Cahiers d'Humanisme et Renaissance
(anciennement Études de Philologie et d’Histoire)

48

Malcolm C. Smith

RONSARD & DU BELLAY
VERSUS BEZE

Allusiveness in Renaissance Literary Texts

LIBRAIRIE E. DROZ

11, rue Massot

GENÈVE

1995

Mentions légales

Résumé

Dernière étude du regretté Malcolm Smith, qui a su regarder toute l’histoire de la poésie française du XVIe siècle d’un œil neuf, débarrassé des préjugés confes-sionnels et sensible à toutes les positions religieuses du temps, réconciliant ainsi histoire littéraire et histoire religieuse. M. Smith reprend ici les combats versifiés entre Ronsard, vu comme un “moyenneur”, et Du Bellay contre le successeur de Calvin. Comme l’affirme l’érudit anglais c’est bien de Bèze dont Montaigne écrira: ‘J’ay veu en ma jeunesse un galant homme presenter d’une main au peuple des vers exellens en beauté et en desbordement, et de l’autre main la plus quereleuse reformation theologienne de quoy le monde se soit desjeuné il y a long temps.’ Avant Montaigne, Ronsard et Du Bellay avaient déjà émis des allusions belliqueuses à l’encontre de Bèze, ce dernier n’ayant, quant à lui, jamais mouché ses attaques. Ce livre nous invite à entrer dans un monde de suspicions, de rapprochements et de scissions, où tour à tour Ronsard comme Bèze essaient de gagner l’autre et le lecteur à leurs idées. Petit livre, comme toujours avec Malcolm Smith, mais grande étude.

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Abstract

Last study of the great scholar Malcolm Smith. In the Renaissance, the divorce between poetry and theology had not yet happened, and both Bèze and Ronsard saw close links between poetry and theology. This book presents the texts in which Bèze and Ronsard and their friends confront each other. It invites you to venture into a conspiratorial world – and to gain, in the process, an intimate acquaintance with Ronsard, Bèze and their respective friends.

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Book design and typesetting by Philip Taylor, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, based on an original design by Librairie Droz. Typeset using TEX at the Computer Centre (RHBNC) in Adobe Times Roman 9 pt and 10 pt, and processed on the Linotronic 300 of the University of London Computer Centre.

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www.droz.org

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Références papier

ISBN-10 : 2-600-00099-2

EAN : 9782600000994

ISSN : 1422-5581

Copyright (1995) by Librairie Droz SA, 11. rue Massot, Genève

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfiche or any other means without written permission.

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Références numériques

EAN ePUB : 9782600300995

EAN PDF : 9782600100991

ISSN : 1422-5581

Copyright (2021) by Librairie Droz SA, 11. rue Massot, Genève

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfiche or any other means without written permission.

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.

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Composition

Book design and typesetting by Philip Taylor, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, based on an original design by Librairie Droz. Typeset using Tex at the Computer Centre (RHBNC) in Adobe Times Roman 9pt and 10 pt, and processed on the Linotronic 300 of the University of London Computer Centre

Note

Malcolm Smith died of cancer on 26 October 1994 at the age of 53. He had completed this book a few weeks earlier, returning to a subject that had preoccupied him as a young scholar, and drawing on his own writings since that time. He supplied the title a few days before his death. The text as he left it required light editing but it is otherwise unchanged.

MJH

Contents

Introduction

7

I : The kinship of Ronsard and Bèze

11

II : Bèze the Christian poet

17

III : Concessions

33

IV : Reconciliation ?

49

V : ‘Ce guerrier de Baize’

61

VI : Bèze’s continuing salvoes

79

Notes

91

Bibliography

129

Introduction

For forty years, a feud raged between the greatest poet of the French Renaissance and one of the leading French Reformers. The poet is Ronsard, the Reformer is Théodore de Bèze ; and the initial and principal issue which divided them is whether it is legitimate for the poet to draw inspiration from classical pagan authors rather than from the Bible. Some of the finest writers of the time entered the fray in support of one or other of the two main protagonists. Two episodes in this long-running confrontation are fairly well known : Bèze’s attack on Ronsard in 1550 in the preface to his edifying biblical play,

Abraham sacrifiant

, and Ronsard’s attack on Bèze in 1562 for preaching a ‘gospel of arms’ in the first civil war. But what is not known is that these were simply two episodes in an enduring dispute. The encounter between Ronsard and Bèze sheds light on the attitudes of the two of them and of their respective friends towards the widening religious division ; on the activities of a group of conciliatory thinkers (often referred to as

moyenneurs

) who sought to bridge the religious divide ; and on the views on poetry held by the opposing parties (and, I suspect, their views on theological discourse as well). A first purpose of this little book is to present the texts in which Bèze and Ronsard and their friends confront each other.

