Toulouse is often remembered as the city where the Inquisition was first established after the thirteenth-century Albigensian Crusade. Renaissance historians have also traditionally presented it as a breeding ground for the “école de Toulouse,” a group of conservative magistrates who advocated political absolutism. Moreover, while the rest of southwestern France was becoming a predominantly Protestant region, Toulouse remained a bastion of Catholic orthodoxy and militancy. In 1562, several hundred Huguenots were expelled from the city, an action that was commemorated with an annual celebration until 1791. In their attempt to give a more complete, and therefore more accurate image of a city that the great humanists Etienne Dolet and François Rabelais called “barbaric,” Nathalie Dauvois and the authors of the thirty articles gathered in this volume propose to reexamine the works and lives of writers, magistrates, antiquarians, and artists who lived, studied, or simply were associated with Toulouse between 1480 and 1596.
The definition of humanism chosen for this volume is conventional, as Jean-Claude Margolin explains: it is understood as a phenomenon that entails the practice of litterae humaniores, an openness to new ideas regarding society and religion, and the discovery of new methods of learning and teaching. The first section of the volume is devoted to judicial and political ideas and institutions. Patrick Arabeyre reassesses the centralizing and absolutist program of the so-called “école de Toulouse.” Jacques Krynen unveils the cultural and political ambitions of the “senatores tolosani,” those influential magistrates whose role in the appointment of professors at the Toulouse college of law is the object of an article by Henri Gilles. Géraldine Cazals provides an extensive account of the life and works of humanist scholar and historiographer Guillaume de La Perrière. Nathalie Dauvois offers an insightful analysis of the convergence of law and poetry in Forcadel’s Necyomantia and Sphaera legalis.
Section 2, which concerns the history of books and printing in Toulouse, includes an article by Stephen Rawles on La Perrière’s bilingual emblem book, the Morosophie, as well as Jocelyne Deschaux’s study of the circulation of texts among Toulouse’s humanist circles. Matthieu Desachy assesses the nature and importance of Bishop François d’Estaing’s systematic reliance on Toulousean counselors. After evoking the beginnings of François Habert’s career, Richard Cooper attempts to determine the dates of his stay as a student in Toulouse and reexamines some of the poet’s early works, notably La jeunesse, the Jardin de Félicité, and Le combat de Cupidon et de la mort.
In section 3, we encounter a distinguished group of humanists. A study of bishop and ambassador Jean de Pins’s correspondence over a period of forty-five years allows Jan Pendergrass to discover a network of Toulousean lawyers, professors, specialists in Greek letters, clergymen, and poets. Nicole LemaÎtre writes about the career and humanist entourage of Georges d’Armagnac, who had the distinction of becoming the only cardinal originating from southern France in his time. Jean-Claude Margolin studies the works of Jean de Boyssoné, whom he shows to be an excellent representative of the judicial humanism that developed in the first part of the sixteenth century. In Michel Magnien’s contribution, the letters of Pierre Bunel are shown to be a rich source of information on intellectual life in Toulouse between 1530 and 1545. Stéphan Geonget gives an excellent analysis of the literary, judicial, and ideological objectives underlying Jean de Coras’s works. Pierre C. Lille recounts the career of Toulouse-born Auger Ferrier, who became one of Catherine de’ Medici’s principal surgeon-astrologers.
Section 4 includes articles by Isabelle Luciani, Philippe Gardy, and Jean-François Courouau on the Toulouse floral games. Their research uncovers the political, literary, and humanistic significance of contests that amounted to a full-fledged literary institution throughout the sixteenth century. This section concludes with an article by Céline Marcy, who reads Gratien Du Pont’s Controverses des sexes masculin et féminin as an exercise in paradoxical declamatio.
In part 5, Jelle Koopmans shows that Toulouse was the setting of a rich theatrical life, while Bruno Tollon examines the relation between patrons and humanist intellectuals in the realm of architectural development. This overview of the non-literary aspects of humanism is followed by Frédérique Lemerle’s analysis of two texts of antiquities published in Renaissance Toulouse, as well as by two articles by musicologists: Frank Dobbin’s assessment of musical life in Toulouse through Boni and Bertrand’s musical adaptations of Ronsard’s sonnets, supplemented by Philippe Canguilhem and Fabien Larroque’s study of an unpublished manuscript containing fifty-three religious pieces.
The last section of this volume is devoted to Guy du Faur de Pibrac and the context of the Wars of Religion. Serge Brunet’s inquiry on the propagation of Reformation ideas in southwestern France is completed by Kate van Orden’s analysis of the uses of liturgical music during the civil wars, as well as in the context of the ceremonies organized in celebration of the peace of 1596. Loris Petris examines the mix of judicial and humanistic discourse peculiar to Pibrac’s Quatrains. The publication of several musical versions in the wake of this text’s considerable success is the subject of a scholarly investigation by Marie-Alexis Colin. This last section also contains Sylvie Davidson’s study of Pibrac’s Plaisirs de la vie rustique, as well as Laura Willett’s iconographical analysis of the mural paintings found in the magistrate’s study.
This is fine multidisciplinary scholarship that provides invaluable historical information. The articles in this volume are well researched and represent a genuine contribution to the field of Renaissance studies.
