indeed was during his lifetime, generally known from an abbacy given
to him by Henri II. when he was still a boy) was born about 1540, in
the province of Perigord, but the exact date and place of his birth
have not been ascertained. He was the third son of François, Comte de
Bourdeilles, and his mother, Anne de Vivonne de la Chataigneraie, was
the sister of the famous duelist whose encounter with Jarnac his nephew
has described in a well-known passage. In the court of Marguerite
d’Angoulême, the literary nursery of so great a part of the talent
of France at this time, he passed his early youth, went to school at
Paris and at Poitiers, and was made Abbé de Brantôme at the age of
sixteen. He was thus sufficiently provided for, and he never took any
orders, but was a courtier and a soldier throughout the whole of his
active life. Indeed almost the first use he made of his benefice was
to equip himself and a respectable suite for a journey into Italy,
where he served under the Maréchal de Brissac. He accompanied Mary
Stuart to Scotland, served in the Spanish army in Africa, volunteered
for the relief of Malta from the Turks, and again for the expedition
destined to assist Hungary against Soliman, and in other ways led the
life of a knight-errant. The religious wars in his own country gave him
plenty of employment; but in the reigns of Charles IX. and Henri III.
he was more particularly attached to the suite of the queen dowager
and her daughter Marguerite. He was, however, somewhat disappointed in
his hopes of recompense; and after hesitating for a time between the
Royalists, the Leaguers, and the Spaniards, he left the court, retired
into private life, and began to write memoirs, partly in consequence of
a severe accident. He seems to have begun to write about 1594, and he
lived for twenty years longer, dying on the 15th of July, 1614.
The form of Brantôme’s works is, as has been said, peculiar. They are
usually divided into two parts, dealing respectively with men and
women. The first part in its turn consists of many subdivisions, the
chief of which is made up of the _Vies des Grand Capitaines Étrangers
et Français_, while others consist of separate disquisitions or essays,
_Des Rodomontades Espagnoles_, “On some Duels and Challenges in
France” and elsewhere, “On certain Retreats, and how they are sometimes
better than Battles,” etc. Of the part which is devoted to women the
chief portion is the celebrated _Dames Galantes_, which is preceded
by a series of _Vies des Dames Illustres_, matching the _Grands
Capitaines_. _The Dames Galantes_ is subdivided into eight discourses,
with titles which smack of Montaigne. These discourses are, however, in
reality little but a congerie of anecdotes, often scandalous enough.
Besides these, his principal works, Brantôme left divers _Opuscula_,
some of which are definitely literary, dealing chiefly with Lucan.
None of his works were published in his lifetime, nor did any appear
in print until 1659. Meanwhile manuscript copies had, as usual, been
multiplied, with the result, also usual, that the text was much
falsified and mutilated.
The great merit of Brantôme lies in the extraordinary vividness of his
powers of literary presentment. His style is careless, though it is
probable that the carelessness is not unstudied. But his irregular,
brightly coloured, and easily flowing manner represents, as hardly any
age has ever been represented, the characteristics of the great society
of his time. It is needless to say that the morals of that time were
utterly corrupt, but Brantôme accepts them with a placid complacency
which is almost innocent. No writer, perhaps, has ever put things
more disgraceful on paper; but no writer has ever written of such
things in such a perfectly natural manner. Brantôme was in his way a
hero-worshipper, though his heroes and heroines were sometimes oddly
coupled. Bayard and Marguerite de Valois represent his ideals, and a
good knight or a beautiful lady _de par le monde_ can do no wrong. This
unquestioning acceptance of, and belief in, the moral standards of his
own society give a genuineness and a freshness to his work which are
very rare in literature. Few writers, again, have had the knack of
hitting off character, superficially it is true, yet with sufficient
distinction, which Brantôme has. There is something individual about
all the innumerable characters who move across his stage, and something
thoroughly human about all, even the anonymous men and women, who
appear for a moment as the actors in some too frequently discreditable
scene. With all this there is a considerable vein of moralising in
Brantôme which serves to throw up the relief of his actual narratives.
He has sometimes been compared to Pepys, but, except in point of
garrulity and of readiness to set down on paper anything that came into
their heads, there is little likeness between the two. Brantôme was
emphatically an _écrivain_ (unscholarly and Italianised as his phrase
sometimes appears, if judged by the standards of a severer age), and
some of the best passages from his works are among the most striking
examples of French prose.
