Agrippa d'Aubigne.

by Madeleine Lazard
Review by: Francois Rigolot
The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 207-208
Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal
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Book Reviews 207

did leave Portugaland was eventuallygrantedthe title of Count ofVidigueirain 1519.
The weakestpart of Bouchon'sbiography,however,is the period 1521-24, which saw
the adventofJolo III and the re-emergenceof Gama.Whatexactlywas Gama'srelationship
toJolo III?What role did Gamaplayin politicalaffairsin theseyears?Ratherthantreatthese
questions,Bouchon abruptlyjumps to the year 1524 as Gama,now a viceroy,is preparingto
embarkon his third and final voyage to India.Moreover,Bouchon assertsthat Gama had
resolvedto put forwardhis own conception of governmentin India.Whatexactly was his
program?Bouchon arguesthatit meant a repudiationof Manuel'sexpansionistdesignsand
its replacementwith a more pragmaticpolicy of retrenchment.Her argument,however,rests
on the interpretationof a singleletter that Gama'sbrother,Dom Aires,wrote to Manuel in
1519, in which he arguedthe need for concentratingPortugueseresourcesat key points,
limitingthe numberof fortresses,nor allowingprivateindividualsto participatein the Asian
trade.Is it possibleto conclude from such scantevidence that Gamapossesseda fully articulatedpoliticalprogram?Ascertaininghis views on policy is very difficult,since Gamadied in
office after only a few months as viceroy.Bouchon's biographyends ratherabruptlywith
Gama'sdeathand suffersgreatlyfromthe absenceof a conclusion.Althoughwe gain a better
understandingof Gama'scharacterby the end of the book, crucialquestionsabout Gama's
role in the evolutionof the PortugueseEmpirewill continue to beckon.
Edward Shannon Tenace ...................................................
Lyon College
Agrippa d'Aubigne. Madeleine Lazard.Paris:Fayard,1998. 567 pp. FF 160.
Renaissancespecialistsarefamiliarwith Madeleine Lazard'seditorialwork and scholarship on humanist comedy. In the last five years,however, she has also become a prolific
biographerof sixteenth-century writers, including Montaigne (Fayard,1992), Rabelais
(Hachette, 1993), and Brantame (Fayard,1995). She now offers us a wonderfully vivid
biographyof Agrippa d'Aubigne (1552-1630), the great and wild baroquewriter who is
inexplicablylittle known even by cultivatedreaders,in Franceas elsewhere.D'Aubigne's
tumultuouslife readslike a novel, and Lazard'selegant narrativeturnsa cornucopiaof colorfulfactsinto pleasurableandprofitablereading,for scholarsas well as nonspecialists.
Born in the GoldenAge of the FrenchRenaissance,d'Aubignelived as a passionateCalvinist throughthe bloody yearsof the "Warsof Religion,"which ragedin Franceunder the
reign of Catherinede' Medici'sthree sons.He fought for the Huguenot causealongsidehis
friend, Henri de Navarre,and, to his horror, saw him convert to Roman Catholicism,
become King Henri IV,and reestablishpeace (Edictof Nantes, 1598), in d'Aubigne'sopinion, at the expense of Protestantinterests.D'Aubigne was almosteighty yearsold when he
died-in the reign of LouisXIII-a bitter,disillusionedexile in CalvinistGeneva.
As a writer,whether in love or at war,d'Aubigneused his books as weaponsto win over
his readersto his combativecause,which as Lazardremindsus with a tinge of humor,was
alwaysinseparablefrom God's.D'Aubigne worked on his famous epic and satiricmasterpiece, LesTragiques,
for some forty years;yet, ironically,the poem was publishedtoo late (in
1616) to wield any influence on the religious cause it was meant to serve.Retelling the
story of such a full life necessarilyimplies reconstructingthe largerhistoricaland cultural
context of an incrediblycomplex period. ProfessorLazardis particularlygood at moving
from one perspectiveto the other.Love affairs,duels,and escapesare strategicallydescribed
againstthe backdropof endlesslyhorrifyingmassacres(Spielberg's"SavingPrivateRyan"is
tameby comparison).Lazardoscillatesfrom micro- to macro-historywith remarkableease
and effectiveness.We are left with the powerfulportraitof a fanaticalHuguenot who per-

