Amphion Orator. Michael Taormina

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СКАЧАТЬ indeed completed a famous translation of the letters of SenecaSeneca; his mentor, Du VairDu Vair, composed treatises on ancient stoicstoicismism; and stoicstoicism arguments clearly inform Malherbe’s consolation poems. However, the royal odes do not present the goodcommonwealththe good, virtuevirtue, or the passions in a way fitting to the ideal of the stoicstoicism sage. On the contrary, the goodcommonwealththe good is what is good for the king, the state, or the nationnation; ambition, love, and glory are unabashedly celebrated in the royal odes; and virtuevirtue receives praise not so much for its own sake as for the benefits of peace, prosperity, and justicevirtuejustice. When stoicstoicismism does make an appearance, it is invariably because some overwhelming dark force threatens the hero and the nationnation (e.g. the failed attempt on Henri’s life in 1605), and similar to what one finds in Corneille’s classic heroic plays, it is a way of accepting the will of destiny without abandoning pride or repudiating the desire for glory (Bénichou 34).

      The royal odes present a third alternative to LeagueLeaguer sacrality and to Politique stoicstoicismism: the monarch’s natural virtuevirtue is portrayed as superlative, quasi-divine, and heroic, while the sacerdotal function of kingship is deemphasized. Of course, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did not witness anything like the desacralizationdesacralization of the monarchy that occurred in the eighteenth century.4 Rather, during the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion, as Myriam YardeniYardeni, Myriam shows, the outburst of national sentimentnationnational sentiment (whose various streams emerge simultaneously from different milieus, Catholic and ProtestantProtestant, noble and commoner, and progressively converge toward the late 1580s) is accompanied by a relative secularization of the state. “In the common cause made by those who are worried about their country [patrienationla patrie], the idea of the State replaces every other criteria, and reason of State brings about a total separation of the State from every theologically-defined religion” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 177). With respect to the royal succession, YardeniYardeni, Myriam sees the growing polarization, after 1584, between intransigent LeagueLeaguers and royalist Politiques, whose pamphlets share many common themes with those of the ProtestantProtestants, leading to increasingly incompatible mind-sets that opposed two fundamental principles of the monarchy: the Salic Law (favored by the Politiques and ProtestantProtestants) and the crown’s sacerdotal office (underscored by the LeagueLeaguers). While Leaguers still conceived the monarch as the anointed of God and the eldest son of the Church (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 177), religious tolerance in the name of national unitynationnational unity, proclaimed early on by Michel de L’Hôpital, came into its own in 1588 and 1589, taking the form of a passionate patriotismpatriotism espoused by ProtestantProtestants, coopted by Henri of Navarre, and embraced by the Politiques and other “true Frenchmen” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 183-198, 221). According to YardeniYardeni, Myriam, the deplorable state of the countryside, the fragmentation of political authority, the abuse of seigneurial power, and the cozying up of the LeagueLeague to the Spanish were at the root of the patriotic propaganda that exploded between 1589 and 1593 supporting the Salic Law and extolling the legendary qualities of Henri IV (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 265-273). “The birth of the legend of Henri IV occurs in this period and undoubtedly responds to a national necessity” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 263). Monsieur d’Aubray, for instance, writes in La Satyre Ménipée: “He alone, and no other, like a natural HerculesHercules, born in Gaul, can defeat these hideous monsters, who make France frightening and horrible to her own children. He alone and no other will exterminate these petty half-kings” (ctd. in YardeniYardeni, Myriam 273). “Everyone understands,” writes YardeniYardeni, Myriam, “that the greatness of France resides in its national unitynationnational unity, under a sole French king” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 273). That Henri felt the need, however, to abjure his ProtestantProtestant faith and return to Catholicism in 1594, even if merely a cynical ploy to undercut moderate Catholic support for the LeagueLeague, shows how important religious affiliation remained in the minds of monarch and subjects. Paradoxically, the arrival of Henri IV—with his abjuration, his fervent patriotismpatriotism, his heroic feats of valor, his legitimacy, his credentials as a Frenchman—canalized this embryonic national consciousnessnationnational consciousness but arrested its further development. The complete secularization of the state could not come to pass due to the monarchy’s traditional association with God (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 281), from whom absolutist theorists derived the king’s power (Keohane 17-18). But a significant shift of emphasis had nonetheless taken place. Religion was no longer the essential common denominator but only one thread among many in the fabric of the nationnation (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 281). Henceforth, “the State’s unifying thread is its nationnational characterethoscharacter, while the unifying thread of France is its specifically French characterethoscharacter. So it is the king who embodies not only the essence of France but also its continuity” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 281). King and kingdom, ideologically torn asunder during the civil war, were reunited but on a new basis, a collective national sentimentnationnational sentiment or patriotismpatriotism arising out of what was initially personal loyalty to Henri IV. In other words, YardeniYardeni, Myriam shows that the monarch who had been separated from the kingdom was reunited with something larger—the patrienationla patrie [nationnation]. Malherbe’s royal odes seek to perfect this unification.