[From _A Short History of French Literature_. 6th Ed. Oxford, 1901.]
[Illustration: Decorative scrollwork above chapter start]
NOTES TO VOLUME I
HISTORICAL NOTE
[1] P. VII:
◆The Duc d’Alençon was later called the Duc d’Anjou. He died at
Château-Thierry, on Sunday, June 10, 1584, from dysentery, which
had almost reduced him to a shadow. Nevers, in his _Mémoires_ (Vol.
I, p. 91), maintains that he was poisoned by a maid of one of his
mistresses. According to L’Estoile’s account, the Duke was given
a magnificent funeral in Paris. He was by no means handsome; his
pimpled and deformed nose earned for him an epigram during his
expedition in Flanders:
Flamands, ne soyez estonnez
Si à François voyez deux nez:
Car par droit, raison et usage,
Faut deux nez à double visage.
[2] P. VIII:
◆Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de l’Abbaye de Brantôme. Was born
in Périgord, 1527; died 1614. Of an old and distinguished family.
Served his apprenticeship to war under the famous Captain François
de Guise. Later Gentleman of the Chamber to two French Kings in
succession, Charles IX. and Henri III., being high in favour
with the latter; Chamberlain to the Duc d’Alençon. As soldier or
traveller visited most parts of Europe; intimate with many of the
most famous men of his day, including the poet Ronsard. Some time
after the death of Charles IX. he retired (disappointed apparently
by a diminution of Court favour, and suffering from the results of
a serious accident due to a fall from his horse) to his estates
in Guyenne, where he employed his leisure in the composition of a
number of voluminous works based on reminiscences of the active
period of his life.
These are:
_Vies des Hommes illustres et grands Capitaines français_,
_Vies des Grands Capitaines étrangers_,
_Vies des Dames illustres_,
_Vies des Dames galantes_,
_Anecdotes touchant des Duels_,
_Rodomontades et Jurements espagnols_,
and sundry fragments.
[3] P. XXVI:
Souvent femme varie,
Bien fol qui s’y fie!
(Woman is changing ever; fool the man who trusts her!)
[4] P. 3:
◆The word which Molière popularized does not date from that time;
it was used much earlier, and in the thirteenth century we see a
man pay a fine of twenty ounces of gold for calling an unfortunate
husband _coucou_ (cuckold). (_Usatica regni Majorici_, _Anno_
1248.) About the middle of the fifteenth century, in a letter
of remission to a guilty fellow, we find this curious remark:
“_Cogul_, which is the same (in the vernacular) as _coulz_ or
_couppault_, is one of the vilest insults to be thrust at a married
man.” At times the word _coux_ was used:
Suis-je mis en la confrairie
Saint Arnoul le seignenur des Coux.
But it was just about the fifteenth century that the confusion
appeared between this word and the bird of April (cuckoo); the word
_coucou_ (cuckoo), which had been explained by a fable, merely
imitated the cry, whereas the word _cocu_ (cuckold) had been
derived from the early Low Latin _cugus_. “Couquou, thus named
after its manner of singing and because it is famed for laying its
eggs in the nests of other birds; so, inconsistently, he is called
a _cocu_ (cuckold) in whose nest another man comes.” (Bouchet,
_Serées_.) There is also a play by Passerat on the metamorphosis of
a cuckoo which is worth mentioning. (Bib. Nat., manuscrit français,
22565, f^o 24 v^o.)
[5] P. 4:
◆In the present work the Author constantly uses the words _belle et
honneste_ (fair and honourable) to describe such and such a lady,
of whom at the same time he speaks as being an unmitigated whore.
But when he adds, as he does sometimes, _vertueuse_ (virtuous) to
_belle et honneste_, he implies by this that the lady was chaste
and modest, and raised no talk about herself.
[6] P. 7:
◆The prothonotary Baraud was one of those churchmen of whom Brantôme
says elsewhere: “It was customary at the time that prothonotaries,
even those of good families, should scarcely be learned, but give
themselves up to pleasure,” etc.
