique, p. 61.

100 Letter to Meigret (5 Jan. 1550), Ortografe, p. 1-2. Later Peletier discovered a new kind of love poetry, Neoplatonic and scientific. See Juge, p. 219 and the Art poetique, p. 5 (though cf. p. 98 of the same work). One of the problems in Peletier's Aritmetique concerns three jealous husbands and their wives (f. 102r). In the 1560s, Beza did not care for Neoplatonic love poetry (letter to Dudith, Poetnata, 1576, pp. 10-II), but, as Professor Allan Farris points out to me, his sermons on the Song of Songs in 1586 move from concrete love-imagery to Christian allegory.

101 Preface to Abraham sacrifiant, p. 201. Italics mine.

102 Ortografe, p. 31.

103 It is too bad that in later editions of this preface Beza's spelling has been changed, for then the intended mockery is missed. Meigret had used the spelling voutre in his translation of Lucian, Le Menteur, appearing in 1548 (Louis Meigret, Le Trette de lagrammere Francoeze, ed. W. Foerster, Heilbronn, 1888, p. xviii). Peletier said in his letter to Meigret that this spelling did not correspond to right pronunciation, and in his Grammere of 1550, Meigret did not use it. Beza had thus seen the 1548 Le Menteur. For the liquid ‘11', Meigret used ‘11’ (Grammere, p. 18), while Peletier used ‘lh'. Beza's spelling dinne for digne does not represent either man's usage, both men spelling it dine (ibid., p. 60; Artpoetique, p. 6). In words like eloigner, where Meigret did consider the soft n-sound to occur, he used the sign ‘fi', thus elofier (Grammere, p. 63). This is what Beza may have been trying to imitate with his dinne. Beza was still exercised about these words in his 1584 treatise on pronunciation (Livet, pp. 513, 515, 527).

104 Oeuvres poetiques, sig. Nviir ; Ortografe, p. 44; Aritmetique, sig. Ddivv.

105 Ibid.; dedication to Jeanne in the Ortografe; ‘Aus lecteurs', Ortografe, speaking of the 'absence of the author'.

106 See his letter to Sceve, p. 220 infra.

107 Ortografe, p. 46; Letter to Wolmar, jvir , jviiir.

108 Preface to the Psalms, Correspondance, I, 210-211. The editors think it very likely that this poem appeared already in the 1551 edition of Beza's translations (ibid., p. 207).

109 Art poetique, p. 92.

110 Peletier did not like to think of himself as vindictive. See his letter to Scève, infra p.220.

112 In his dedication of the Algebre to Brissac, written in 1554, Peletier spoke of the campaigns as occurring ‘this year'. One can understand why Peletier, with his distaste for war, left this post as quickly as he did.

113 Since Zacharie Gaudart, the financial officer to whom Peletier dedicated the Art poetique, was involved in raising these loans. The mathematician Jean Trenchant calculated interest rates for these loans and probably knew Peletier (he spelled his name ‘Ian' for the 1558 edition of his Arithmetic).

114 See the verses from Textor to Beza printed by de Tournes in 1551 (Correspondance, 1, 206).

115 Correspondance, I, 98-99. Hotman did not publish with de Tournes until 1564, but he had published in 1548-1552 with de Tournes’ friend and former master Sebastien Gryphe.

116 On des Masures’ connections with Beza in 1550, see Correspondance, 1, 61-62. Des Masures knew both Peletier and Jean Martin in Paris at the end of the reign of Francis I (R. Lebegue, La Tragidie religieuse en France; les debuts, 1514-1573, Paris, 1929, p. 328) and then published his translation of the first four books of the Aeneid in Lyons with de Tournes in 1552 (ibid., p. 331). Peletier praised his work in the Artpoetique, p. 13.

117 Correspondance, 1, 95. Peletier could have met Obrecht through Zacharie Gaudart, for Obrecht was involved in the loans to Henri n.

118 On Cathelan, see A. Bernus, Theodore de Bèze á Lausanne (Lausanne, 1900), pp. 30-31. He pubhshed his Arithmetique et maniere d'apprendre a chiffrer et compter with Thibaud Payens in Lyons, 1555 (Baudrier, iv, 261) and therefore may have passed through the city. This Arithmetic is a straight steal of the Art et science de arismetique published in Paris around 1520 by Trepperel's widow and Jean Jehannot. If Peletier met Cathelan, he carTriot have been much impressed by this plagiarist and would probably have agreed with Beza's harsh judgment.

