2 - Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive and the Dames des Roches: Proto-Salon Entertainment in Lyon and Poitiers

Summary

Abstract: Sixteenth-century Lyon's cultural encounters between Italy and France served as incubators for entertainment practices in its prosperous société mondaine. Women's participation in literary society illustrates how they engaged in intellectual play with their male contemporaries. Moreover, gatherings in printers’ abodes as well as the Académie de Fourvière and the home of Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive serve as examples for the ways that early twentieth-century scholarship demarcated Lyonnais sodalities as either brilliant humanist circles or intellectually suspect groups of fans of vernacular Italian literature and games, a seldom completely supportable dichotomy. In Poitiers the bureau d’esprit of the Dames des Roches provides a case in point, as it was a humanist salon but one that clearly engaged in vernacular poetry and games.

Keywords: Lyon, Poitiers, Marie-Catherine de Pierrevive Gondi, Dames des Roches, Estienne Pasquier

Lyon was the preferred stop for humanist travelers. There they found the most favorable material and moral conditions. Indeed, the merchants who became rich had felt the need for delicate and refined pleasures. From this was born the original Lyonnaise Renaissance, which had not been formed by books or scholars, but which resulted from social life itself, through the relationships between men from all countries, bankers, merchants, literati, or scholars, under the influence of Italian art and luxury, in the midst of festivals, with the help of great, learned ladies.

— Lucien Romier

Poitiers, at the time of the French Renaissance, was far from an eccentrically located provincial town. Its university, more particularly, the law school, attracted Du Bellay and many other kindred spirits. There Baïf rhymed to Francine, and Tahureau, La Péruse and Vauquelin formed their well-known literary group under the guidance of Guillaume Bouchet and Scévole de Sainte-Marthe. It was, in the words of Lacroix du Maine, a region ‘abondante en toutes choses et surtout en personnes d’esprit.’

— A. H. Schutz

Lyon and Proto-Salon Society

When the Pierrevive-Gondi family was ascending in wealth and political power in early sixteenth-century Lyon, the city was home to a thriving, Italianate société mondaine in which men and women participated. It was marked by engagement in both humanist scholarship and vernacular poetry composition.