[7] P. 10:
◆Cosimo de Medici, who had his wife Eleonora de Toledo poisoned. The
daughter of whom Brantôme speaks was Isabella, whom he married to
Paolo Orsini, the Duke of Bracciano. But Cosimo had too marked an
affection for this daughter; although she was married, he insisted
that she live in Florence and remain with him. Vasari, who painted
for the Medici one of the arches of the Palazzo Vecchio, one day
surprised the father and the daughter, and recounts the strange
adventure which he witnessed. After the death of Cosimo, Paolo
Orsini called Isabella to his apartment, and there, according to
Litta, “with a rope around her neck coldly strangled her on the
night of July 16, 1576, in the act of consummating the marriage.”
(Medici, t, IV, tavola xiv.) That unhappy woman was one of the most
marvellous of her time: beautiful, cultured, musical, she had all
the brilliant advantages of the mind and of the body. Meanwhile,
she had had as a lover Troilo Orsini, who was attached to her
husband as a bodyguard, and who was assassinated in France, where
he had retired.
◆Louis de Clermont de Bussy d’Amboise was born towards the middle
of the XVIth Century, and took an active part in the Massacre of
Saint Bartholomew. On that occasion, profiting by the confusion,
he murdered his kinsman Antoine de Clermont, with whom he was at
law for the possession of the Marquisat de Renel. Having obtained
from his patron the Duc d’Anjou the governorship of the Castle of
Angers, he made himself the terror of the countryside. Letters of
his addressed to the wife of the Comte de Montsoreau, whom he was
endeavouring to seduce, having fallen into Charles IX.’s hands,
were by him shown to the husband. The latter forced his wife
to write a reply to her lover appointing a rendez-vous. On his
appearing there, Montsoreau and a band of armed men fell upon and
despatched him (1579). The comment of the historian de Thou is in
these words: “The entire Province was overjoyed at Bussy’s death,
while the Duke of Anjou himself was not sorry to be rid of him.”
[Transl.]
[8] P. 11:
◆René de Villequier, Baron de Clairvaux, murdered his first wife,
Françoise de la Marck, in cold blood, in 1577 at the Castle of
Poitiers, where the Court was residing. He killed at the same time
a young girl who was holding a mirror before her mistress at the
moment. According to some authorities he acted on the suggestion of
the king, Henri III. At any rate he got off with absolute impunity,
and within a very short time after was decorated by his Sovereign
with the Order of the St. Esprit. [Transl.]
[9] P. 12:
◆Sampietro, the famous soldier of fortune, and commander of the
Italian troops under the French Kings Francis I. and Henri II.,
was born near Ajaccio in Corsica in 1501. He was of humble birth,
but his many brilliant feats of war made him celebrated throughout
Europe. He actually strangled his wife,—Vanina, a lady of good
family, but not in consequence of such misconduct on her part
as Brantôme represents. The real circumstances were as follows.
Sampietro having attempted to raise his Corsican compatriots in
revolt against the Genoese, he was imprisoned and all but put to
death by the latter. This roused in him so implacable a hatred
of the Genoese State, that on learning that his wife during his
absence at Constantinople had condescended to implore his pardon
from the Genoese, he deliberately put her to death in the way
described. He was himself eventually murdered, being treacherously
stabbed in the back by his Lieutenant and friend Vitelli at the
instigation of his Genoese enemies. [Transl.]
◆This is another allusion to Paolo Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, who
could not overtake Troilo Orsini, and killed Isabella that he might
marry Vittoria Accoramboni, whose husband he had assassinated.
(Litta, Orsini, t, VII, tav. XXIX.)
[10] P. 15:
◆The Avalos family originally came from Spain, and gave Italy the
Marquis de Pescaire, one of the greatest captains of the sixteenth
century. It is of him that Brantôme speaks as the _viceroy_. Maria
d’Avalos was married to Carlos Gesualdo, prince of Venousse, and
was the niece of this Marquis de Pescaire and of Del Guasto, whom
Brantôme describes as “dameret” (foppish) to such a degree that he
perfumed the saddles of his horses. He was the one who lost the
battle of Cérisoles in 1544.
