A posthumous tribute to the eminent d’Aubigné scholar André Thierry (1924–2000), to whom is due the rehabilitation of Agrippa d’Aubigné's Histoire Universelle and its magisterial (now standard) reedition (1981–2000), this volume contains a brief biography of Thierry, a bibliography of his scholarly works, seven of his most interesting (and not always easily accessible) essays, and nine new essays by well-regarded senior seiziè mistes on historiographical issues raised by d’Aubigné's (1552–1630) works and time of religious and civil strife. The volume thus aims to establish a dialogue between André Thierry's work and current research on sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French historiography and is of interest to scholars in the fields of French literature and history and in the historiography of the period.
Thierry's essays highlight the range and depth of his research and illustrate his interest in problems of historiography as well as in the literary and thematic dimensions of the historical works, specifically those works in which the writer or historian figures as witness or actor, and his focus on questions of the influence of partisanship on those writings. The essays included here demonstrate Thierry's balanced and refined critical judgment and present a nuanced reading that carefully appraises the relationship of history to myth and to literature.
Thierry compares d’Aubigné's work to that of other historians of his time, most notably of Monluc, a Catholic capitain, and of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, a moderate Catholic and a key member of the group of political moderates known as the Politiques. Another essay reflects Thierry's interest in structural motifs in the Histoire Universelle, here the recurring motif of the vieillard, or old man D’Aubigné's vieillards appear as conventional figures of grandeur with political, poetic, and ideological roles and function as doubles of the historian himself. The essays also explore the relationship between the Histoire Universelle and other works of d’Aubigné, thus studying the relationship of historical genres to one another and to other genres, specifically, history to memoires to autobiography, and of history to poetry — in this case, to d’Aubigné's epic poem Les Tragiques. While the first is supposedly factual and more nuanced and the latter an impassioned polemical plea, both subscribe to a similar ideology in the belief that history possesses a divinely determined meaning. Thierry examines how d’Aubigné as historian treats the works of some members of the opposing political and religious party, how a recurring motif may reflect ideological positions and diverge from historical accuracy. They demonstrate as well the interrelationship of various historical and literary genres and how the historian may figure in his works not only as an individual but as a symbol of his cause and as a model for his readers to emulate.
The nine contemporary essays that follow approach the question of historiography by some of the same means as Thierry. Several essays question some of the readings by Thierry by finding additional departures from the criterion of objectivity that d’Aubigné claimed for his Histoire. Gilles Banderier compares d’Aubigné's depiction of Henry IV in his writings with the depiction of Henry IV in those of the moderate Catholic Pierre Jeanin. Jean Brunel studies the elogium, its rhetoric and content, reconstructs the horizon of expectations of the contemporary reader, and explores its contributions to the political history and intellectual life of the sixteenth century. Jean-Marc Debard traces the role of the Huguenot hymnal in the development, not only of family and community worship, but also of literacy, in the region of Montbéliard. Jean-Raymond Fanlo focuses on the dispositio of the Histoire Universelle to demystify the notion of the work as a geste of Henry IV and finds that the work portrays, instead, the history of the Reformed movement and issues a call to a continued wariness regarding any expressions of peace.
Several essays examine the representation of particular historical figures in d’Aubigné's Histoire Universelle: Olivier de Serres (Dubois), Elizabeth I (Lazard), and Michel de l’Hopital (Legrand). Marie-Madeleine Fragonard studies the causal motif of the betrayal by the leaders in the supplement to the Histoire Universelle of 1626, when neither peace nor war was stable, and in d’Aubigné's correspondence, which paints a more pragmatic and less dire picture at the time of occurrences. They all find particular nuances revealing d’Aubigné's beliefs and positions that shade the truth or depart from it. For example, Lazard finds the image of Elizabeth I in the Histoire Universelle to be partisan: the queen appears as the archetype of a good leader. Marie-Dominique Legrand studies the play of associations in Michel de l’Hopital's given name, creating a more complex portrait of the chancellor in her reading of the text. Claude-Gilbert Dubois traces the changing image of Olivier de Serres over time to show how particular ideologies influence the representation of this historical figure, offering a study in the construction of an image or symbol by the erasure of the resistance of history.
Daniel Ménager's essay fittingly closes the volume with an investigation of the representation of the origins of the Reformed movement. He contrasts the French version, exemplified by d’Aubigné's depiction of the Albigensian-Vaudois connection — which Ménager finds to be more mythic and shaped by the historical-political situation and an anti-royalist position — with the German version, which stresses the role of scholarship, specifically linguistic and philological, in promoting a return to religious truth found in biblical sources, a position that influenced views of the origins of the Reformed movement.