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208

Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXX / 1 (1999)

verselyrelishedbeing persecuted,a man full of contradictionswho was never able to reconcile within himself the soldier'srage to kill, the sinner'sremorsefor killing, and the saint's
belief in his God-inspiredmission and God-drivendestiny.
When ProfessorLazardcomes to analyzingd'Aubigne'sliteraryproduction,she deftly
to lesserknown works:love poetry ("Le Printemps,"
shiftsher attentionfrom LesTragiques
"L'Hecatombea Diane");religious satire ("Confession catholique du Sieur de Sancy");
politicaltheory ("Traitedes guerresciviles,""Du Debvoir mutuel des royset des subjects");
historiography (the wonderfully biased "Histoire universelle");picaresquefiction ("Les
Aventuresdu Baronde Faeneste");and,finally,autobiography("SaVie a ses enfants").The
only aspectof d'Aubigne'spersonalityLazardunderestimatesis his obsessionwith Pierrede
Ronsardas France'sleadingliteraryfigure.Agrippa'sdeepestwish was to be Ronsard'sson.
The generational link had been providentially established:in his youth, Agrippa loved
Diane,who happenedto be the niece of CassandraSalviati,the woman Ronsardcelebrated
in his Amours.Although Ronsard was a staunchdefenderof the Catholic faith, d'Aubigne
believed he had inheritedRonsard'spoetic mission,even though his "divinefrenzy"took a
the paganMuse
radicallydifferentcourse from Ronsard's.In his monumentalLesTragiques,
is abandonedfor the Holy Spirit, and Apollo's furor yields to the eschatologicalspirit of
divine Revelation.Under the guise of Prometheus,whose presencepervadesthe prefatory
apparatusof the book, God'snewly appointedprophetclaimshe has stolen the celestialfire
to hand it down to his fellow mortals.D'Aubigne usurpsRonsard'splace to become the
ideal Renaissancewriter whose objectiveis to arousethe readers'"real"emotions.Directly
inspiredby divine fire,Agrippabearswitness to the New Covenantbetween God and His
chosen people:his book becomes a latter-daysequence to the corpus of the HolyWrit.
Lazard's
trulyremarkablebiographyis unfortunatelymarredby a numberof formalinacIn the bibliography,the Pleiadeedition of d'Aubigne'sOeucuraciesand misrepresentations.
vresis oddly laid out with incorrect punctuation. Eight works by Gilbert Schrenck are
surprisinglyattributedto Albert-MarieSchmidt.The authorof the monumentalHistoirede
la tolerance
isJosephLecler(not Leclerc).Theeditorsof a book on "libertede conscience"are
Hans R. Guggisberg(not Ouggisbert)and FrankLestringant(not Leshingaut).Major critical workswritten in foreignlanguagesor by non-Frenchscholarsare often ignored.Thisis
the case of Richard Regosin's The Poetryof Inspiration.
Agrippa d'Aubigne'sLesTragiques
et intersubjectivite:
Les "Tragiques"
d'Agrippad'Aubigne
(1970), and Ullrich Langer'sRhetorique
classicstudy is misrepresentedas an articlepublishedin a magazine
(1983). ImbrieBuffurm's
LesTragiques:A
Studyof the
supposedlyentitled Poetry;the correct title is Agrippad'Aubigne's
BaroqueStylein Poetry(YaleUP, 1951).The index is often misleading.Although most placenames are not recorded,Talcy,the location of Diane's chateau,is made an exception (but,
then, why is it mentionedonly three times-once with a wrong page)?A randomsampling
shows that Dante andVirgilare mentioned on p. 378, not p. 379; Callot p. 379, not p. 380;
Jeanneret p. 377, not p. 378. Typographicalerrors occur on p. 15 (obviously,the future
Madamede Maintenonis named Francoise,not Francoisd'Aubigne);p. 43, note 27: reference to the Weber edition is incorrect (p. 853, not 253); p. 77: read"se sert,"not "de sert;"
p. 268: "Henri III, devenu saint Clement"should read:"l'assassind'Henri III, devenu saint
Clement,"since the monk who murderedthe lastValoisking was namedJacquesClement.
Princeton University
Frangois Rigolot ............

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