[11] P. 16:
◆Iliad, Bk. III,—
◆Paul de Caussade de Saint-Mégrin, favorite of the king, was killed
on leaving the Louvre by a band of assassins led by Mayenne. He was
the lover of Catherine de Clèves, Duchess de Guise. Henri IV., then
king of Navarre, who had good reasons not to like favorites, says
apropos of this: “I am thankful to the Duc de Guise for refusing
to tolerate that a bed favorite like Saint-Mégrin should make him
a cuckold. This treatment ought to be meted out to all the little
court gallants who try to approach the princesses with the aim of
making love to them.”
◆Françoise de Saillon, married to Jacques de Rohan. She was saved by
a miracle, says Jean Bourdigné’s chronicle, in 1526.
[12] P. 17:
◆Brantôme refers to Françoise de Foix, Chateaubriant’s lady,
regarding whom an old pamphlet of 1606 says as follows: “She could
do what she desired, and she desired many things that she ought not
to at all. During her lifetime, her husband was ever afflicted and
tormented.” (Factum pour M. le connestable contre Madame de Guise,
1606.) That is also the opinion of Gaillard in his _Histoire de
Françoise I^{er}_, t. VII, p. 179, in the 1769 edition, who sees in
this passage an allusion to Mme. de Chateaubriant.
◆Jean de Bourdigné, author of _Histoire agrégative des Annales et
Chroniques d’Anjou et du Maine_ (Angers, 1529, fol.), was born at
Angers. He was a priest and Canon of the Cathedral of his native
town. The book is very rare; as a history it is almost worthless,
being full of the wildest fables.
◆Francis I. king of France, 1515–1547.
[13] P. 21:
◆Philip II. had his wife Isabelle de Valois poisoned; he suspected
her of adultery with Don Carlos, his son of a former marriage.
[14] P. 22:
◆Louis X., surnamed le Hutin, had caused his wife Marguerite de
Bourgogne to be strangled at the Château-Gaillard. She had been
imprisoned there in 1314. As to Gaston II., of Foix, outraged by
the life of debauch Jeanne d’Artois (his mother) led, he obtained
from Philippe de Valois an order of internment in 1331.
◆Anne Boleyn, who was the cause of the Anglican schism. The king
had had her beheaded because of her infidelity and married Jane
Seymour. As to the charge of which Brantôme speaks, Henry VIII. was
so keen on that matter that he had caused Catherine Howard to be
beheaded because he had not been quite convinced of her virginity.
[15] P. 23:
◆Baldwyn II., cousin and successor of the first Baldwyn, king of
Jerusalem, brother of Godfrey de Bouillon, reigned from 1119 to
1131. Brantôme is mistaken here. Baldwyn II. had married Morphie,
daughter of Prince de Mélitine; but he had not been formerly
married. Does he wish to speak of Baudoin I^{er}, who repudiated
the daughter of the Prince d’Arménie and then Adéle de Monferrat?
(Cf. Guillaume de Tyr, liv. II, c. xv.)
◆Read _Melitene_; this is how the Ancients named this town, the
modern name of which is _Meletin_, in Latin _Malatia_; in Armenia,
on the Euphrates.
◆_History of the Holy Land_; by William of Tyre.
◆Louis VII. succeeded his father, Louis le Gros, on the throne of
France 1137, and died 1180. His wife, whom he divorced soon after
his return from the Holy Land, whither she had accompanied him,
was Eleanore of Guienne. This divorce was very painful to Louis
VII., surnamed le Jeune, because he had to give up the duchy of
Aquitaine and cast off the beautiful equestrian seal which he had
had engraved for himself in his rank as duke.
[16] P. 24:
◆Suetonius, _Cæsar_, Chap. VI. Brantôme is thinking of Clodius; but
Cicero never made the speech in question.
◆Brantôme (Lalanne edition, t. VIII, p. 198) repeats this anecdote
without giving further details.
[17] P. 25:
◆Fulvia. (Sallust, Chap. XXIII.)
◆Octavius (Augustus), first Roman Emperor, was the son of C.
Octavius, by Atia, a daughter of Julia, the sister of Julius Cæsar.
He was therefore the grand-nephew of the latter, the founder of the
Empire and virtual, though not nominal, first Emperor. He married
Livia after his divorce of Scribonia.
[18] P. 26:
◆Caligula, the third Roman Emperor, A. D. 37–41. His name was Caius
Cæsar, Caligula being properly only a friendly nickname, “Little
Boots,” bestowed on him as a boy by the soldiers in his father,
Germanicus’ camp in Germany, where he was brought up. He was
inordinately cruel and licentious and madly extravagant. Eventually
murdered.