      In a climate where national consciousnessnationnational consciousness has displaced but not eradicated religious loyalties, national unitynationnational unity finds its center of gravity in the person of the monarch, still intimately linked to God, but now endowed with natural qualities that appear all the more exceptional. Take, for instance, Jean BodinBodin, Jean’s formula for sovereignty: “he is absolutely sovereign who holds nothing, after God, but from his own sword.”5 Published in 1576, Les Six Livres de la République [The Six Books of the Republic] so tirelessly repeats that the absolute sovereign, whose unbounded powers BodinBodin, Jean takes great pains to enumerate, must obey divine law, that one cannot help but think the jurist doth protest too much—as though the king’s conscience were the last safeguard against the omnipotence BodinBodin, Jean feels compelled to unleash.6 Claude d’Albon’s definition of sovereignty in De la majesté royale [Of Royal Majesty] (1575) exhibits a similar distribution of divine and human powers: “What has placed kings in such veneration has been above all the virtuevirtues and divine powers which have been observed in them alone” (ctd. in YardeniYardeni, Myriam 18). By the late 1580s, however, this formula receives a different emphasis in the minds of royalist apologists. The powers that the king holds from God are deemphasized, and thus his natural powers increase. In 1594, in d’Aubray’s formulation, the monarch has become “a natural HerculesHercules.” The link to God need not be utterly suppressed for the king’s natural virtuevirtue—in BodinBodin, Jean’s image, the sword—to augment considerably, especially in a political climate where the king himself becomes the focus and the catalyst of a new national consciousnessnationnational consciousness. One must bear in mind, of course, that Henri, prior to his accession, had been publicly slandered as a relapsed heretic, and thus he was concerned to demonstrate the sincerity of his conversion and did not neglect to cultivate the sacerdotal aura of kingship—he touched for scrofula, for example, and he reasserted his authority over the Gallican Church. But aware that his conversion was viewed with suspicion, he did not privilege the sacerdotal route to authority. Or at least, he knew that he could not rely on the monarchy’s mystical rituals and symbols in the same way his predecessors had.7 Malherbe’s royal odes reflect this unusual state of affairs. While not neglecting the monarch’s special relationship to God, they stress instead the human couragevirtuecourage, power, or greatness that makes a monarch particularly fit to command and to protect—in short, they underscore the monarch’s natural virtuevirtue.

      Coexisting with the divine powers of the king established by Christian theology, virtuevirtue is a sort of classical substratum with its own political, metaphysical, and moral implications. Although Malherbe is a poet and not a scholastic philosopher, one cannot help but notice that the royal odes add three key predicates to the portraitethosportrait of the “monarque magnanime” [magnanimous monarch] (“Ode au feu roi sur l’heureux succès du voyage de Sedan,” v. 181). In addition to portraying Henri as possessing great and complete virtuevirtue, and having the right concern with honor (NE 4.3 1123a35, 1123b20, 1123b30), the royal odes characterize this moral quality as superlative, quasi-divine, and heroic. The following СКАЧАТЬ