There is another issue on which this investigation sheds light, and an engrossing one, and it is the habit, so dear to Renaissance writers of invective, of referring to their targets

obliquely. While they attack each other pitilessly, they often do so without naming names. It was the sheer pleasure of identifying the targets of allusive attack which led me to write this little book. When Ronsard, Bèze and others veiled the identity of their targets they made their allusions all the more pointed — and created an aura of collusion between themselves and their audience. This book invites you to venture into that conspiratorial world — and to gain, in the process, an intimate acquaintance with Ronsard, Bèze and their respective allies. For, when they write this way, they are inviting us, their unseen readers (even those separated from them by four centuries !) to enter into a relationship of intellectual and personal kinship with them, and to see at close hand how their minds worked. A second purpose of this book, then, is to explore this culture of veiled allusion.

The fact that Ronsard and Bèze usually refrained from naming each other explains why their feud has not attracted attention in modem times. But there is another reason : while Ronsard and Bèze plainly had a substantial common readership in their own day, this is no longer the case. On the whole, Ronsard has attracted the attention of historians of literature while Théodore de Bèze has been studied by historians of the Reformation. The history of literature and the history of the Reformation have largely been pursued in isolation from each other. But, arguably, this has been unscholarly : all the Pléiade poets sought in one way or another to exert an influence on the religious opinions of their contemporaries. And Bèze, besides being a great Reformer, was also a celebrated poet, and was convinced that poetry could serve theological ends. Thus, both Ronsard and Bèze saw close links between poetry and theology (though, as we shall see, different sorts of links). A third purpose of this book is to explore this issue. Today, most European poets no longer seek to expound the ways of God to men, and most European theologians no longer teach ‘poetically’ in parables. In the Renaissance, the divorce between poetry and theology had not yet happened.

Broadly, we shall see six phases in the relationship between Ronsard and Bèze : (i) a period of kinship (1547-1550), in which some close affinities between the two can be shown to have existed ; (ii) a time of debate about Christian poetry, advocated by Bèze in the preface to his

Abraham

(1550) and by others in subsequent years ; (iii) a period in which Ronsard and Du Bellay made concessions to this view (1552 and subsequently) ; (iv) a moment of apparent

rapprochement

between the two sides (1559-1560) ; (v) the first civil war (1560-1563) and the definitive parting of the ways ; (vi) continued salvoes from Bèze and his followers up to the time of Ronsard’s death in 1585, and rejoinders to them by the poet’s admirers.

For the sake of brevity, I have quoted only sparingly from Ronsard, whose poems are readily available : many of the passages are magnificent invective (Bèze unintentionally inspired some of Ronsard’s most vigorous lines). Also for the sake of brevity, I have tried to keep the focus firmly on Bèze and the Pléiade poets (and, where relevant, their close associates) ; it would have been possible, though questionably relevant, to multiply references to the debate on Christian versus pagan poetry (which of course did not begin in the sixteenth century). However, I have referred occasionally in passing to some wider issues which the subject of this book raises.

CHAPTER I
The kinship of Ronsard and Bèze

(i) Bèze and the young Pléiade

The probable first point of contact between Bèze and the embryonic Pléiade was the poet and mathematician Jacques Peletier. Peletier, a secretary of the Bishop of Le Mans, René Du Bellay, almost certainly met Ronsard in 1543 when Ronsard went to Le Mans to begin his career as a cleric by receiving the tonsure from the Bishop

1

. Peletier noted in the chapter on the ode in his

Art poëtique

that Ronsard met him in Le Mans in his youth and showed him odes he had written, and told him that he was writing this kind of poetry in emulation of Horace ; Peletier added that since then, Ronsard had published odes based on Horace, and also (and especially) odes which emulated those of Pindar. He noted, too, that Ronsard was the first person to use the word ‘ode’ in French

2

.

A mutual respect and close intellectual kinship arose between Peletier and Ronsard, as is clear from a letter to Ronsard which Peletier published in 1557 in his book on Euclid : ‘You know the high opinion I have always had of you, Ronsard. And I know that the view you have of me is not a low one. For we have handed posterity a memorial of our friendship by our mutual expressions of esteem, and this, indeed, is of no mean significance even while we are living : for that public confirmation has about it a certain unique delightfulness. I am very

keen (as I think you are) that posterity should know that we are bound together not just being contemporaries of each other, but by a union of soul… You know how great was the common accord and kinship of our minds some time back, at the time when a third scholar, Joachim Du Bellay, joined our number. I recall how in the name of the Muses, you showed such kind respect to me, your elder by a few years, when you were still a youth’

3

.