◆Brantôme does not appear to know very well the persons he is
speaking of here: Hostilla is Orestilla; Tullia is Lollia;
Herculalina is Urgulanilla.
[19] P. 27:
◆Claudius, the fourth Roman Emperor, A. D. 41–54. The notorious
Messalina was his third wife. For a lurid picture of her
immoralities see Juvenal’s famous Sixth Satire.
[20] P. 28:
◆Giovanni Boccaccio, the author of the Decameron, was born at
Paris in 1313, being the (illegitimate) son of a wealthy merchant
of Florence. He died 1375 at Certaldo, a village near Florence, the
original seat of the family.
◆Does the following _chanson_ refer to the same woman?
On void Simonne
Proumener aux bordeaux
Matin, soir, nonne,
Avec ses macquereaux.
(Bib. Nat., ms. français 22565, f^o 41 v^o.)
[21] P. 29:
◆This is indeed one of the most curious passages of the book,
and I am glad to remove one of Lalanne’s doubts. Brantôme is
really talking of a statue, an antique piece which was found July
21, 1594, in a field near the Saint-Martin priory. It had been
admirably conserved. Unfortunately, Louis XIV. having claimed it
later, it was placed on a barge which sank in the Garonne, and was
never recovered. (O’Reilly, History of Bordeaux, 1863, Vol. II.)
The statue is described as having had one breast uncovered and
curled hair, a description that agrees only partly with Visconti’s
type (_Iconographie romaine_, t. II., planche 28), in which
Messalina is not décolleté and carries her son. Was the Bordeaux
statue indeed a Messalina?
[22] P. 31:
◆Brantôme is mistaken; Nero caused Octavia to be killed. (See
Suetonius, _Nero_, Chap. XXXV.)
◆Nero, fifth Roman Emperor, A. D. 54–63.
◆Domitian succeeded his father Titus on the Imperial throne; reigned
from A. D. 81 to 96.
◆Pertinax, a man of peasant birth, but who had carved out for
himself a distinguished career as soldier and administrator, was
elected Emperor by the Prætorian Guards on the murder of Commodus,
A. D. 193. Himself murdered after a two months’ reign.
[23] P. 32:
◆Septimius Severus, Emperor from A. D. 193 to 211. He was a great
general and conducted successful campaigns in Britain, where he
died,—at York.
[24] P. 33:
◆Philippe Auguste, King of France 1180–1223. Philip Augustus
repudiated Ingeburga after twenty-eight days of marriage, and
married Agnes de Méranie. The censure of the church induced the
king to discard the second marriage and return to Ingeburga (1201).
The latter was reputed to have a secret vice which greatly angered
the king.
[25] P. 34:
◆Marguerite, daughter of the Archduke Maximilian, whom Charles VIII.
rejected in order to marry Anne of Brittany (1491). Louis XII.
turned away Jeanne in order to marry the widow of Charles VIII.
◆Charles VIII., 1483–1498, of the House of Valois.
◆Louis XII., successor of the last named, reigned 1498–1515, the
immediate predecessor of Francis I.
[26] P. 35:
◆Alfonso V., king of Aragon, who left maxims which were collected by
Antonio Beccadelli, surnamed Panormita.
◆Twenty-second tale. M. de Bernage was equerry of King Charles VIII.
and the lord of Civray, near Chenonceaux.
[27] P. 36:
◆It is not Semiramis, but Thomyris, who, according to Justin (Bk.
I.) and Herodotus (Bk. II.), thrust the head of Cyrus into a vat of
blood. Xenophon says, on the contrary, that Cyrus died a natural
death.
[28] P. 40:
◆Albert de Gondy, Duke de Retz, was reputed as a practitioner of
Aretino’s principles. His wife, Claudine Catherine de Clermont,
deserved, perhaps wrongfully, to occupy a place in the pamphlet
entitled: “Bibliothèque de Mme. de Montpensier.”
[29] P. 41:
◆Elephantis is referred to by Martial and Suetonius as the writer of
amatory works—“molles Elephantidos libelli,” but nothing is known
of her otherwise. She was probably a Greek, not a Roman.