119 Mlle Droz describes the relation between Fontaine and Sauvage, pp. 609-610. Fontaine had, of course, known Beza in the 1540s. On Peletier and Fontaine, see Carrier, pp. 353 (on the Marot edition), 366. Fontaine's Odes, enigmes, et epigrammes of 1557 had poems to both Peletier and Sauvage.

120 Annates et Chroniques, sig. aiiv. His comments are much milder than those of Beza in the preface to Abraham sacrifiant. In the Ortografe, Sauvage sided with Beza (p. 102). Here again Peletier must have been bothered by Sauvage's taking the initiative in publicly dissociating himself from Peletier's program.

121 Cohortatio, p. 309. It is interesting that the privilege for Postel's De la republique des Turcs was granted to the Marnefs on 7 March IS47 (i.e., 1548), the same date as the privilege for all of Peletier's works published by that house. Beza also attacked Postel in a letter of 1570 (Epistolarum theohgicarum … liber, p. 22).

122 Chamard, m, 342. Peletier probably did not meet Servetus or his proofreader Guillaume Guéroult, for they went to Geneva in 1553 after their troubles with the Vienne Inquisition. The printer of Servetus’ work, Balthasar Arnoullet, was a friend of de Tournes and occasional partner of de Tournes’ son-in-law Guillaume Gazeau. Once released from jail, Arnoullet surely visited the de Tournes atelier.

123 Ortografe, p. 66.

124 Art poetique, p. 14, p. 73.

126 Preface to the Abraham sacrifiant. There are, of course, other examples of Beza's attempt to reintegrate his repudiated past into his life as a reformer—his 1554 piece on the pronunciation of Greek, for instance. He was unwilling to bring out another edition of the Poemata, however, until 1569 and there were many changes and omissions from the 1548 edition (Gardy, Bibliographie, p. 5).

126 Letter to Corbin. Peletier urged Corbin to write about why he had combined the career of letters with that of arms, advice that Corbin does not seem to have taken.

127 But Jean Martin had not broken with Sauvage, for Sauvage saw to it that Martin's edition of Alberti was published in Paris posthumously (La Croix du Maine, p. 243). Martin died in 1553. Some remarks about hypocrites in the letter to Corbin—such as his comments about ‘un tas de petiz compagnons'—must refer to others.

128 In Euclidis Eletnenta, f. 3V.

129 Ibid.,ff. 2V-3V.

130 Ibid., and see also his poem to Gabriel Dupous in the Opuscules at the end of the Art poetique (p. 98):

Or vivons done en foi et souvenir

Et faisons tant tous deux qu'á l'avenir

Ceux qui auront quelque desir d'apprendre

Comme se doit l'amitiee maintenir

Dessus nous deux example viegnet prendre.

131 Carrier, p. 371; Algebre, ‘Aus Francoes'.

132 In Euclidis Elementa, f. 2r.

133 Ibid., f. 1; Chamard, III, 312, n. 1. The Discours non plus mehncoliques was printed years after Marnef had received the manuscripts and without the author's (or authors’) permission (sig. aiiir). The translation into French of the Cohortatio, appearing in 1558, was made from a work published in 1555 (Hutton, pp. 304-305). Jean II de Tournes published another edition of the Arithmetic in 1570. Peletier published nothing new in French during those years. In contrast, he had his Algebra translated into Latin and published several new Latin works in mathematics and medicine.

134 Correspondance, II, 55-56.

133 Ibid., f. 1; Chamard, III, 312, n. 1. The Discours non plus mehncoliques was printed years after Marnef had received the manuscripts and without the author's (or authors’) permission (sig. aiiir). The translation into French of the Cohortatio, appearing in 1558, was made from a work published in 1555 (Hutton, pp. 304-305). Jean II de Tournes published another edition of the Arithmetic in 1570. Peletier published nothing new in French during those years. In contrast, he had his Algebra translated into Latin and published several new Latin works in mathematics and medicine.

134 Correspondance, II, 55-56.