That passage indicates that Peletier also had a close relationship with Joachim Du Bellay. It is probable that Peletier met Du Bellay, too, at Le Mans in 1543

4

. His relationship with Du Bellay appears to have been every bit as cordial as his relationship with Ronsard. Du Bellay noted in the preface to

L’Olive

that it was Peletier who persuaded him to write sonnets and odes, types of poetry not commonly written at that time (four years ago) in France

5

. Du Bellay’s first published work was a poem in Peletier’s

Œuvres poëtiques

of 1547

6

. He also seems to have adopted some of Peletier’s ideas in the

Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse

7

. And he dedicated three sonnets of

Les Regrets

to him (nos. 78, 156, 189).

Shortly after making the acquaintance of Ronsard and Du Bellay, Peletier abandoned his post of rector of the Collège de Bayeux so as to devote himself more single-mindedly to a life of scholarship. In the company of a friend and fellow-scholar, Jean Martin, he went to live in the house of the printer Michel de Vascosan in the rue Saint-Jacques in Paris. Unencumbered by any professional responsibilities, he appears to have devoted the winter of 1547-48 to work on various publications (the

Œuvres poëtiques

, the

Dialogue de l’ortografe

, the

Aritmetique

, and a collection of essays in which he appears to have had a hand, the

Discours non plus mélancoliques que divers

). He also seems to have spent time discussing intellectual issues, long into the night, with his friends. Into this group, Peletier welcomed Théodore de Bèze, ‘a man happy in the gifts of grace, nature and fortune’

8

. Vascosan’s house is probably where Ronsard and Bèze first met. For Peletier’s

Œuvres poëtiques

,

published in September 1547 by Vascosan, contain the first published works of Ronsard (and, as we have just seen, of Du Bellay), and Vascosan was to issue several of Ronsard’s earliest publications

9

.

A common cultural purpose seems to have united Bèze, Ronsard, Peletier and other scholar-poets. They all sought renown as poets — and as poets who had successfully assimilated the work of their great classical predecessors, and could aspire to a status rivalling theirs. The poets in the Vascosan circle practised the same genres as the ancient poets, and wrote on similar themes. Bèze’s

Poemata

, published for the first time by Conrad Badius in Paris in mid-July 1548, have been summarized as being predominantly ‘Liminary verses,

silvœ

, birthday poems, translations and adaptations of poems from the

Greek Anthology

, epitaphs both serious and humorous, epithalamia, love elegies and epigrams in the Ovidian manner, and Catullan and Martialian epigrams’

10

 ; the same description would encompass a very large part of the output of Ronsard and Du Bellay also. As Du Bellay compiled the first French collection of love sonnets in praise of his Olive, Bèze was extolling his Candida ; indeed, just as Du Bellay and (especially) Ronsard were to be criticised for writing poetry which was erotic or licentious, so too was Bèze on the strength of the poems dedicated to Candida in the collection of 1548. And though Du Bellay, Ronsard and Peletier generally wrote in French while Bèze’s poetry was in Latin, this difference was a superficial and transient one : Ronsard’s first work had been in Latin, and Du Bellay was to become a great Latin poet, while Bèze was shortly to publish poetry in French.

In some of his early poems, Ronsard seems to have drawn inspiration from Bèze

11

. There are also possible echoes of Bèze in Du Bellay

12

. And in the

Poematum libri quatuor

, Du Bellay was to include Bèze in a list of famous contemporary love poets

13

.

(ii) The obscurantism of the Sorbonne

We shall see later, when we look at a famous letter to Melchior Volmar which Bèze published in 1560, that Bèze already had some contact with the views of the Reformers at the time he met Peletier, and had been tempted to adopt those views. He appears however at this time to have refrained from telling his friends about this. However, if he did, Ronsard, Peletier and Du Bellay are not likely to have been discountenanced by any radical opinions he may have proffered. All three were animated by scholarly openness ; all three had an attitude towards the prevailing wisdoms which bordered on the iconoclastic. The tracts on which Peletier was working sought radical reform of orthography and mathematics, and Ronsard and Du Bellay, in their manifestos, insisted time and again on what separated them from their predecessors.

More specifically, all these poets seem also to have had in common an aversion for what they saw as the obscurantism of the Sorbonne. Some years later, Estienne Pasquier was to declare in his

Recherches de la France

that Bèze and Peletier were (with Maurice Scève) the vanguard in a war against ignorance — and, Pasquier added, Ronsard and Du Bellay followed close behind in this endeavour

14

. Pasquier was echoing Ronsard’s denunciations of the ‘vilain monstre Ignorance’, and both Pasquier and Ronsard seem to have been attacking the Sorbonne and its opposition to the study of Greek and Hebrew and to publication of the Bible

15

.

