In his Lâantiqvité de Saintes et Barbezievs, first published in 1571, respected humanist Ãlie Vinet passionately called on fellow scholars to write the histories of every town, château, and landmark of France, to guard these descriptions for posterity in communal coffers and church treasuries, and to make them generally available through publication. According to Vinet, principal of the Collège de Guyenne, many inquirers into the origins of cities had been content to make up fables when true urban foundations eluded them, and he urged local historians to take a more hands-on approach. âFor my part,â he counseled, âI have always thought that he who wishes to research the antiquity of some place must go to see and examine its old walls thoroughly and look about everywhere for some stone that might speak.â The diligent researcher should also read all the ancient authors and more recent texts, search out book collections, and quarry the treasuries of city councils, churches, and noble households, if he could gain admittance.1 This was the way to avoid the ungrounded speculations of those âwho are happy to dream up fables regarding Paris, Tours, Poitiers, and our other cities, when they are ignorant of the truth regarding their founders and antiquity.â2 Such had been Vinetâs own methods for his histories of Bordeaux, Saintes, Angoulême, Poitiers, and other towns of Guyenne, and he clearly hoped that his works would inspire others to adopt his methods and improve on his findings.3
Writing these words sometime between 1556âwhen he left Bordeaux and used forced leisure time to collect his notes on urban antiquities and to write them up in readable formâand 1568âwhen back at the Collège de Guyenne he added his findings on Barbézieux to those of SaintesâVinet could well hope that his call for well-researched local histories might serve as a model and spur to future works.4 By mid-century, few expositions of the history and antiquities of French cities had been published, and fewer eschewed the kinds of foundation myths of which Vinet complained. Most likely working up his notes from 1558 to 1560, Vinet himself could certainly have consulted the heavily revised 1550 edition of Corrozetâs Antiquitez, histoires et singularitez de Paris, which he owned,5 while rejecting the fabulous origins for Tours and Poitiers in Alain Bouchartâs Grandes croniques de Bretaigne (1514) and Bouchetâs Les annales dâAcquitaine (1524). At that time, though, Poldo dâAlbenasâs Discovrs historial de lâantiqve et illvstre cite de Nismes (1560) was just appearing in print, and Chaumeau was still actively at work consulting municipal inventories for his Histoire de Berry, published posthumously.6 Vinet personally knew people who had been busy writing a full history of Saintes several decades earlier, and his friend, Corlieu, had begun to collect the antiquities of Angoulême by the early 1560s, but no published results were yet available.7 Thus, despite a growing interest in urban history writing in France and a developing appreciation for its ancient monuments and inscriptions, Vinet could well see his own publications focusing on the early histories of Bordeaux, Angoulême, and Saintes as major contributions to the genre.8
Such was the limited state of French urban history in print when Belleforest, one-time student of Vinet, began work by 1571 on his Cosmographie universelle, published in Paris by Nicolas Chesneau and Michel Sonnius in 1575.9 Reacting to the evident popularity of works focusing on the topography, history, and pictorial representation of the world and its cities, Belleforest and his publishers aimed at seriously revising Sebastian Münsterâs Cosmographia universalis (1544) and substantially augmenting the limited section devoted to France.10 By the mid-sixteenth century, a significant amount of chorographical work focused on German and English cities and regions had already been theorized and published.11 Yet, in the 1570s, the published works on Franceâs many towns and provinces merely scratched the surface, so that any author who aimed at representing the whole of France pictorially and historically would have to seek other means. Belleforest and his publishers thus decided to contact all the principal towns in France, asking municipal officials to send a view of their city along with a written description of its origins, monuments, and most important historical events, as well as any remarkable attributes of their locale. The publishers sent out letters in May 1572, and a good number of responses began to arrive in Paris shortly afterward.12 The participants were assured that their efforts would be remembered in the published work, and Belleforest indeed lived up to this promise by carefully identifying the expeditors of the many memoranda he received and used. These contributions were viewed as essential to the work. They were advertised in the very title of the Cosmographie universelle, and the privilege secured by the publishers on May 22, 1572 forbade anyone else, including the original authors, from publishing their historical descriptions or maps separately for ten years.13
Thanks to the enthusiastic response that Belleforest received from city councils, humanist scholars, and ecclesiastical officials from many parts of France and his care in acknowledging these sources for his local descriptions, the Cosmographie universelle offers an excellent window on the characteristics of urban history writing in France by the third quarter of the sixteenth century. It indicates the aspirations and methods of those who chose to heed Belleforestâs call to publicize their communityâs past in print and helps to reveal the significant networks of individuals interested in local history and antiquities at the time, even if the number of publications remained relatively small. It also demonstrates how integrally the projects to define a French national character and history, on the one hand, and to demonstrate the unique pasts and privileges of particular localities, on the other, were related in the sixteenth century.14 For Belleforest, the hundreds of pages devoted to the description of the towns and provinces of France would demonstrate first and foremost the characteristics of the French as a people, united in their Gallic origins and defined by their shared history, laws, and institutions. Yet this view of the whole at which he aimed was impossible without the particular stories of local foundations, antiquities, and signal historical moments that the author received from all corners and incorporated into his larger work. For the local scholars and town councils who eagerly sent off their written descriptions and city views, by contrast, the Cosmographie universelle provided an excellent opportunity to make known the particular âantiquities and singularities and also the rare virtues of [the] citizensâ of their communities and to interpret their meanings for a larger public.15 The Cosmographie universelle thus had an important, stimulating influence on French urban history writing. It brought already existing historical descriptions out of dusty coffers; it prompted historical enthusiasts to turn their casual collections of notes into readable narratives; and it even galvanized a number of Belleforestâs collaborators to write full-fledged city histories and to publish them separately in the following decades.
If the Cosmographie universelleâs extensive section on France played an important role in sixteenth-century urban history writing, this was in no way thanks to the commercial or critical success of the work as a whole. Despite Belleforestâs obvious hopes to incorporate additional historical descriptions into succeeding revisions, the 1575 edition was the sole to see the light of day. Although the folio volume was no doubt expensive, the cost alone cannot explain the failure, since Münsterâs Cosmographia universalis went through thirty-five editions in eighty-five years.16 Rather, it was likely the workâs unwieldy format and refusal to address a specific readership that led to its lack of success. The textâs organization in two long columns per page with very few breaks makes it difficult to peruse, as does the pagination appearing sometimes by page but at other times by column. Further, although the significant number of maps and city views would suggest an intended audience of armchair travelers, the low quality of the paper and ink mitigates enjoyment of these elements.
have rendered just as poor service to good letters as they were unworthy to treat them, [who were] truly just as lacking in spirit, judgment, memory, and all of the attributes that a good disposition can bring to them as full of audacity in interpreting poorly and writing worse what they never understood.17
Frank Lestringant, discussing the contempt lavished primarily on Thevet, royal cosmographer (cosmographe du roi), and secondarily on his one-time secretary and later rival, Belleforest, has emphasized both the social and religious divide that separated these professional writers from their more established and erudite contemporaries in the developing Republic of Letters.18 Such differences may well account for the venom aimed their way. By the time of the redaction of his Cosmographie universelle, Belleforest was certainly staking a position within the strongly Catholic circles in the capital, and his marked association with the Franciscans of Paris may further testify to his ultra-Catholic leanings by the time of his death in January 1583.19 Further, if we turn from the opinions of the generally politique historians of France to canvass the more local writers, we find a different picture. Men such as Corlieu of Angoulême and Saint-Julien of Mâcon and Chalon agreed with the assessment of Bourgueville of Caen: Belleforest was a âtruly learned man and diligent scholar of the antiquities of this kingdom and other nations.â20 These local historians certainly thought highly enough of the author of the Cosmographie universelle to entrust accounts of their cities to his editorial hand.
Still, no-one who has read the Cosmographie universelle or Belleforestâs other works would rank him among the signal historians of the sixteenth century. Historians who have discussed his career and output, such as Huppert, Yardeni, and especially his biographer, Michel Simonin, have for good or ill categorized Belleforest as a generalist and popularizer, as someone who can inform us about the state of historical ideas and methodologies of his time through his very mediocrity.21 And this general observation holds equally well for the Cosmographie universelle in particular. Belleforest as an author had distinct ideas on the Gallic origins of the French people and their cities, on their Catholic identity, and on the most reliable sources for history writing, and by the 1570s, he had already established a place for himself as a translator, editor, and minor man of letters. Yet, since his humanist credentials and circle of contacts were by no means extraordinary for his time, the relatively broad response to his requests for local descriptions and the level and range of communications concerning the urban past that they reveal cannot be credited to any special scholarly or social allure of the author. Rather, they were owing to the power of Belleforestâs project to elicit enthusiasm and to prompt individuals in the provinces to contribute their own histories and notable monuments to the general formulation of the history and topography of France.
This chapter thus uses the French sections of the Cosmographie universelle as a touchstone to enter the world of local history writing in France in the middle decades of the sixteenth century. From Belleforestâs conception of his project and his methods of soliciting and analyzing texts to fulfill it, we may gauge how a historical writer with less perspicacity and fewer resources than a Pasquier or a Jean du Tillet nevertheless sought to present a historically informed view of France, grounded in reliable sources and extensive local testimony. From the contributions he received, we may likewise assess the existing levels of historical writing in French towns and trace some of the connections and friendships between individuals with such historical interests. Thus, after considering Belleforestâs concerns to present the French kingdom and people as a whole in his Cosmographie universelle, this chapter will examine how the author and his publishers solicited and obtained the large number of civic contributions essential to this vision, as well as the effects of these requests on the local scene. It will then turn to Belleforestâs historical methods: How did the author use the vast array of information from existing printed texts and the manuscript memoranda he received, and how did he reconcile their broad array of historical assumptions with his own particular concerns? Having established Belleforestâs authorial and editorial practices, we then consider the particular local concerns that were reflected in this general work, how the Cosmographie universelle served to prompt further urban history writing, and the ways that cosmographical and chorographical texts interacted generally in the decades after Belleforestâs contribution to the genre.
1 Belleforest and the French People
Belleforest envisaged the long section on France in his Cosmographie universelle as an exposition of the history, institutions, and character of the French people. Explicitly limiting the astronomical and geographical content in his work compared with his predecessor, Münster, and his contemporary, Thevet, Belleforest conceived of his cosmography not just as a geography but as a true history of nations.22 He therefore proposed to treat not only âthe location of regions, their situations, limits, and extentâ but also âthe people living in them, the laws they follow, the religion they embrace, their origins, movements, wars, migrations, conquests, alterations, and ruins,â with special attention to âthe cities where they live, their foundations, fortune, governmental order, and decline.â23 Like other Renaissance cosmographers and chorographers, he thus conceptualized his material according to the rhetorical categories germane to the ancient praise of cities genre.24
For Belleforest, in order for a state to exist, there must be a people present from whom it can be named and who will set its boundaries; likewise, the values and customs of a people derive from its laws, which, like its political institutions, are often obscured by their great antiquity. France, moreover, illustrated these precepts in ideal fashion. Although the kingdom now derived its name from the Franks, it owed its existence and character to the Gauls. As the original people, the Gauls had given their name to the country as it had existed before the arrival of the Franks. They had succeeded in establishing the boundaries of the land and retaining its borders even when forced to submit to other powers, such as the Romans. Their descendants, moreover, had always succeeded in retaining their unified character as a people. For Belleforest, therefore, the status of the Gauls as an indigenous people was paramount. In discussing the origins of their name, he was hesitant to pronounce definitively on whether they derived it from their descent from Galathée, son of Hercules, as the Greeks had it, from Gomer, as the ancient Babylonian priest Berosus would claim, or by way of their originator Pluto or Dis, as Caesar reported.25 Yet one thing was certain: the Gauls, and thus the French, were an ancient people, considerably older than the Greeks and Romans and predating them in knowledge and letters. They in no way owed their beginnings to the Greeks, Germans, or English, whose origin stories were largely based in fable and whose true foundations were obscure. Like many historians of his time, Belleforest wished that the ancient Gauls could have provided more written information on the origins and nature of their cities, but he also accused the Romans of having purposely destroyed their textual output.26 Thus, he called on all good Frenchmen to demonstrate their love for their country by carefully researching the origins, antiquities, and history of their cities. âGiven that it is not within the power of a single man to see, possess, or know everything,â he wrote, âand that we all belong to one French, or Gallic, body, we must therefore as good members all work in unison to illustrate ourselves and to deliver Gaul from the obscurity in which she has lived by our own fault for so many centuries and years.â27
In the last few decades, the character and timing of the development of national sentiment in France has come under serious debate. For Colette Beaune, a strong national consciousness developed in the late Middle Ages around a set of royal symbols, saints, and mythologies, including the fleur de lys, the oriflamme, St. Michel, the Salic Law, and the myth of Trojan origins.28 Through the careful exposition of Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, Robert Gaguinâs national loyalties emerge in his Compendium de Francorum origine et gestis (1495) and other writings, based on a lively opposition to Italian humanist criticism and a sense of French historic rivalries with England; however, for Yardeni, the development of national sentiment should be traced to the experiences of the sixteenth-century religious wars.29 For David Bell, French nationalism, or the deliberate political project to envision and construct a nation, appeared only during the eighteenth century.30 However disparate these periodizations and causes of national identity may seem, they may be at least partly reconciled if we keep in mind the ranges of their advocates and audiences. From the royal court, to the courts and their administration, to the court of public opinion, both the symbols and content of the ânationâ expanded from its late medieval embodiment in the semi-sacred figure of the king to the notion of the citizen and the birth of modern nationalism. In the middle decades of the sixteenth century, humanist authors tended to focus their national sentiment in a quest for French origins on a Gallic past, on assertions of French cultural and linguistic independence from Italian and Roman influence, and on expositions of the excellence of French royal institutions as they had developed since ancient times. Belleforest enthusiastically embraced this trend. If his insistence on the continuities between ancient Gaul and contemporary France, his rejection of Roman influence, and his emphasis on the importance of law and official institutions were hardly new, he emphasized more than most the role that the plethora of local origins and histories could play in building a unified understanding of the French people as a whole.
I donât know what our fathers were thinking in wanting to soil all the nations and almost all of the illustrious cities of Europe with the movements of a handful of men escaped from the ruins of Troy and in wanting to build for us the walls of the most excellent cities by the hand of the worst men on Earth. And I know even less whence they have fished so many fables nor the invention of such a stupid practice of basing the foundations of their cities on the resemblance of their names with the supposed names of men brought to the fore by nonsense and poetical lies.32
Why, Belleforest asked when rejecting any Trojan foundations for Orléans, would one wish to taint the memory of the Gauls by claiming that they were descended from fugitives who could not even defend their one city of Troy?33
Yet, if Belleforest rejected the Trojan origins of Franceâs cities and ascribed their existence to indigenous Gauls, this did not mean that he discarded the idea of city foundations altogether. In fact, he was so impatient with these Trojan travelers precisely because they stole glory from the real originators of many French citiesâthe ancient kings of Gaul. Thus, in describing the founding of Beauvais, Belleforest carefully notes that the city owed the first construction of its walls to Belge, king of Gaul, a full one hundred years before the founding of Troy, rather than some Bavon, âinvented by our fathers, not knowing whence to take their antiquity than from the ruins of Troy.â34 In the case of Paris, he is careful to deny that the city was founded by Paris, husband of Helen, but he nevertheless holds that the capital, Lutèce, and its people, the Parisians, owed their origins to Luce and Paris, two kings of the Celts at the time of Noah.35 These kings of the Celts and the Gauls, descended from Samothes, fourth son of Japheth (and thus grandson of Noah), were of course well attested to in the chronicles of Berosus and Manetho, ancient priests of Babylon and Egypt, ârediscoveredâ and edited by Giovanni Nanni of Viterbo. Even if influential men of letters such as Beatus Rhenanus and François Bauduin had for decades denounced these texts as forgeries, many erudite scholars could not bring themselves to pass up such ancient writings, and they continued to be cited with confidence well into the first half of the seventeenth century.36 In this regard, Belleforest was not ahead of the practices of his time, but his work did do much to place the last nail in the coffin of the Trojan ancestry of the ancient Gauls and their cities.
Given that French towns were founded by Gallic kings rather than wayward Greeks or ambitious Romans, it stood to reason that most of the proposed etymologies of their names from Greek or Latin were misguided. Melun, for example, had not borne the names Iseos, from Isis, and then Miledunum from being renamed in the year 1001, but rather owed its name to the Gallic word âdun,â for mountain. The same observation held for Dijon, which could not be the city of the gods (âdivio,â or the âville des dieuxâ), because its foundation long predated the Romans.37 The Gallic language, or languages, was of course lost to contemporaries, as were all original sources from ancient Gaul. Belleforest, like many of his contemporaries, deplored having to mine the works of Caesar for clues to the early history of France, even though he respected the Commentaries as the best source of early information on the towns of Gaul. Caesar, in particular, could provide the most solid testimony to the existence of Gallic cities before Roman domination. Thus, if the Roman general mentioned a French town or its people, this was solid proof not only of its existence at his time, but also of its Gallic identity. The reverse did not hold, however: if Caesar did not mention a French town, his silence did not necessarily condemn it to a later, Roman foundation. When describing the early history of Nîmes, Belleforest specifically paused to note that Caesarâs silence on this ancient Greek colony demonstrated that he only mentioned those towns where he had spent time or against which he had waged war.38 Further, if a French town served as an episcopal seat early in its Christian history, this provided positive evidence that it was an important administrative center in Gallo-Roman times and thus almost surely the head city of a Gallic people. Belleforestâs reasoning in the case of Orléans is instructive. Although Trippault, a noted humanist, held that Orléans had been founded in the third century by Emperor Aurelian (r.270â75), Belleforest insisted that Orléans had been the Genabum mentioned by Caesar, and thus an important Gallic town. The life of St. Liphard, supposedly bishop of Genabum, clinched the argument. Since Orléansâs bishops had been attested since Merovingian times and the Gallic town of Genabum also had a bishop, the two communities were identical. Thus, if Orléansâs name truly recalled the Roman emperorâs, this commemoration must have stemmed from a renaming of the city and not its original foundation.39
Thus, Messieurs of Angoulême, see how your conversion to the faith dates from the time that the church was first established, that it was St. Martial who first called you to know the Gospel, just immediately after the death of St. Peter, before all of the apostles had died, and that St. Ausone ⦠was given to you as bishop, the first who ever presided over your church.
For Belleforest, moreover, the conversion of the Angoumoisins during the first century also served as essential proof that the city had existed before the arrival of the Romans, even if Caesar said nothing of Angoulême in his commentaries.40
In his Cosmographie universelle, Belleforest thus had a distinct historical vision of the French past and current identity that he repeatedly emphasized in his figurative tour of the kingdom. The particular characteristics of individual towns in the past and the present did nothing to detract from this view of the whole. In fact, it was only through collecting and assessing the multiple experiences of urban communities that the nature of the French and the dominant features of their history could be revealed. One man, however, could never succeed in uncovering the history and characteristics of such a wide range of locales. This was not only because the work involved would be overwhelming but also because âeach citizen is better instructed in the antiquities of his city than we, who are strangers and not initiated to their means of proceeding.â41 The nature of Belleforestâs project in the French sections of his Cosmographie universelle thus required that he seek out local accounts of the history, monuments, and notable attributes of numerous towns throughout the kingdom.
2 Local Testimonies, Urban Contacts
In an article devoted to the process of the redaction of the Cosmographie universelle, Simonin treated the collection of the many urban descriptions it included as the affair of the publishers. It was Chesneau and Sonnius, after all, who obtained the royal privilege, registered letters patent, sent out printed circulars to numerous city councils, and followed up with subsequent correspondence. Lestringant confirms this view by contrasting Belleforestâs status as a mere âsecretary of redactionâ with Thevetâs active collection of materials for his comparable work.42 Yet such a characterization of Belleforestâs limited role in soliciting and acquiring the memoranda and maps that together went to illustrate the historical and topographical properties of France proves inaccurate. First, Belleforest clearly drafted his own correspondence asking for materials that would aid him in the historical projects he had in hand, including the Cosmographie universelle. Thus, on September 18, 1571, long before the publishersâ circular letters dated May 1572, the author wrote to an acquaintance in his home town of Samathan. He requested that his correspondent send him any descriptions of the towns of the region of Comminges and their antiquities and any surviving ancient documents, since he currently had nothing with which to write a particular account of the region in the âuniversal history of nationsâ that he had been charged to write. He further asked that his friend intercede with the noblemen of the area to send him accounts of the antiquity of their houses and brave deeds of their ancestors to aid his work on his history of France, and he begged that his contact collect the legends of certain local saints, so that they could be made known throughout France thanks to a Histoire des saints on which he was also advancing.43 Second, although Belleforest certainly received historical descriptions from urban officials unknown to him thanks to the efforts of the publishers, the great majority of Belleforestâs informants had some prior connection to him. Thus, a substantial amount of the information that arrived in Paris moved along networks of sociability and shared scholarly interests already in place. To unearth these relationships is also to sound the breadth and shape of the body of local historical writers and texts in France by the mid-sixteenth century.
The idea to solicit local descriptions in order to construct a broader historical vision of an area was hardly new, and it would be used repeatedly throughout the early modern era. Before his death in 1508, the German humanist Conrad Celtis had already begun work on a Germania illustrata, or a âcollaborative effort involving every âpublic-spirited man of letters in Germanyââ that would describe the history, geographical features, institutions, and customs of the German lands and thus counter ancient Roman and modern Italian charges of barbarism.44 When Münster first conceived of his Cosmographia universalis in its expanded form, he published in 1528 an appeal for help in describing the notable features, customs, and events of Germanyâs towns, castles, monasteries, and geographical landmarks, called on specific individuals to send descriptions, and gave detailed instructions on what they should include and how they should send their results to him. Further, Münster both went on his own research trips and engaged in advanced letter-writing campaigns in the interest of illustrating the German lands in considerable topographical and historical detail. He enlisted a broad range of humanists from Germany and northern Europe to contribute to his work, quizzed travelers on their way through Basel for information, obtained subsidies from German town councils, and received so much material that the 1550 edition of the Cosmographia contained numerous additions to the first edition of 1544. The 1572 edition incorporated still more information that Münster had been unable to use during his lifetime.45
The influence of Münsterâs methods on Belleforest and his publishers is evident, even if their three to four years of effort look puny compared to the German geographerâs exertions over several decades. Belleforest, however, did not limit his requests for individual contributions to his works to his Cosmographie universelle. His letter of 1571 to Monsieur de Mons of Samathan has already shown him requesting saintsâ lives for work on an Histoire des saints, as well as noble genealogies and memoranda for his history of France, and both his Chroniqves et annales de France (1573) and his Grandes annales, et histoire generale de France (1579) show that certain noble families obliged his call. Although Belleforest complained in his Chroniqves et annales that a good number of nobles had been too lazy to provide him with the memoranda he had sought, the author was still able to narrate at length the military fortunes of Jean de Voyer, viscount of Paulmy, during the religious wars, as well as to record the epitaphs of two of Paulmyâs lieutenants killed in 1567â68.46 He also provided a short history of the house of Sennecey, no doubt thanks to Bauffremont, to whom he dedicated the work.47 By his Grandes annales, the author was able to add the exploits of Antoine de Pons, count of Marennes, to those of Paulmy and even to defend Ponsâs actions as governor of Saintonge.48 Belleforest clearly understood the advantage that obtaining particular historical accounts could afford a general work, both in enhancing the points of view presented and in securing the interest of those who had contributed. He would hardly be the last to use such methods, moreover. Simon Ditchfield has explained how Ferdinando Ughelli, in researching and writing his monumental Italia sacra (1644â62), sent out questionnaires to the Italian dioceses, which local correspondents went to considerable pains to answer. The work then served to legitimize numerous local traditions and functioned as a fundamental point of departure for subsequent efforts in local ecclesiastical history.49
Even if Belleforestâs methods to obtain local descriptions were not unique, they were nevertheless productive. A significant number of town councils responded positively to the publishersâ circular letter and commissioned both a city view and a textual description of their communityâs antiquities and historical highpoints to be included in the Cosmographie universelle. The actions of the consuls of Grenoble, first examined by Simonin, provide an excellent case in point. In their letter dated May 8, 1572, the publishers asked the municipal officials to send them a map of their city, as well as âwhatever is the most remarkable [about it], either for the beauty of the site and its surroundings, either for the way [their] citizens live, as well as [an account] of the first foundation and constitution of [their] city.â50 After receiving the letter, on May 30 the consuls of Grenoble deliberated on their response and concluded that one of their number would contract with an artist to undertake the city view. The Parlement of Grenoble likewise delegated two judges, Laurent Rabot and Pierre Girard, to draft the topographical and historical description, a copy of which still survives. By June 27, the city map was completed, and the consulat undertook to pay Pierre Prévôt, master painter, for his work, as well as remunerating the notary Barthélemy Chapot for the multiple copies of the âGratianopolitanae vrbis descriptioâ that he had written out under the supervision of the parlementaires.51 The consuls of Grenoble even took it upon themselves at the request of the Parisian publishers to write a letter to their colleagues in Avignon to ask them to respond in a favorable and timely fashion to the circular letter they had received. By letter of August 19, 1572, the city council of Grenoble forwarded on a second copy of the publishersâ printed letter and assured the consuls of Avignon of their confidence âthat [they] would not wish to cause the cessation of such a work that can lead all nations to see and become familiar with the notable and remarkable cities of all of France.â52 The city council of Avignon accordingly commissioned a perspectival view and written description of their city that they sent to the Parisian publishers and that was also included in the second volume of the Civitates orbis terrarum (1575) of Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg.53
Such actions demonstrate that city officials could perceive the advantages of showing off their community to good effect in a work devoted to the whole of France, indeed the world, and that they were enthusiastic enough to pay costs from the public purse. Although Belleforest did not receive the outright subsidies that Münster occasionally obtained, these municipal decisions to take on the expense of hiring an artist to depict their cityscapes represented a tangible investment in the work.54 When the mairie (town council) of Dijon found that the lieutenant général for the king in Burgundy was refusing to allow them to draw up a perspectival plan of the city, for example, they managed to obtain a letter from Charles ix, in which the king urged his representative to permit the view and a summary of the most remarkable aspects of the city to be drafted and sent off to the Parisian publishers.55 Bernard des Barres, mayor (vicomte-maïeur) of Dijon in 1574, also took action to arrange that written memoranda reach Belleforest in Paris, and among the descriptions the cosmographer received was an account by a former mayor, Bénigne Martin.56 At Nevers, the aldermen decided to send a historical description of their town already composed by their fellow-citizen, Guy Coquille, and Belleforest explicitly thanked the city councils of Autun, Beauvais, Clermont, Embrun, Semur, and Valence for sending memoranda or a city view to be included in the Cosmographie universelle.57 At Clermont, the original twelve écus that the aldermen authorized on August 22, 1574 so that François Fuzier, master painter, could produce a map of the city proved insufficient, and their total expenditure eventually rose to fifty-six livres.58 Certainly, not all towns chose to contribute to the work. The city council of Nantes received the publishersâ printed letter, dated May 10, 1572, and even preserved it among their papers in the hôtel de ville, yet Belleforest noted that he had not received material from any Breton city.59
But it happened that in 1572 François de Belleforest, a man of great learning, desired to publish his Cosmographie and asked the bourgeois of Angoulême to send him the portrait of their city along with memoranda regarding its antiquities if they had any. This made me think that I would act like those who do not dare set off alone, but having found company, I would hazard to pass along with descriptions of other cities of France a brief summary that I had put together concerning ours.
He thus sent his account to Belleforest, who used it extensively in his description of Angoulême.60
Now it occurred a few years ago that when the sieur de Belleforest (a personage to whom France owes much) wished to bring to light his work, the Cosmographie universelle, its publishers invited by printed letter all patriots to contribute something that would illustrate their native region and the notable places of which they had knowledge and notes. Such a letter was sent to me by Reverend Father in God, Monsieur the bishop of Autun, who added his own prayer that I would attempt to set out for posterity the most remarkable and ancient aspects of his city of Autun. To refuse him in this I neither could nor should, even though there were many other excellent minds who could have engaged themselves to better effect. Leafing through my old jottings, among which several fragments of research on various antiquities were scattered here and there, a good number on Tournus came to hand.62
Saint-Julien had already composed two accounts on Chalon and Mâcon but was not sufficiently familiar with or close to other cities in Burgundy to study their remains. Further, he knew that Barres, mayor of Dijon, was working to collect evidence of the antiquities of the Burgundian capital.63 Therefore, motivated by the bishopâs request, Saint-Julien organized his writings, not only on Tournus and Autun but also on Chalon, Mâcon, and the Burgundians, and sent the whole to Paris. Thus, as the testimonies of Corlieu and Saint-Julien show, the practice of collecting documents and meditating on local history and antiquities had already developed by the mid-sixteenth century in France and had even received impetus from the sense that the damage caused by the Wars of Religion could destroy precious clues to the urban and ecclesiastical past. Further, without the call for contributions to the Cosmographie universelle, some of these document collections and historical narratives would have remained in manuscript in undigested form. Belleforestâs project galvanized individuals in the provinces interested in local history to give voice to their research and broadcast their cityâs historical identity well beyond the bounds of their community.
As appealing as the prospect of contributing to the Cosmographie universelle was to provincial scholars, many would no doubt have refrained without the assurance that prior connections with the author afforded them. Corlieu was almost certainly acquainted with Belleforest long before he sent off his observations on the history of Angoulême to Paris. Belleforest had spent the years of 1553 to 1556 in Angoulême, during which time he had served as tutor for the son of François Nesmond, lieutenant général in the sénéchaussée. Since Corlieu later dedicated his published history to Nesmond, his colleague at the sénéchaussée, it would have been difficult for the two men not to have met. That both Belleforest and Corlieu knew Vinet, who spent time near Angoulême beginning in 1556, may also have confirmed the acquaintance.64 Likewise, Saint-Julien recounts that it was the bishop of Autun who informed him about Belleforestâs project and urged him to contribute. Yet, he would also have been reassured that Bauffremont, baron of Sennecey, whom he knew well, had accepted Belleforestâs dedication of his Chroniqves et annales in 1573 and had for his part contributed a detailed history of his house and an engraving of his château to be included in the Cosmographie universelle. When Saint-Julien later published his own Discovrs des antiqvitez de la ville, et cite de Chalon svr Saone (1580), he likewise dedicated the work to the baron.65
Similar relationships connected other contributors to the author and to each other. In his discussion of Orléans, Belleforest thanked Trippault, humanist and judge in the presidial court of Orléans, for sending him information on the town, no doubt including his recently published Sylvva antiqvitatvm avrelianarvm (1573).66 Although he claimed that his own research on Orléans agreed with Trippaultâs account, Belleforest nevertheless disputed the judgeâs claim that the town was founded by Emperor Aurelian, thanks to the manuscript life of St. Liphard that Jacques Binet, canon at Meung-sur-Loire, had shared with him.67 For their part, Trippault and Binet were well acquainted. Trippault had recently dedicated his Antiqvité de la ville dâOrléans (1572), essentially a French version of his Sylvva, to Binet, and, since Binet was involved in his own antiquarian research in the 1570s, the two men almost certainly discussed their scholarly interests.68 Belleforest had spent time in Orléans in 1561, at which point he most likely met Trippault, Binet, and their circle.69 This prior acquaintance no doubt explains why Binet responded to Belleforestâs request for information on local saints, most likely for his projected Histoire des saints, by sending him the legend of St. Liphard. Trippault, for his part, welcomed Raymond Rancurel, an engraver who produced several of the city views for the Cosmographie universelle, into his home, where the artist stayed for three months completing the map of Orléans.70 While at Orléans, Belleforest had also most likely met Guillaume Fournier (or Fornier), professor of law and regent of the university of Orléans, who, as a close friend of Trippault and expert in ancient languages and history, had received a copy of the Sylvva. He may have been the one to pass it on to Belleforest while he was writing his passages on Orléans. Belleforest was certainly familiar with some of Fournierâs own extensive publications.71 Further, when Robin du Faux, an erudite historian of Anjou, agreed to help complete the third volume of the Histoire des saints that Belleforest had begun, Fournier aided him in the work. Robin du Faux had been an acquaintance of Belleforestâs since around 1572 and sent him the manuscript copy of his history of Anjou on which the author of the Cosmographie universelle relied heavily for his description of the province.72 Although difficulties with the artist of the perspective view of Angers meant that only some of the copies of the Cosmographie universelle contain the pictorial representation, it is noteworthy that seventeen lines of text from Robin du Fauxâs unpublished history accompanied this map of Angers engraved by Rancurel that was also published separately in 1576.73
Such networks of acquaintance and interests could also revolve around important noble patrons, such as René de Voyer, viscount of Paulmy, grand bailli of Touraine. Belleforest had made the acquaintance of Paulmy shortly after July 1571, and by the publication of his Chroniqves et annales in 1573 could praise the viscount as the heir to the virtues of his father and talk of the friendship and reverence he owed him.74 In the Cosmographie universelle, Belleforest repeated these assurances and obliged the nobleman by providing a history of the house of Voyer, a long description of the château of Paulmy, and an image of it complete with family arms, motto, marketplace, and manorial mill. Paulmy, for his part, imparted the documents and charters on which Belleforest based the history of his house, as well as information on the town of Loches and other areas in Touraine.75 In forming a relationship with the viscount, Belleforest also established contact with numerous other scholars and writers within Paulmyâs orbit and benefited materially from these connections for his Cosmographie universelle. François Gruget, royal counselor and referendary in the royal chancellery, thus provided the author with historical memoranda on his native town of Loches. Since Paumly had served as bailli of Touraine since 1571 and as the governor of the town and château of Loches from 1574 to 1576, the two men were certainly acquainted.76 Also within Voyerâs literary circle was Guy Le Fèvre de la Boderie, a native of Falaise and literary scholar, who provided Belleforest with information on the history of his hometown as well as a derivation of its name from the Hebrew.77 Subsequently penning a Galliade (1578) in which he explained the Celtic origins of the French in verse, Le Fèvre shared an interest in the ancient Gauls with Belleforest. He also may have served as a link between the author of the Cosmographie universelle and Bourgueville, recently retired lieutenant général in the bailliage of Caen, who provided historical descriptions of Caen, Bayeux, and Falaise for the work. As early as 1564, Le Fèvre de la Boderie had marked his friendship for Bourgueville in a sonnet praising him.78 Finally, Belleforest may have owed his relations with La Croix du Maine to Paulmy. In his Bibliothèque françoise, La Croix du Maine repeatedly mentioned the contents of the viscountâs library and even dedicated the âDiscovrs,â in which he described his plans for myriad future publications, to Paulmy in November 1579.79 Earlier, though, he had responded to Belleforestâs request for local information by providing historical information on his native town of Le Mans as well as a poem by René Flacé, curé (parish priest) of the church of La Couture, in honor of the Manceaux.80 La Croix du Maine also knew La Serre, lieutenant particulier of Bayonne, and had once seen over fifty manuscripts attributed to Postel in his library. Could this connection have encouraged La Serre to send memoranda on his native town of Dax to Belleforest to be incorporated into his cosmography?81
Even the responses of local governments to the publishersâ call for contributions could depend on preexisting personal relationships. At Grenoble, Rabot may have been willing to help draft the âGratianopolitanae vrbis descriptioâ that he and Pierre Gilbert, his colleague in the Parlement of Grenoble, sent to Belleforest, since Belleforest was close friends with Joachim Rabot de Bussière, his nephew. As for the younger Gilbert, it is possible that as a native of Toulouse and a minor figure of the Pléiade, he was already familiar with the author.82 At Clermont, Belleforestâs long acquaintance with Jean Villevault, procureur (solicitor) in the Parlement of Paris and enquêteur (investigating judge) in the sénéchaussée of Clermont, clearly motivated the aldermenâs enthusiasm to send historical information on their city to the author. Dedicating his work, La Pyrenee, to Villevault in 1571, Belleforest warmly evoked their long friendship originating in their youth at least thirteen years before.83 Writing on the history of Clermont, the cosmographer explained that he would discuss the vexed question of its identity with the Gallic head city Gergovia, since âseveral good and learned men from Clermont gave me information at the request of a friend of mine, their fellow citizen ⦠desiring to see his native land depicted.â84 It is likely that Belleforest followed the historical descriptions he received from Clermont and reproduced their concerns especially closely due to this connection.
Belleforest, it should thus be evident, was able to draw on preexisting networks of acquaintance that drew together men of the law, clerics, and educated nobles united in their interest in local history and antiquities. His project to describe the whole of France and the French people by focusing on the particular historical and topographical characteristics of each community elicited enthusiasm because it fit well with current chorographical preoccupations. Town councils could easily see the advantages of advertising their particular identities and historical traditions to a wider public. By the early 1570s, urban elites had begun to focus on the testimonies of ancient authors, early charters, and fading inscriptions that could shed light on the local past and to discuss their findings with fellow citizens and likeminded scholars in surrounding communities. The Cosmographie universelle, in drawing on these connections, closely reflected their particular concerns in print, often for the first time. At the same time, however, it incorporated them into a larger argument about the fundamental historical identity of the French kingdom that sometimes required Belleforest to discount the communications he had received.
3 Belleforest, Historian
In discussing how Belleforest used information on local history and antiquities, Simonin ascribes to him a strong editorial hand, according to which he significantly adapted local communications to accord with a pronounced centralizing vision and militant Catholic proclivities. By contrast, Lestringant sees the cosmographer as including these descriptions almost verbatim, so that he was more a collector of documents than an author.85 Neither characterization of Belleforestâs editorial practices, however, captures his true methods. Rather, a more detailed consideration of the French sections of the Cosmographie universelle reveals the author as a relatively conscientious historian, concerned to give credit to his numerous contributors and to cite the published accounts he had used. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he rarely copied his sources word-for-word, but neither did he silently edit out opinions with which he disagreed. The author was particularly apt to dispute theories that failed to live up to proper historical methodologies as he saw them, such as use of reliable evidence and respect for chronological verisimilitude. He was also openly critical of views that contradicted his understanding of the foundations of French identity, particularly the Gallic origins of French cities and their evangelization at the time of the apostles. Belleforestâs attempts to construct reliable historical descriptions, consonant with his sense of historical best-practice and the underlying themes of the work, thus stand out. But his respect for local knowledge also shines through in his text.
The Cosmographie universelle was not a simple compilation of texts coming from outside sources. Although only a fraction of the original historical descriptions sent to Paris survive in any form, it is clear from the remaining few that Belleforest, even as he followed their points quite closely, rewrote and rearranged their content, selected portions to suit his own needs, and occasionally used their assertions to support his own ideas. For example, Belleforest almost certainly drew his information on Dax from an existing manuscript description of the city by La Serre.86 The cosmographer clearly summarized La Serreâs account of the cityâs baths, churches, walls, and legal jurisdictions, while presenting these elements in his own order and retrenching the authorâs focus on the baths.87 He reproduced an inscription from the cathedral that La Serre had provided as testament to the age of the city, yet commented that its style was too rude to be Roman. La Serreâs assertions that the Aqua Augusta of Ptolemy referred to Dax and that the region of Aquitaine had derived its name from the city, Belleforest summarily rejected.88 In the case of Forêts, Belleforest owed his information to a handwritten account of the region and the house of Beaujeu sent to him indirectly by Jean-Papire Masson.89 Following Massonâs short description of the towns of Forêts, the bridge over the Loire River, the fertility of the region, and its noble houses extremely closely, Belleforest nevertheless expanded on Massonâs limited evocation of the characteristics of the Foresiens.90 Specifically acknowledging Masson as his source for an account of the counts of Forêts and lords of Beaujolais, the cosmographer nevertheless used these genealogical details for his own purposes. Although the brief notes sent by Masson were conceived as a family history of the house of Beaujeu, Belleforest used them first to establish the age of the county by means of an epitaph from 993 and second to recount how the counties of Beaujolais and Forêts were separated and then reunited under the house of Bourbon.91 Since such concerns were not reflected in the texts that Masson relayed, it is clear that Belleforest both conveyed the contents highlighted by his correspondent and drew on particular details to support his own historical concerns.
There were times, however, when Belleforest was clearly relying especially heavily, if not exclusively, on the communications he received. In the case of Autun, the cosmographer specifically stated that for what he said of the town, he was relying almost word-for-word on Saint-Julienâs description.92 In portraying Clermont and arguing for its origins as the ancient Gergovia, however, Belleforest certainly acknowledged that he had received information from two aldermen, a local financial official (élu), and a brother of the abbey of Saint-Allire, all at the behest of Villevault. Only the unusually charged and legalistic language in this section, though, indicates that he was inserting portions of these local texts unchanged into his description.93
Belleforestâs respect for manuscript material and desire to honor his contributors may also have led him to be slightly less than honest about his sources on some occasions. In his section on Nîmes, the author particularly thanked Jean Nicot, former ambassador to Portugal and maître des requêtes (master of requests) of the kingâs household, âa man of great research and rare erudition, concerned for the good and profit of posterity,â for his account of the city.94 He also informed readers that detailed measurements of the extent of Nîmesâs ancient walls could be found in Poldo dâAlbenasâs Discovrs historial de lâantiqve et illvstre cite de Nismes and encouraged readers to consult the work for more complete descriptions of the cityâs ancient monuments.95 Yet although such a thorough published work existed on Nîmesâs ancient past, Belleforest chose to focus his description on Nicotâs manuscript account instead. This choice meant that where Poldo dâAlbenas provided extensive information on Nîmesâs foundation by Nemausus, son of Hercules, on the Temple de la Fontaine, and on the antiquities of Arles, Belleforest mentioned these topics very little or not at all.96 Further, Belleforest chose to agree with Nicot on most issues where he contradicted the published antiquarian. Where Poldo dâAlbenas speculates that a medal found in Nîmes could mean that a colony of Nîmois settled in Egypt during the time of Marcus Antoninus, Belleforest remarks that Nicot rejected such insufficient proof for these conjectures. Although Poldo dâAlbenas carefully argued that Nîmesâs Maison Carrée could not be a basilica built by Hadrian, Belleforest simply provided the original view as common opinion. Where Poldo dâAlbenas was concerned to prove that much of the destruction of early Nîmes was not the work of the Goths but of the âbarbarous and cruel tyrantâ Charles Martel, Belleforest followed Nicot in proposing that the Goths were responsible for beheading all of the embossed eagles found throughout the city.97 In fact, the cosmographer followed his manuscript instructions and ignored the particular points of the Discovrs historial to such an extent that it is questionable whether he actually consulted the published work at all. It is certainly true that the city view of Nîmes in the Cosmographie universelle was first produced for the Discovrs historial, but since Nicot was involved in obtaining the royal permission for Poldo dâAlbenasâs work in the first place, he might also have helped to acquire the image for Belleforest.98
Belleforest, then, was careful to acknowledge his correspondents for the important information they provided on Franceâs many cities, and he may have even privileged his manuscript evidence over published accounts. Such habits of citation were certainly becoming more common in historical practice over the course of the sixteenth century, but Belleforest may have also been engaging in a deliberate strategy to counteract the insistence of his rival cosmographer, Thevet, that eyewitness experience was more valuable than textual evidence.99 Nevertheless, Belleforest did not hesitate to critique his sources, both manuscript and published, when they contradicted his sense of proper historical reasoning or veracity. Although by no means a leading light of historical methodology, Belleforest did ascribe to the main currents in research and reasoning that were solidifying in his time: a preference for the testimonies of reliable ancient and early medieval authors; a value for local documents and archeological remains; an acknowledgment of the importance of ecclesiastical sources; and a concern to take chronology and institutional development firmly into account.100 Rather than relying solely on narratives written by others, Belleforest engaged in his own historical research. The extensive sections on the university and colleges of Paris, the churches of the capital, and the monastery of Saint-Denis in the Cosmographie universelle demonstrate that he willingly visited these locations, talked to their administrators and clergy, consulted documents, and examined inscriptions and epitaphs.101 The author also made a particular point of insisting that documentation from churches and monasteries could be particularly useful, since it often constituted the only reliable testimony from Merovingian times.102 His sense of chronology and historical development also led him to conclude that the Châtelet of Paris could not date from the time of Clovis, since none of the laws of Charlemagne or his successors made any reference to it.103
This critical sense endured as Belleforest tested the many historical theories of his correspondents. He duly reported the possible Greek and Latin etymologies for the name of Chartres proposed by his local contributor, Claude Prevost, lawyer in the bailliage, but commented that the Latin derivation, based on the supposition that Chartres was the location where delinquent Gauls received punishment from their Druid judges, was highly unlikely. Although Nicot refused to believe that the Pont du Gard was an aqueduct serving Nîmes, Belleforest opined that it was, based on the testimony of Sidonius Apollinaris, an important fifth-century aristocrat and bishop. The author also disputed the theory that Valence was founded by Emperor Valens or Valentinian (r.364â75) in the fourth century, since Strabo had mentioned the Roman colony three hundred years earlier. Chronology was also key to Belleforestâs dogged assertion that Dijon had not been founded by Emperor Aurelian but by the ancient Gauls. Although a manuscript legend of St. Bénigne, forwarded to Belleforest from Dijon, testified that when the saint had arrived at âDivion,â he found a château under construction by Aurelianâs command, Belleforest inquired how a saint who had been martyred in 204 under the reign of Septimius Severus (r.193â211) could have seen an edifice built by his late third-century successor.104
As is evident from these examples, Belleforest was most contentious where his deeply held assumptions were at stake: namely that almost all French cities owed their foundation to indigenous Gauls and not conquering Romans, that their names generally reflected this Gallic heritage and not a classical etymology, and that their Christian identities dated back to the first century or so after Christ. Contradictions of these principles and other failures in historical verisimilitude received the authorâs sarcastic attention, but Belleforest was not a consistent enough historian to question the very bases of the historical narratives he was addressing. Like all but the best of his contemporaries, he approached historical argumentation piecemeal, without consistently applying the methods that he nevertheless made a point of supporting. His reaction to Vinetâs reasoning that La Rochelle and Blaye were not the port and prominence of Saintonge mentioned by Ptolemy provides an excellent example. Vinet had examined Ptolemyâs methods of geographical description to conclude that the ancient geographer always proceeded from south to north and that he positioned the port and prominence of Saintonge between the Garonne and Charente Riversâboth solid arguments against identifying La Rochelle and Blaye as the communities he mentioned.105 Belleforest, by contrast, after quoting Vinetâs arguments on the ancient geographerâs descriptive habits, did not reproduce his teacherâs detailed observations on how Ptolemyâs geography did not match up with current-day topography. Rather, he tentatively suggested that Blaye could very possibly have corresponded to Ptolemyâs prominence of Saintonge, especially since its site corresponded so well to the little Ptolemy said about it, but agreed with Vinet that La Rochelle was of modern foundation.106 Thus, where Vinet had constructed a logical argument to reject both attributions, Belleforest repeated much of his teacherâs analysis, but illogically upheld only half of his conclusions. That Blaye had been mentioned by Ausonius in the fourth century was enough to convince him that it was on Ptolemyâs radar as well.107
If Belleforest could tentatively disagree with an important humanist such as Vinet, he was eager to deny the fables and false conclusions of Jean de Bourdignéâs Chroniques dâAnjou et du Maine (1529) and Bouchartâs Grandes croniques de Bretaigne. Both works erred in assigning Trojan origins to the ancient Angevins and Bretons, the latter via England, and both emphasized long lines of local rulers, either counts of Anjou or, worse, independent kings of Brittany. Introducing his section on Anjou, Belleforest castigated Bourdigné for arguing that Angers derived its name from the Angions, a band of Trojans who, after the death of their leader Ajax, came to resettle the city. âTo be frank,â he exclaimed, âwhen a man of good judgment throws a glance at the beginning of a book and sees that a fable lies at its foundation, he steps back from the work, in the belief that the rest of the construction is of a piece with this entry.â Despite this opening criticism, however, Belleforest did not lay aside the Chroniques dâAnjou but continued to summarize it quite fully, including Bourdignéâs account of Ajax and his fellows, despite its purported dreams and lies.108 The cosmographer, though, could be tolerant of Bourdignéâs many mistakes. In contradicting the annalistâs assertion that Vortigern, king of Great Britain, named the Saxon Hengist consul of Anjou in 431, he mildly commented that the period of the Danish and Anglo-Saxon invasions was extremely confused and that if Bourdigné had been able to consult the Venerable Bede instead of the prophecies of Merlin, he never would have made such a claim.109 In his rejection of Bourdignéâs assumption that hereditary counts of Anjou already existed under the Merovingians, Belleforest further had the testimonies of other historians to consider. Both Du Haillan and Claude Paradin were right to criticize Bourdignéâs fables, but the cosmographer could not go as far as Du Haillan as to claim that no hereditary counts of Anjou existed until the reign of Charles iii (r.898â922), or later. Rather, Belleforest credited Robin du Faux, his correspondent, who, based on âancient documents and charters from the treasury of the city of Angers,â asserted that a Torquatus was invested with the county of Anjou during the reign of Charles ii.110 Robin du Fauxâs information, based also on manuscript Latin annals of Anjou, which Belleforest had personally seen in the possession of Bauduin, definitively proved that Geoffroy Grisgonnelle had not been the first count of Anjou, as Du Haillan claimed.111
that the annalist plays with the Gallic lands like a ball and has them subjected by this Arthur, through the means of this Hoel, whom he has conquer the lands of Poitou and Aquitaine, without considering in what time this Arthur lived and what kings he had to deal with, notably Clovis.112
Belleforestâs historical sense thus did not lead him to reject the works on which the stories of King Arthur were based, but his sentiments did revolt against the idea that King Arthur had ever held sway in France. So long as Arthur was descended from Romans rather than Trojans and remained on English shores, he was a perfectly reputable historical figure. Belleforest could thus criticize Bouchartâs outlook but then draw information from the same sources the chronicler had consulted, such as Vincent of Beauvais, to confirm his own. Further, the cosmographerâs insistence that the kings of Brittany cited by Bouchart were simple counts was based on nothing more than his conviction that no local leader could resist the force of a Clovis or a Charlemagne.113 After disputing Bouchartâs evidence concerning the âfirst lineâ of Breton counts, however, Belleforest was content to summarize the Grandes croniques de Bretaigne for the whole of the âsecond line.â114
Thus, Belleforestâs approach to the histories of Anjou and Brittany, as well as the other cities and provinces of France, shows him to be concerned to give credit where it was due, but prone to reject individual trespasses against historical plausibility as he saw it rather than to set out any broader principles of analysis. His treatment of the annals of Anjou and Brittany was particularly vehement, since he strongly disapproved of the Trojan theories and assertions of local independence of Bourdigné and Bouchart and did his best to counteract the specifics of the lines of counts, dukes, and kings that they provided. In the case of Anjou, the cosmographer had the assistance of other published histories, as well as a manuscript account provided to him by his acquaintance, Robin du Faux, to help him sort fact from fiction. These additional sources provided Belleforest with solid ammunition, in the form of documentary references, that he could effectively launch against the views he was contesting. Without such straightforward counterweights, however, the cosmographer failed to adhere to any consistent historical assumptions that differed markedly from the works with which he disagreed. Belleforest could question specific details, based on reliable authors, documentary evidence, and a dose of historical realism, but he neither provided a real appraisal of how other historians had constructed their narratives nor a systematic critique of the sources they used. Such a scatter-shot approach may not have marked Belleforest as the most advanced historical practitioner of his day, but it was valuable in the context of the Cosmographie universelle. Although local authors, both published and aspiring, might find their theories criticized, Belleforestâs methods meant that their original speculations and local traditions still gained voice in the larger work.
4 Local History in Print
The town councils, local dignitaries, and scholars who sent historical descriptions to Belleforest and his publishers hoped above all to call attention to the importance and status of their city. In evoking its monuments, privileges, origins, and the great moments of its history, they could see their names cited as dedicated citizens and supporters of letters, while assuring that knowledge of local traditions reached a wider audience. The cosmographer, it is true, did not credit all of the assertions that reached him from the provinces, but he did allow the greatest part of them to stand. Even when he disagreed, he tended to debate each point in turn, allowing even dubious claims to get an airing. Thus, if Belleforest needed these local communications to help him flesh out the body of France and its people as a whole, his correspondents were rewarded for their efforts in seeing their urban traditions and documentary research in print, often for the first time. For some, this contribution to the Cosmographie universelle proved only a beginning. In the coming years, several of Belleforestâs most important participants would turn their hand to publishing their own complete histories of their native city and surrounding communities. Belleforestâs project, therefore, was important not only because it prompted numerous local communities to send information on their history and topography to Paris but also because it encouraged a whole new round of local history writing that might not have occurred without it. This effect, coupled with the uses to which the Cosmographie universelle was put in succeeding decades, made the work significant, even if the print run and critical acclaim were disappointing.
In sending Belleforest information on the important characteristics and historical moments of their town, provincial contributors were able to broadcast local points of view to a wider French, or even European, audience. The consuls of Grenoble, who had done so much to assure that their own city and that of Avignon were well represented, could thus be proud to read that the province of Dauphiné had entered the French kingdom through âties of friendshipâ; that their refusal to accept anyone other than a prince of the blood as their governor was owing to their determination to recognize no-one but the king as their sovereign; that they were proud of their liberties and fierce in battle; and that the judges of the Parlement acted as âthe conservers of the rights of the area and defenders of the liberty of their province.â115 For Chartres, Louis Huiré, alderman, and Claude Prevost, lawyer in the presidial court, assured that their cityâs strong association with the Virgin Mary would become common knowledge. Although Belleforest did not report on all of the extensive documentation that his correspondents provided from their famous cathedral, he did relate the Chartrainsâ prescience in believing before the birth of Christ that a virgin would give birth to a savior, as well as the wonder of St. Savinian and St. Potentian when they found that their efforts at evangelizing the city would be minimal, since the Chartrains were already worshipping the Virgin in a church built in her honor when they arrived to convert the city to Christianity. In case Chartresâs claims to special holiness were not yet established, Belleforest also reported that in 1567, the Protestants had attacked the city in exactly the same spot as Rollo and Raoul the Norman during the barbarian invasions. Further, in the recent siege, an image of the Virgin miraculously escaped destruction, thus confirming a similar miracle that had occurred in the time of Rollo.116 Where the Grenoblois emphasized the special liberties of their city and province, the citizens of Chartres tied their fortunes during the recent Wars of Religion to their cityâs special relationship with the Virgin Mary, confirmed by miracles and the dedication of their cathedral. Belleforestâs project then provided an excellent opportunity for these local ideas of Grenobleâs privileges and Chartresâs Catholic identity to reach a general audience.
In many cases, the lessons of urban history were contentious, and Belleforestâs work could uphold the claims of one urban community over its rivals. If the cosmographer insisted that Orléans had not been founded by Aurelian but should be identified as the Gallic head city of Genabum, this was to deprive its rival, Gien, of this honor. In following the writings of Saint-Julien on Autun so closely, Belleforest repeated much of his extended argument that Autun had once been Bibracte, the capital city of the Gallic Aedui, rather than Beuvray. Although some claimed that the similarity of the names of Beuvray and Bibracte indicated that they were the same location, Belleforest impatiently rejected such an unreasonable opinion, citing Saint-Julienâs assertions that while there were no marks of ancient habitation at Beuvray, Autun bore all the signs of its antiquity and former greatness. He also credited Saint-Julien with the argument that Autun was located precisely where Caesar had situated Bibracte.117 Saint-Julien himself claimed that he had only taken on this difficult subject when asked to write a history of Autun for the Cosmographie universelle, but his strong partisanship for Autun shines through, despite his purported reluctance to tackle the problem.118 Regarding the vexed question of whether Riom, Saint-Flour, Clermont, or a ruined site on the summit of Mount Gergoye could claim to be the famous Gergovia, hometown of Vercingetorix and victor against Caesarâs famous assault, Belleforest also came down definitively in support of Clermont, following the many writings he obtained from the city thanks to the efforts of Villevault.119 Here, the cosmographer may have been aware that his treatment of the issue could be interpreted as partisan, since he lamented that he had not received information from Riom that would have allowed him to illustrate that townâs antiquities as he had done for Clermont. He also went so far as to reassure his readers that âI have offered here nothing to gratify or particularly to please anyone, but have been motivated by the truth of the matter and by the antiquity of the precedence of the cities.â120 Clearly, making sure that the point of view of oneâs own city was represented in print could be important. The aldermen of Clermont certainly recognized this fact when they authorized Fuzier to complete a cityscape, so that Clermont could figure among âthe principal and capital [cities] of the kingdom.â121
In addition to airing specific civic points of view, the Cosmographie universelle served as a spur to further local history writing. Several of Belleforestâs correspondents, who might never have written up their notes for publication in the first place, subsequently expanded on their initial efforts and published full-fledged urban histories. For Corlieu of Angoulême, the necessity to publish his original findings arose from his dissatisfaction with Belleforestâs use of his work. Since the cosmographer had considerably shortened his account, changed numerous items, and added his own information, what he had provided on the history of Angoulême had only served to âwhet the appetiteâ of those who wanted to know more. In fact, Corlieu had cause to complain that Belleforest had transposed the evangelization of the Angoumois from the third to the first century and had pared back the long sections on the counts of Angoulême. At the urging of his friends, therefore, Corlieu brought his Recveil en forme dâhistoire de ce qvi se trovve par escrit, de la ville et des comtes dâEngolesme quickly to print in 1576.122
Saint-Julien expressed no such disappointment when he published histories of Autun, Chalons, Mâcon, Tournus, and the Burgundians in 1581. It was true that Belleforest noticeably changed Saint-Julienâs emphasis in his work on Tournus, by showing more sympathy with the inhabitants of the town than with the monks attempting to keep them in servitude, but he also defended Saint-Julienâs cherished theory that the Burgundians had originated from a town known as the âBourg dâOgneâ in the vicinity of Dijon, rather than invading eastern France from German lands.123 It is possible that in publishing his history of Autun, Saint-Julien had very little to add to the original description he sent to Paris. Belleforest did mention that he would refrain from discussing the Autunoisâ false religion and government from their pagan days, and he omitted to describe Autunâs ancient monuments in any detail as well as information relating to the townâs surrounding area. All other topics that Saint-Julien covered in his published history of Autun, however, find their complement in Belleforestâs work.124 For Chalon and Mâcon, however, Saint-Julien must have considerably expanded his treatment. Although Belleforest reproduced some of his correspondentâs concerns, notably the history of the jurisdiction of the abbey of Saint-Pierre, the fate of the bourg of Saint-Laurent, and the ways that the police of Chalon had been handled so much better in the past, he also left out whole areas that Saint-Julien would later discuss, such as the history of the dukes of Burgundy and counts of Chalon and the catalog of the townâs bishops.125 It is clear that Saint-Julien added these topics in revising his work, since Belleforest specifically mentioned not having any information on these subjects.126 For Mâcon, Belleforestâs presentation followed a different order from the published work and discussed only a tiny part of the material that would appear in print.127 Thus, after dusting off his collections of documents and sending narratives to Belleforest, Saint-Julien continued to work on the history of Burgundy throughout the 1570s and published his work with the same publisher, Chesneau, in 1580â81.128
We can identify the same process for Bourguevilleâs Les recherches et antiqvitez de la prouince de Neustrie, finally published in 1588. Belleforest thoroughly agreed with Bourguevilleâs insistence that the Normans were originally native Gauls and closely reproduced his description of the château, the hôtel de ville, an epitaph of the duchess Matilda, the legal jurisdictions of the city, and the importance of the University of Caen.129 These items were certainly in the written description that Bourgueville forwarded to the cosmographer in the early 1570s. Yet, retired from his position as lieutenant général of the bailliage since 1573, Bourgueville had ample time to devote to the historical work he had begun. In 1582, he presented a copy to the town council, and internal evidence reveals that in 1588 he was still hard at work on it.130 His final product contained much that was not in the original memoranda. His extended discussion of the institutional development of the University of Caen and its colleges Belleforest would not have hesitated to mention if provided the opportunity.131 Further, Bourgueville used his published work to relate details of Caenâs past that he was afraid would be forgotten and to offer advice on how the city could preserve and expand its heritage in the future. Looking back on the last two centuries, he saw the experiences of the Hundred Yearsâ War and the Protestant takeover of 1562 to be similar, since both episodes had caused irreparable harm to the city based on the feuds of great princes.132 For the late medieval period, Bourgueville had access to city registers, including the âmatriloge,â and for the period up to the First War of Religion, the retired judge and former municipal official clearly also relied on livres de raison and his own papers.133 None of these concerns appear in the Cosmographie universelle, and so in the published work we can chart how an aging official expanded on his original project and sought to preserve his cityâs legacy as he saw it.134
In providing a wider opening for the writing and dissemination of urban history, Belleforestâs Cosmographie universelle played a role considerably more significant than its one edition and lack of critical acclaim would suggest. This is not to say that the work was ignored on its own terms. Subsequent historians such as Jean Darnalt of Agen, Bergier of Reims, Le Maire of Orléans, and Lurbe of Bordeaux would reference what Belleforest had written on their cities in their own urban histories.135 Nicolas Bonfans, the editor and publisher of updated editions of Corrozetâs Les antiquitez, chroniqves et singvlaritez de Paris (1561), silently incorporated a significant amount of Belleforestâs observations on the churches, colleges, and judicial institutions of Paris into the successive guides to the capital and its history that he published between 1576 and 1586. Like Bonfans, authors of later topographies of France, such as François Des Rues and Jacques de Fonteny, copied many of its passages without credit.136
Yet beyond these sources of direct influence, the French portion of the Cosmographie universelle, through its very repetition and approachability, provided a template for the most important aspects of urban history writing and suggested the kinds of historical sources and strategies that could be used to undertake the task. In drawing on a wide range of sources, both published and manuscript, it suggested that urban description was an important and lively enterprise pursued throughout France. In a century during which urban communities were particularly eager to demonstrate how their past experience supported local privileges, it provided a venue for these historical traditions to be articulated and discussed. However particular the urban experience, readers could learn, each was a product of the special character of the French people. And finally, in drawing on numerous networks of scholarly acquaintance and encouraging the circulation and production of works on urban history, this cosmography stimulated the growth and development of chorography, or local history writing, in France.
Vinet, Lâantiqvite de Saintes, A2v, E3v, quotation, A2v. Vinetâs Lâantiqvite de Saintes was first published in 1568, but the section on Barbézieux only appeared in 1571.
Vinet, Lâantiqvité de Bovrdeavs, B iii v.
Vinet, Lâantiqvite de Saintes, A2v, D4r. Vinetâs work on Poitiers has been lost.
Following a dispute over his appointment as principal of the Collège de Guyenne in 1556, Vinet spent six years away from Bordeaux. He indicates in his Lâantiqvité de Saintes that he spent some of this time at the estate of a friend working up his notes on urban antiquities. See Vinet, Lâantiqvite de Saintes, A3r, E3v; Ernest Labadie, Ãtude bibliographique sur âLâEngoulesmeâ dâElie Vinet, Poitiers, 1567 (Angoulême: Imprimerie Charantaise, Georges Chasseignac, 1909), 4â7.
Vinet, Lâantiqvite de Saintes, A3r; Louis Desgraves, Ãlie Vinet, humaniste de Bordeaux (1509â1587): Vie, bibliographie, correspondance, bibliothèque (Geneva: Droz, 1977), 169.
Jean Jenny, âJean Chaumeau et son Histoire de Berry,â Cahiers dâarchéologie et dâhistoire de Berry 169â70 (2007): 89â100, at 90.
Vinet, Lâantiqvite de Saintes, A3v; Corlieu, Recveil en forme dâhistoire, ii r; Gigon, Recherche de lâantiqvité dâEngovlesme, 27. Cooper speculates that one of these earlier historians of Saintes may have been Briand Vallée (d.1544), an antiquarian and friend of François Rabelais. See his âHistoire et archéologie de la Gascogne antique,â 147.
Frédérique Lemerle emphasizes the early interest in studying inscriptions and collecting antiquities in southern France in La Renaissance et les antiquités de la Gaule, 11â12.
Belleforest himself reports that Vinet had been his teacher (Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 167). In a letter to Monsieur de Mons, dated September 17, 1571, of which a contemporary summary survives, Belleforest mentions three great projects that he currently had in hand, of which his Cosmographie universelle was clearly one. See J. [Jean] Lestrade, âLa Gascogne dâaprès F. de Belleforest,â Revue de Gascogne, n.s., 13 (January 1913): 5â14, at 9â10.
The context is well laid out by Michel Simonin in his âLes élites chorographes ou de la âDescription de la Franceâ dans la Cosmographie universelle de Belleforest,â in Voyager à la Renaissance: Actes du colloque de Tours 30 Juinâ13 Juillet 1983, ed. Jean Céard and Jean-Claude Margolin (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987), 433â51, at 434.
Chassagnette, Savoir géographique, 337â66; Stan Mendyk, âEarly British Chorography,â Sixteenth Century Journal 17, no. 4 (1986): 459â81.
Our only evidence for where the publishers sent their letters and who replied is to be found in the text of the Cosmographie universelle or in scattered communal archives. Simonin provides a reproduction of one of the letters sent to the mayor and aldermen of Grenoble on May 8, 1572 in âLes élites chorographes,â plate 7 and his Vivre de sa plume au XVIe siècle, ou la carrière de François de Belleforest (Geneva: Droz, 1992), 172.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, title page and *vi r.
Woolf makes a similar argument for early modern England, except that he emphasizes how local historical views gradually gave way to a national historical narrative in Social Circulation of the Past, 273, 295â96.
ac Avignon, aa43, no. 151, r.
The format is the somewhat unusual folio in 6s (three folio pages sewn together in each signature). My thanks to Brian Ogilvie and Margaret Schotte for discussion of this question. See also Matthew McLean, The âCosmographiaâ of Sebastian Münster: Describing the World in the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 1.
Quoted in Frank Lestringant, André Thevet: Cosmographe des derniers Valois (Geneva: Droz, 1991), 247. For Du Haillan, see Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 210â11; for Claude Dupuy, see Anna Maria Raugei, âGraffi e graffiti di umanisti,â in Parcours et rencontres: MeÌlanges de langue, dâhistoire et de litteÌrature françaises offerts aÌ Enea Balmas, vol. 1, ed. Paolo Carile, Giovanni Dotoli, and Anna Maria Raugei (Paris: Klincksieck, 1993), 539â55, at 544.
Lestringant, André Thevet, 231â58.
Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 71, 82â83, 219. Although it is certain that Belleforest was buried in the Cordeliers convent in Paris, Pierre Debofle also theorizes that he had served as a Franciscan friar. See his âLâengagement politico-religieux de François de Belleforest à lâépoque des guerres de religion,â Bulletin de la Société archéologique, historique, littéraire & scientifique du Gers: Numéro spécial consacré au XVIe siècle gersois à lâoccasion de lâhommage rendu à François de Belleforest (Auch: Th. Bouquet, 1996): 407â39, at 408â9. On the Franciscansâ advocacy of ultra-Catholic sentiments in Paris, see Megan C. Armstrong, The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers during the Wars of Religion, 1560â1600 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004).
Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiqvitez, book 1, 6.
Huppert, Idea of Perfect History, 83, 168; Myriam Yardeni, La conscience nationale en France pendant les guerres de religion (1559â1598) (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1971), 60; Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 137.
McLean, âCosmographiaâ of Sebastian Münster, 151â55, 177; Lestringant, André Thevet, 189â96; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, *ii v. See also Frank Lestringant, Lâatelier du cosmographe ou lâimage du monde à la Renaissance (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), especially chapter 1, âLe modèle cosmographique.â
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, *iiii r.
McLean, âCosmographiaâ of Sebastian Münster, 147â48; Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre, 214â17; Chassagnette, Savoir géographique, 371.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, 161â62, 181.
Ibid., 162â63, [316].
Ibid., 302.
Beaune, Birth of an Ideology.
Schmidt-Chazan, âHistoire et sentiment national chez Robert Gaguinâ; Yardeni, La conscience nationale.
David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1660â1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Bell, âRecent Works on Early Modern French National Identity,â Journal of Modern History 68 (1996): 84â113.
R. [Ronald] E. Asher, National Myths in Renaissance France: Francus, Samothes, and the Druids (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993); Claude-Gilbert Dubois, Celtes et Gaulois au XVIe siècle: Le développement littéraire dâun mythe nationaliste (Paris: J. Vrin, 1972). See also Beaune, Birth of an Ideology, chapter 8.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 14.
Ibid., 324.
Ibid., 373.
Ibid., 175.
Dubois, Celtes et Gaulois, 27; Anthony T. Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 99â101, 245â46; Marian Rothstein, âThe Reception of Annius of Viterboâs Forgeries: The Antiquities in Renaissance France,â Renaissance Quarterly 71 (2018): 580â609. For more on the persistence of these kinds of origin claims in French towns, see chapter 4.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, 282â83, 332.
Ibid., second pagination, 355.
Ibid., 323â24. This vita of St. Liphard led Belleforest astray, since St. Liphard (d. c.570) was not a bishop.
Ibid., second pagination, 186â87, quotation, second pagination, 187.
Ibid., second pagination, 300.
Simonin, âLes élites chorographesâ; Lestringant, André Thevet, 285.
Lestrade, âLa Gascogne,â 9â10. Simonin does not seem to have realized that Belleforest was asking for sources for all three works in this contemporary report of his letter. See Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 132.
McLean, âCosmographiaâ of Sebastian Münster, 89â91, 105â6.
Ibid., chapter 3; Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre, 158, 164â66, 191â206; Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983â93), 1:70.
François de Belleforest, Les chroniqves et annales de France des lâorigine des Francoys, et levr venve es Gavles ⦠(Paris: Gabriel Buon, 1573), aiii v, 508râv, 514vâ516r, 521r.
Ibid., 529r.
François de Belleforest, Grandes annales, et histoire generale de France, des le regne de Philippe de Valois, ivsqves a Henry III. a present hevrevsement regnant ⦠(Paris: Gabriel Buon, 1579), 1667vâ1668r, 1679r.
Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity, and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 342â54.
Reproduced in Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 172.
Simonin, âLes élites chorographes,â 437; A. [Auguste] Prudhomme, Inventaire sommaire des archives communales antérieures à 1790: Ville de Grenoble, 6 vols. (Grenoble: G. Dupont, 1886â91), 1:67, 2:124â25. Simonin was aware of the municipal deliberations in vol. 1 of this inventory, but missed the reference to the payments of Prévôt and Chapot in vol. 2. A copy of the âGratianopolitanae vrbis descriptioâ survives in BnF ms fr. 209, 2râv.
ac Avignon aa43, no. 151. Simonin also provided part of this text in âLes élites chorographes,â 447â48n39, but slightly misread this passage.
Marc Venard, Lâéglise dâAvignon au XVIème siècle, 5 vols. ([Lille]: Service de Reproduction des Thèses, Université de Lille iii, 1980), 1:9, 5:3, illustration 1. See also
McLean, âCosmographiaâ of Sebastian Münster, 161.
Letter of Charles ix to Eléonor Chabot-Charny, dated January 16, 1574, in Garnier, Correspondance de la mairie de Dijon, 2:46.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 284â85. The date of 1570 in the text is a mistake.
Ibid., 393 (Nevers); second pagination, 294 (Autun); 373â74 (Beauvais); second pagination, 234 (Clermont); second pagination, 329 (Embrun); second pagination, 296â97, 300 (Semur); second pagination, 326 (Valence).
Gilbert Ronchon, âLe plus ancien plan de Clermont-Ferrand dessiné par François Fuzier (1575),â Revue dâAuvergne 42 (1928): 65â71, at 67â68.
Charles Dugast-Matifeux, Nantes ancien et le pays nantais, comprenant la chronologie des seigneurs, gouverneurs, évêques et abbés: Le pouillé diocésain et la topographie historique de la ville et du pays; dâaprès les auteurs originaux, revus et annotés (Nantes: A. L. Morel, 1879), 134â35; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, 144.
Corlieu, Recveil en forme dâhistoire, ii râv; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 181â94. See also Simonin, âLes élites chorographes,â 439â40.
Saint-Julien, De lâorigine des Bovrgongnons, ai v, 18. The privilege for the Origine des Bovrgongnons is dated May 30, 1567.
Pierre de Saint-Julien, Recveil de lâantiqvite et choses plvs memorables de lâabbaye, et ville de Tovrnus ⦠(Paris: Nicolas Chesneav, 1581), 499, published with De lâorigine des Bovrgongnons. See also Simonin, âLes élites chorographes,â 438.
Saint-Julien, De lâorigine des Bovrgongnons, 566â67.
Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 40â41; Corlieu, Recveil en forme dâhistoire, ii râiii v; Vinet, Lâantiqvite de Saintes, A3r.
Belleforest, Les chroniqves et annales, aii r-aiv r; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 306â8; Saint-Julien, Discovrs des antiqvitez de la ville, et cite de Chalon svr Saone, 371â74.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, 325. It is unclear whether Trippault sent Belleforest information in addition to this work. Trippaultâs Sylvva is definitely the published work in question, since it was dedicated to Sébastien de LâAubespine, bishop of Limoges, as Belleforest specifically indicates. See Léon Trippault, Sylvva antiqvitatvm avrelianarvm ⦠(Orléans: Eloy Gibier, 1573), Aii râv.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, 324.
Léon Trippault, Antiqvite de la ville dâOrleans, et choses plvs notables dâicelle, fidelement recueillie des cosmographes, & historiens qui en ont escrit ⦠(Orléans: Eloy Gibier, 1572), Ai v; Jean Binet, âTrois dialogues de lâantiquité de Meung sur Loire,â BnF ms fr. 5408. Trippaultâs 1572 Antiqvite was an independent publication of a text originally included in his annotated Coustvmes generales, des bailliage, et preuosté dâOrleans, & ressorts dâiceulx ⦠(Orléans: Eloy Gibier, 1570). The manuscript histories of Meung-sur-Loire, based heavily on the life of St. Liphard, are internally dated to June 1579 and are almost certainly the work of Jacques Binet.
Belleforest, Grandes annales, 1626r.
âRemarques critiques sur lâhistoire dâOrleans de Mr. Le Maire edition in 4 imprimée en 1645 par Mr. ***,â bm Orléans, ms 548 (431), 286. The text identifies the engraver as François Rancuret, but since Rancurelâs name is clearly displayed on the image of Orléans in the Cosmographie universelle, this may have been a copying error or mistake of the author writing seventy years after the fact.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, 325, 329. On Fournier, see Jean-Eugène Bambenet, Histoire de lâUniversité de loi dâOrléans (Paris: Dumoulin, 1853), 368â69.
Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 191, 191n77; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, [57ter]. For Robin du Fauxâs historical works, see chapter 1.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 57bis; François Comte, âNouvelles recherches sur les premières représentations dâAngers (XVIeâXVIIe siècles),â Archives dâAnjou: Mélanges dâhistoire et dâarchéologie angevines 1 (1997): 31â53, at 36.
Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 125â26; Belleforest, Les chroniqves et annales, 508v.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 30, 34â36, and inset image.
Ibid., second pagination, 30â34; Louis Ãtienne Arcère, Histoire de la ville de La Rochelle et du pays dâAunis, vol. 1 (La Rochelle: René-Jacob Desbordes, 1756), 639; Simonin, âLes élites chorographes,â 438.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 117â18. On Le Fèvre de la Boderieâs many tributes to René de Voyer, see La Croix du Maine, Bibliothèque françoise, 134; Simonin, Vivre de sa plume, 124â25n24.
Lemerle, La Renaissance et les antiquités de la Gaule, 52; âNotice biographique,â in Charles de Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiquitez de la province de Neustrie, a présent duché de Normandie, comme des villes remarquables dâicelle, mais plus specialement de la ville et université de Caen (Caen: T. Chalopin, 1833), xi.
La Croix du Maine, Bibliothèque françoise, 474, 485, 523.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 43â50; La Croix du Maine, Bibliothèque françoise, 435â36.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 384; La Croix du Maine, Bibliothèque françoise, 485.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 320; V. L. [Verdun Louis] Saulnier, âUn ami de Joachim Du Bellay: Pierre Gilbert,â Bibliothèque dâhumanisme et Renaissance 28, no. 1 (1966): 26â31.
François de Belleforest, âLa pastorale amoureuse,â Jean Hulpeau, 1569; âLa Pyrénée,â Gervais Mallot, 1571, ed. Maxime Gaume (Saint-Ãtienne: Publications de lâUniversité de Saint-Ãtienne, 1980), 135â39.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 223.
Simonin, âLes élites chorographes,â 440; Lestringant, André Thevet, 190, 285.
This manuscript account, entitled âDe la ville dâAcqs en Gascogne et des choses singulieres et remarquables en icelles et ez lieux circonuoysins,â survives in BnF ms fr. 4055, fols. 55râ62v and BnF Duchesne 70, fol. 332ff. A published copy edited by Philippe Tamizey de Larroque may be found in the Revue historique de Béarn, Navarre, et Lannes 1 (1883): 504â14. Nothing in the text explicitly announces that Belleforest used it to draft his Cosmographie universelle, but the similarity of the content and the fact that Belleforest specifically indicates that he received information from La Serre make it virtually certain.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 384.
La Serre, âDe la ville dâAcqs,â 55r, 56v; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 384.
BnF ms fr. 16661, fols. 532râ547r. To my knowledge, this is the only original, surviving manuscript account that was explicitly addressed to Belleforest.
Ibid., 547r; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 317.
BnF ms fr. 16661, 532râ546v, especially 534v; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 318.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 288.
Ibid., second pagination, 354. On Jean Nicot, see Jean Baudry, Jean Nicot (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1988); [Albert] Puech, âUn homme de lettres au XVIe siècle,â Mémoires de lâacadémie de Nîmes, 7th series, 14 (1891): 203â58.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 355.
Poldo dâAlbenas, Dicovrs historial, 11â17, 81â84, and inset, 195â98; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 346, 348â49, 355.
Poldo dâAlbenas, Discovrs historial, 73â75, 93â96, 98â99, 112, quotation at 114; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 355.
Baudry, Jean Nicot, 115.
Lestringant, André Thevet, 13â14, 38â39, 198, 201â2.
On the development of historical methodology in the sixteenth century, see Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship; Huppert, Idea of Perfect History; Franklin, Jean Bodin; Grafton, What Was History?, chapters 2â3.
For Belleforestâs Parisian research, see Bernstein, âCosmography, Local History, and National Sentiment,â 43â47.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, *iiii r, 188.
Ibid., 182â83.
Ibid., 302 (Chartres), second pagination, 279, 282 (Dijon), second pagination, 326 (Valence), second pagination, 358 (Nîmes).
Vinet, Lâantiqvite de Saintes, B2vâB3r.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 167â68, 170.
Ibid., second pagination, 168.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 54â57, quotation, second pagination, 54â55; Jean de Bourdigné, Chroniques dâAnjou et du Maine, ed. [Théodore de] Quatrebarbes and [Victor] Godard-Faultrier, 2 vols. (Angers: Cosnier et Lachaise, 1842), 1:37â41.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 61â62; Bourdigné, Chroniques dâAnjou, 1:46.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 63â65, quotation, second pagination, 65. In fact, Du Haillan held that there was no reliable evidence concerning the counts of Anjou before the time that Hugh, count of Paris and of Angers, gave the county of Angers to Geoffroy Grisgonnelle in 955. Paradin did not openly criticize Bourdigné, but simply discounted any counts of Anjou before Robert (d.875). See Bernard de Girard du Haillan, Histoire sommaire des comtes et dvcs dâAniov depvis Geoffroy Grisegonnelle iusques à Monseigneur Henry fils & frere de roys de France, & duc dâAnjou, de Bourbonnois & dâAuuergne ⦠(Paris: Pierre lâHuillier, 1573), 4vâ6r; Claude Paradin, Alliances genealogiqves des rois et princes de Gavle ⦠Seconde edition ⦠([Lyon]: Jean de Tournes, 1606), 168.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 68.
Ibid., second pagination, 146. Cf. Alain Bouchart, Grandes croniques de Bretaigne, ed. Marie-Louise Auger, Gustave Jeanneau, and Bernard Guenée, 2 vols. (Paris: c.n.r.s., 1986), 1:206â16, 248â59.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 147â48.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 149â53; Bouchart, Grandes croniques de Bretaigne, books 3â4.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 319â20, 323, quotations, second pagination, 319, 323.
Ibid., 302â7.
Ibid., second pagination, 288â89.
Saint-Julien, Discovrs de lâillvstre, et tres-ancienne cité dâAvtvn, 191â92, 194â97.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 223â34, 236.
Ibid., second pagination, 234â35, quotation, second pagination, 235.
Deliberation of August 22, 1574, cited in Ronchon, âLe plus ancien plan de Clermont-Ferrand,â 67.
Corlieu, Recveil en forme dâhistoire, ii vâiii r. The dedication to François de Nesmond is dated October 1, 1576 (iii v). Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 186â87, 188â93.
Saint-Julien, Recveil de lâantiqvite et choses plvs memorables de lâabbaye et ville de Tournus, 533â35; Saint-Julien, De lâorigine des Bovrgongnons, 15â23; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 268â69, 309.
Saint-Julien, Discovrs de lâillvstre, et tres-ancienne cité dâAvtvn, 193â226; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 288â95.
Saint-Julien, Discovrs des antiqvitez de la ville, et cite de Chalon svr Saone, 293â94, 401â6, 416â25, 429â31, 433â90; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 304â6.
Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 304â5.
Saint-Julien, Devx livres des antiqvitez de Mascon, 231â367; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 309â10.
The title pages of De lâorigine de Bourgogne, the Recveil de lâantiqvité et choses plvs memorables de lâabbaye, et ville de Tournvs, and the Discovrs des antiqvitez de la ville, et cite de Chalon svr Saone are dated 1581, but the title page of the Devx livres des antiqvitez de Mascon is dated 1580. The dedication for the Antiqvitez de Mascon is dated July 10, 1577 (230).
Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiqvitez, book 1, 8â9, book 2, 1, 6â7, 9â10; Belleforest, Cosmographie universelle, second pagination, 120â24.
Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiqvitez, book 2, 38, 201; âNotice biographique,â in Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiquitez, xv.
âVN ASSEZ LONG DISCOVRS de lâerection et creation de lâVniuersité de Caen: Et autres de la France,â in Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiqvitez, book 2, 216â63.
Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiqvitez, book 2, 59â60, 91.
For the âmatriloge,â see ibid., book 2, 56.
âNotice biographique,â in Bourgueville, Les recherches et antiquitez, xvi; Pierre-Daniel Huet, Les origines de la ville de Caen: Revûës, corrigées, & augmentées; Seconde édition, preface by Guy Le Maignan (Paris: Le Livre dâhistoire, 2005), ii râv, 9.
Jean Darnalt, Remonstrance, ov harangve solemnelle, faicte en la cour de la seneschaussee, & siege presidial dâAgenois, & Gascongne, à Agen ⦠Ensemble les antiquitez de la ville dâAgen & pays dâAgenois annee par annee, depuis dixsept cens ans en ça, iusques à lâestat present de ladite ville & pays ⦠(Paris: François Huby, 1606), 19râ20r, 23v, 26r; Nicolas Bergier, Le dessein de lâhistoire de Reims: Avec diverses cvrievses remarques touchant lâestablissement des peuples, & la fondation des villes de France ⦠(Reims: François Bernard, 1635), 312, 370â72; Le Maire, Histoire et antiqvitez (1645), 5; Lurbe, Chroniqve bovrdeloise (1594), 3r.
Bernstein, âCosmography, Local History, and National Sentiment,â 47â58.