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This medal
has been minted in France in 1818 to commemorate the French historian, books
collector and President of the Parliament of Paris, Jacques de THOU, 1553 – 1617.
This is a
medal of the prominent French medalist, CAUNOIS.
Jacques
Auguste de Thou (Thuanus) (October 8, 1553, Paris
– May 7, 1617, Paris) was a French historian,
book collector and president of the Parlement de Paris.
av. The portrait
of Jacques Auguste de Thou
rv. The
inscription in Latin
size
- 41 mm, (ca 1⅝ “)
weight – 39.40 gr
(1.39 oz)
metal
– bronze, authentic patina
Jacques Auguste de Thou was the grandson of Augustin de Thou, president of the parlement of Paris (d.
1544), and the third son of Christophe de Thou (d. 1582), premier président of the same parlement,
who had had ambitions to produce a history of France. His uncle was Nicolas
de Thou, Bishop of Chartres (1573–1598). With this
family background, he developed a love of literature, a firm but tolerant
piety, and a loyalty to the Crown.
At seventeen, he began his studies in law, first at Orléans, later at Bourges, where he made
the acquaintance of François
Hotman, and finally at Valence, where he had Jacques Cujas for his
teacher and Joseph Justus Scaliger as a friend. He was at first
intended for the Church; he received the minor
orders, and on the appointment of his uncle Nicolas to the episcopate
succeeded him as a canon of Notre-Dame de Paris.
During the next ten years he seized every opportunity for
profitable travel. In 1573 he accompanied Paul
de Foix on an embassy,
which enabled him to visit most of the Italian courts; he formed a friendship
with Arnaud d'Ossat (afterwards Bishop of Rennes, bishop of Bayeux and a
cardinal), who was secretary to the ambassador. In the following year he formed
part of the brilliant cortege which brought King Henry III back to France,
after his flight from his Polish kingdom. He also visited several parts of
France, and at Bordeaux met Michel de Montaigne. On the death of his
elder brother Jean (April 5, 1579), who was maître des requêtes -to the parlement, his relations prevailed on him to leave
the Church, and he entered the parlement and got married (1588). In the same
year he was appointed conseiller d'état. He served faithfully
both Henry III and Henry IV, because they both represented legitimate
authority.
He succeeded his uncle Augustin as président à mortier (1595), and used his authority in the interests of religious
peace. He negotiated the Edict of Nantes with the Protestants, while in the name of the principles of the
Gallican
Church he opposed the
recognition of the Council of Trent.
After the death of Henry IV, de Thou had a disappointment; the queen
regent, Marie de Medici, refused him
the position of premier président of the parlement, appointing him
instead as a member of the Conseil des finances intended to take the
place of Sully. This was to him a demotion; he continued, however, to serve
under her, and took part in the negotiations of the treaties concluded at Ste
Menehould (1614) and Loudun (1616). He died in Paris.
His attitude exposed him to the animosity of the League party
and of the Holy See, and to their persecution when the first edition of his
history appeared. This history was his life's work. In a letter of March 31,
1611, addressed to the president Pierre Jeannin, he described
his labours. His materials were drawn from his rich library, which he
established in the Rue des Poitevins in the year 1587, with the two brothers,
Pierre and Jacques Dupuy, as librarians. His
object was to produce a scientific and unbiased work, and for this reason he
wrote it in Latin, giving it as title Historia sui temporis. The
first 18 books, embracing the period from 1545–1560, appeared in 1604 (1 vol.
folio), and the work was at once attacked by those whom the author himself
calls les envieux et les
factieux.
The second part, dealing with the first wars of religion
(1560–1572) including the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, was put on
the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (November 9, 1609). The third part (up to 1574), and the fourth
(up to 1584), which appeared in 1607 and 1608, caused a similar outcry, in
spite of de Thou's efforts to remain just and impartial. He carried his scruples
to the point of forbidding any translation of his book into French, because in
the process there might, to use his own words, "be committed great faults
and errors against the intention of the author"; this, however, did not
prevent the Jesuit Father Machault from accusing him of being "a false
Catholic, and worse than an open heretic" (1614); de Thou, we may say, was
a member of the third order of St Francis. As an answer to his detractors, he
wrote his Mémoires, which are a useful complement to the History of
his own Times.
To de Thou we also owe certain other works: a treatise De re accipitraria (1784), a Life, in Latin, of Papyre
Masson, some Poemata sacra, etc.
Three years after the death of de Thou, Pierre Dupuy and Nicolas Rigault brought out the first complete edition of the Historia sui
temporis, comprising 138 books; they appended to it the Mémoires,
also in Latin (1620). A hundred years later, Samuel Buckley published a
critical edition, the material for which had been collected in France itself by
Thomas
Carte (1733). De Thou
was treated as a classic, an honour which he deserved. His history is a model
of exact research, drawn from the best sources, and presented in an elegant and
animated style; unfortunately, even for the men of the Renaissance, Latin was a dead language; it was impossible for de Thou to find exact
equivalents for technical terms of geography or of administration.
As the reasons which had led de Thou to forbid the translation
of his monumental history disappeared with his death, there was soon a move to
make it more accessible. It was translated first into German. A Protestant pastor, G Boule, who was afterwards converted to Catholicism, translated it
into French, but could not find a publisher. The first translation printed was
that of Pierre Du Ryer (1657), but it is mediocre and incomplete.
In the following century the abbé Prévost, who was a
conscientious collaborator with the Benedictines of Saint-Maur before he became the author of the more profane work Manon Lescaut, was in treaty
with a Dutch publisher for a translation which was to consist of ten volumes;
only the first volume appeared (1733). But competition, perhaps of an unfair
character, sprang up. A group of translators, who had the good fortune of being
able to avail themselves of Buckley's fine edition, succeeded in bringing out
all at the same time a translation in sixteen volumes (De Thou, Histoire
universelle, Fr. trans. By Charles le Beau, Le Mascrier, the Abbé Des Fontaines, 1734). As to the Mémoires
they had already been translated by Le Petit and Des Ifs (1711); in this
form they have been reprinted in the collections of Petitot, Michaud and Buchon.
For his life may be consulted the recollections of him collected
by the brothers Dupuy (Thuana, sive Excerpta ex ore J. A. Thuani per
F.F.P.P., Paris, 1669 (F.F.P.P.=Fratres Puteanos, i.e. the Dupuy brothers;
reprinted in the edition of 1733), and the biographies by J. A. M. Collinson (The Life of
Thuanus, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), and Heinrich Düntzer, (Jacques Auguste de
Thou's Leben, Schriften und historische Kunst verglichen mit der der Alten,
Darmstadt: Leske, 1837).
See also Henry Harrisse, Le
Président de Thou et ses descendants, leur célèbre bibliothèque, leurs
armoiries et la traduction française de J. A. Thuani Historiarum sui Temporis (Paris: Librairie H. Leclerc, 1905).