In the expanded edition of

L’Olive

, which appeared in 1550, Du Bellay included a long polemical poem,

La Musagnœomachie

, or ‘battle of the Muses and of Ignorance’, which projects the same sentiment. The monster, benighted and cruel, seems to represent the Sorbonne ; and as enemies of the monster, Du Bellay presents (in addition to poets) men who were to acquire a strong reputation for scholarship and for openness to new ideas — François Olivier, Pierre Du Chastel, Jean de Monluc and Pierre Danès

16

.

Revealingly, Bèze and Du Bellay had a common view on a contemporary

cause célèbre

, the execution in August 1546 of Estienne Dolet. Of all people, Dolet best epitomized the hostility of scholars to the obscurantism of the Sorbonne ; and, unlike others, he sustained that opposition

jusques au feu inclusivement.

Bèze deplored Dolet’s death in his

Poemata

of 1548

17

 ; and Du Bellay, in the

Deffence et illustration

of 1549, extolled Dolet’s memory — and, not content with praising a man whose biblical publications had been condemned by the Sorbonne and who had been burned (with his books) for his opinions, he castigated the ‘crass ignorance’ of the ‘venerable Druids’ of the Sorbonne who oppose vernacular Bibles ; and he expressed the hope that Dolet’s unpublished book on rhetoric will see the light of day

18

(prudently, the young poet dedicated the

Deffence

to his father’s cousin, Cardinal Jean Du Bellay, whose protection, as he noted in the dedicatory letter, would be a shield and protection for him). The kinship between Bèze and Du Bellay on the question of Dolet is all the more remarkable in that Dolet had been abandoned, and publicly, by almost all his humanist friends.

There is no obvious reason why Bèze on the one hand and Ronsard and Du Bellay on the other should have parted company on religion, indeed, Bèze hesitated for a long time before adopting the Reformation

19

. Ronsard and Du Bellay, for their part, deplored that corruption in the Catholic Church which drove so many into the arms of the Reformers, and which remained painfully uncorrected. In one of the odes published in 1550, Ronsard attacked what he called ‘fraudes rommaines’

20

 ; and Du Bellay’s comments on clerical corruption, found notably but by no means exclusively in

Les Regrets

, are well known

21

. Indeed, Ronsard seems to have had some interest in the doctrines of the Reformers, for he was to note later that he had, in his youth, ‘tasted the poisoned honey’ of the Reformers

22

. Thus, Bèze and the two leading poets in the group which was to become known as the Pléiade were probably a lot closer in 1548 — culturally, intellectually and even on religion — than either side was prepared to admit later.

(iii) The parting of the ways

Within months of the (probable) first acquaintance of Bèze and the three poets who could be described as the Pléiade in embryo, this group of young humanist-poets was broken up. Even as his friendship with Peletier deepened, Bèze was being torn in different directions. On the one hand, he was delighted by the literary life of Paris and by his growing reputation as a poet, and was gratified by the income which came with the ecclesiastical benefices his relatives gave him ; on the other hand, he had determined a decade earlier to follow his mentor, the Reformer Melchior Volmar, who had taught him in Orléans and Bourges from 1528 to 1535, to Germany, and he had secretly promised to marry Catherine Denosse

23

. He was to evoke these tensions years later, as we shall see, in his famous letter to Volmar. Bèze left Paris in October 1548 — for Geneva, and as a religious refugee. A contemporary, Nicolas de Nicolaï, attributed his flight to the composition of his epigram in defence of Dolet : ‘I hear he has fled from France to Switzerland, but I do not know what precipitated his flight. However, I suspect that he incurred odium for that epigram in which he extols Dolet, an atheist who was convicted and burned in Paris. If only he had not published that epigram !’

24

. At all events, the Paris

Parlement

put him on trial as a fugitive Reformer and, on 31 May 1550, sentenced him to be burned in effigy

25

. In the meantime, Peletier had left Paris by mid-September 1548, first for Bordeaux and then Poitiers. The reason for his departure is obscure, but the likeliest explanation is that he feared religious persecution

26

.

CHAPTER II
Bèze the Christian poet

(i) Biblical or secular models ?

Bèze seems first to have fallen out with Ronsard and Du Bellay over the question of whether a poet should seek inspiration in the Bible or in secular models. In fact, all three were to become ‘biblical’ poets, and there was little difference between them in substance. Moreover, it was only by accident that this first dispute arose at all. The dispute would hardly be worth looking at were it not that it triggered a long-running feud of great historical interest. To understand the genesis of this first dispute, it is necessary to recall the circumstances in which Ronsard and Du Bellay published their first collections of poems, in 1549 and 1550.

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