◆Heliogabalus, or Elagabalus, Emperor from A. D. 218 to 222. Born at
Emesa, and originally high-priest of Elagabalus the Syrian Sun-god.
After a very short reign marked by every sort of extravagant folly,
he was succeeded by Alexander Severus.
◆The Cardinal de Lorraine, Cardinal du Perron, and others, had been
already represented in the same way along with Catherine de Medici,
Mary Stuart and the Duchesse de Guise, in two paintings mentioned
in the _Légende du Cardinal de Lorraine_, fol. 24, and in the
_Réveille-Matin des Français_, pp. 11 and 123.
[30] P. 42:
◆I agree with Lalanne that this prince was no other than the Duke
d’Alençon. As to the fable of the coupling of the lions, it came
from an error of Aristotle, which was repeated by most naturalists
until the eighteenth century.
[31] P. 45:
◆Ronsard the poet was born 1524, being the son of Louis de Ronsard,
sieur de la Poissonnière, an officer in the household of King
Francis I., and died 1586. He enjoyed an immense reputation in
his lifetime, and was the favourite poet of Mary Queen of Scots.
Her lover, the unfortunate Chastelard, read his _Hymne de la
mort_ on the scaffold, and refused any other book or confessor to
prepare him for death. Originator and leading member of the famous
_Pleïade_ of Poets.
[32] P. 46:
◆He was a Florentine, Luigi di Ghiaceti, who had grown rich by
negotiating the taxes with the king. He married the beautiful
Mlle. d’Atri, and to please her he had bought for 400,000 francs
the estate of Chateauvilain. Mme. de Chateauvilain was a model
of virtue, if Brantôme is to be believed; but we wonder, fully
agreeing with the author of the notes to the _Journal de Henri
III._, where this lady could have acquired her virtue—was it at the
court or at her husband’s estate? Besides this gallery of pictures
which is mentioned here, Louis Adjecet (the French form for Luigi
Ghiaceti) had mistresses with whom he indulged in the low appetites
of rich upstarts. He was killed in 1593 by an officer; and his wife
withdrew to Langres, where she lived with her children.
[33] P. 47:
◆Ariosto, _Orlando furioso_, canto XLII., stanza 98.
Ecco un donzello a chi l’ufficio tocca
Por su la mensa un bel nappo d’or fino....
◆Very likely Bernardin Turissan. Brantôme is perhaps referring to
the _Ragionamento della Nanna_, printed in Paris in 1534, without
the name of the publisher. The _peggio_ must have been one of those
infamous Italian books which the noblemen of the court wrangled
over. The _Nanna_ was well known at the French court (see _Le
Divorce satyrique_, t. I. of the _Journal de Henri III._, 1720
edition, p. 190).
◆Bernardino Turisan, who used as his sign the well-known mark of the
Manutii, his kinsmen.
◆Pietro Aretino was born at Arezzo in Tuscany in 1492. The natural
son of a plain gentleman he became the companion and protégé of
Princes, and their unscrupulous and adroit flatterer. Friend of
Michael Angelo and Titian. His works are full of learning and
wit,—and obscenity.
[34] P. 48:
◆This book, entitled _La Somme des péchés et les remèdes d’iceux_
(Compendium of all Sins, and the Remedies of the same), printed at
Lyons, by Charles Pesnot c. 1584, 4to, and several times since, was
compiled by Jean Benedict, a Cordelier monk of Brittany. He has
filled it with filth and foulness as full as did the Jesuit Sanchez
his treatise _De Matrimonio_ (on Marriage). It is a singular fact
that a work so indecent should have been none the less dedicated to
the Holy Virgin. As we see from the text, Brantôme and his fellows
quite well understood how to turn such works to their advantage and
find fresh stories of lubricity in their pages.
[35] P. 49:
◆This Bonvisi, a Lyons banker, had had as receiver Field Marshal
de Retz, the son of a Gondi, who had become a bankrupt in Lyons.
(Notes of the Confession de Sancy, 1720 edition, t. II., p. 244.)
[36] P. 51:
◆L. Aurelius Commodus (not Sejanus), Emperor A. D. 180–192, was the
son of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Faustina. Annius Verus was
his brother, and received the appellation of _Cæsar_ along with his
elder brother in 166.
[37] P. 58:
◆_Antonomasia_, properly.
[38] P. 60: