Jacques Auguste de Thou

Jacques Auguste de Thou (Thuanus) (1553 - May 7, 1617) was a French historian.

He was the grandson of Augustin de Thou, president of the parlement of Paris (died 1544), and the younger son of Christophe de Thou (died 1582), "first president" of the same parlement, who had ambitions to produce a history of France. His uncle was Nicolas de Thou, Bishop of Chartres (1573-1598). With this family background, he developed a love of literature, a firm but tolerant piety, and a loyalty to the Crown. At seventeen, he began his studies in law, first at Orléans, later at Bourges, where he made the acquaintance of François Hotman, and finally at Valence, where he had Jacques Cujas for his teacher and Joseph Justus Scaliger as a friend. He was at first intended for the Church; he received the minor orders, and on the appointment of his uncle Nicolas to the episcopate succeeded him as a canon of Notre-Dame de Paris.

During the next ten years he seized every opportunity for profitable travel. In 1573 he accompanied Paul de Foix on an embassy, which enabled him to visit most of the Italian courts; he formed a friendship with Arnaud d'Ossat (afterwards Bishop of Rennes and Bayeux and a cardinal), who was secretary to the ambassador. In the following year he formed part of the brilliant cortege which brought King Henry III back to France, after his flight from his Polish kingdom. He also visited several parts of France, and at Bordeaux met Michel de Montaigne. On the death of his elder brother Jean (April 5, 1579), who was maître des requétes to the parlement, his relations prevailed on him to leave the Church, and he entered the parlement and got married (1588). In the same year he was appointed conseiller d'etat. He served faithfully both Henry III and Henry IV, despite their faults, simply because they both represented legitimate authority.

He succeeded his uncle Augustin as president à mortier (1595), and used his new authority in the interests of religious peace, negotiating the Edict of Nantes with the Protestants, while in the name of the principals of the Gallican Church he opposed the recognition of the Council of Trent. This attitude exposed him to the animosity of the League party and of the Holy See, and to their persecution when the first edition of his history appeared. This history was his life's work. In a letter of March 31, 1611, addressed to the president Pierre Jeannin, he described his labours. His materials were drawn from his rich library, which he established in the Rue des Poitevins in the year 1587, with the two brothers, Pierre and Jacques Dupuy, as librarians. His object was to produce a scientific and unbiased work, and for this reason he wrote it in Latin, giving it as title Historia sui temporis. The first 18 books, embracing the period from 1545-1560, appeared in 1604 (1 vol. folio), and the work was at once attacked by those whom the author himself calls les envieux et les factieux.

The second part, dealing with the first wars of religion (1560-1572), was put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (November 9, 1609). The third part (up to 1584), and the fourth (up to 1584), which appeared in 1607 and 1608, caused a similar outcry, in spite of de Thou's efforts to remain just and impartial. He carried his scruples to the point of forbidding any translation ‘of his book into French, because in the process there might, to use his own words, "be committed great faults and errors against the intention of the author"; this, however, did not prevent the Jesuit Father Machault from accusing him of being "a false Catholic, and worse than an open heretic" (1614); de Thou, we may say, was a member of the third order of St Francis. As an answer to his detractors, he wrote his Mémoires, which are a useful complement to the History of his own Times. After the death of Henry IV, de Thou had another disappointment; the queen regent, Marie de Medici, refused him the position of first president of the parlement, appointing him instead as a member of the Conseil des finances intended to take the place of Sully.” This was to him a distinct downfall; he continued, however, to serve under her, and took part in the negotiations of the treaties concluded at Ste Menehould (1614) and Loudun (1616). He died at Paris.

Three years after the death of de Thou, Pierre Dupuy and Nicolas Rigault brought out the fitst complete edition of the Historia sus temporis, comprising 138 books; they appended to it the Mémoires, also in Latin (1620). A hundred years later, Samuel Buckley, published a critical edition, the material for which had been collected in France itself by Thomas Carte (1733). De Thou was treated as a classic, an honour which he deserved. His history is a model of exact research, drawn from the best sources, and presented in an elegant and animated style; unfortunately, even for the men of the Renaissance, Latin was a dead language; it was impossible for de Thou to find exact equivalents for technical terms of geography or of administration. As the reasons which had led de Thou to forbid the translation of his monumental history disappeared with his death, there was soon a move to make it more accessible. It was translated first into German. A Protestant pastor, G Boule, who was afterwards converted to Catholicism, translated it into French, but could not find a publisher. The first translation printed was that of Pierre Du Ryer (1657), but it is mediocre and incomplete. In the following century the abbé Prévost, who was a conscientious collaborator with the Benedictines of Saint-Maur before he became the author of the more profane work Manon Lescaut, was in treaty with a Dutch publisher for a translation which was to consist of ten volumes; only the first volume appeared (1733). But competition, perhaps of an unfair character, sprang up. A group of translators, who had the good fortune of being able to avail themselves of Buckley's fine edition, succeeded in bringing out all at the same time ‘a translation in sixteen volumes (De Thou, Histoire universelle, Fr. trans. by Charles le Beau, Le Mascrier, the Abbé Des Fontaines, 1734). As to the Mémoires they had already been translated by Le Petit and Des Ifs (1711); in this form they have been reprinted in the collections of Petitot, Michaud and Buchon. To de Thou we also owe certain other works: a treatise De re accipitraria (1784), a Life, in Latin, of Papyre Masson, some Poemata sacra, etc.

For his life may he consulted the recollections of him ‘collected by the brothers Dupuy (Thvana, sive Excerpta f. A. Thuani per if. P. P., 1669; reprinted in the edition of 1733), and the biographies by JAM Collinson (The Life of Thuanus, 1807), and Düntzer, (De Thou's Leben, 1837). Finally, see Henry Harrisse, Le Président de Thou et ses descendants, leur célébre bibliothèque, leurs armoires et la traduction française de J. A. Thuani Historiarum sui Temporis (1905).