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English Writers and Beza's Latin Epigrams: The Uses and Abuses of Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Anne Lake Prescott
Anne Lake Prescott*
Affiliation:
Barnard College
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To many Englishmen of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Théodore de Bèze (or Beza, as he was usually called) was a famous and respected figure, widely known as the biographer and successor of Calvin and as the author of a number of theological treatises and Biblical commentaries which spelled out major aspects of Calvinist thought. English readers also knew him well as a translator of Scripture, whose Latin had angered both Lutheran and Catholic scholars, as a translator of the Psalms into French and Latin poetry, and perhaps, even, as the author of an early experiment in vernacular Biblical tragedy, Abraham sacrifiant.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 21 , 1974 , pp. 83 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1974

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References

1 The standard biography is Geisendorf's, P. F. Théodore de Bèze (Geneva, 1949)Google Scholar. See also Kingdon, Robert M., Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564-1572 (Madison, Wise, 1967)Google Scholar and Beza's Correspondance, ed. Fernand Aubert, Henri Meylan, et at. For Beza's poetry see Maigron, Louis, De Theodori Bezae poematis (Lyon, 1898)Google Scholar. An interesting study of an early MS of the Juvenilia is F. Aubert, J. Boussard, and H. Meylan, ‘Un premier recueil de poésies latines de Theodore de Bèze’, BHR, xv (1953), 257-294; 164-191. More bibliographical and biographical material will be found in E. Droz, ‘Notes sur Théodore de Bèze’, BHR, XXIV (1962), 392-412, 589-610.

2 Fitz-Geffrey, Charles, Affaniae (Oxford, 1601)Google Scholar, sigs. K8-K8V.

3 Kingdon, article on Beza in The New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967).

4 Geisendorf and Maigron briefly discuss die response to Beza's epigrams; a longer treatment of ‘la Querelle des Juvenilia’ will be found in the introduction to Beza's Juvenilia, ed. Alexandre Machard (Paris, 1879), which focuses on the reaction in Europe, although Machard mentions several English writers. So far as I know there is no modern study of the affair.

5 There has been little written on the subject, but see Lee, Sidney, The French Renaissance in England (Oxford, 1910 Google Scholar), and Hudson, H.H., The Epigram in the English Reniassance (Princeton, 1947)Google Scholar, who cites some translations and borrowings, concluding that 'the learned public in England enjoyed some acquaintance, throughout the period we treat of, with the Latin poetry of Beza’ (p. 131). Nor was Beza's reputation as a Neo- Latin poet confined to Protestant countries. Montaigne, for instance, included him among those ‘cunning and able men’ who had given poetry ‘hir vogue and credit in our age”. See his Essayes, trans. John Florio (1603), Book n, chapter 17 (London, 1897, IV, 181-182).

6 This very sketchy outline is based on Gardy, Frédéric, Bibliographie des oeuvres … de Théodore de Béze (Geneva, 1960)Google Scholar.

7 Epigram xevi: ‘For to be married yesterdaie, / To Churche a gallaunt jetted gaie: / His crisped locks wavde all behinde, / His tongue did lispe, his visage shinde. / His rovyng eyes rolde to and fro, / He fiskyng fine did mincyng go: / His lippes all painted semed sweete: / When as the Priest came them to meete, / (A pleasaunt scouse, though nought of life) / He askt of bothe whiche was the wife?’ Trans, by Timothy Kendall for Flowers of Epigrammes (1577), Spenser Society reprint (Manchester, 1874), xv. Here and elsewhere I follow Marchad's edition o£ the Juvenilia.

8 Du Bellay, Joachim, Poésies fratifaises et latines, ed. Courbet, E. (Paris, 1918), I, 498–499 Google Scholar.

9 Hudson merely calls tkejuuenilia Beza's ‘wild oats’. Lénient, Charles in La Satire en France (Paris, 1877), 1 Google Scholar,184, says they were the ‘imprudent péché de jeunesse, où 1'esprit de parti devait un jour aller chercher, sans mesure et sans bonne foi, un texte perpetuel d'accusations’. But Geisendorf says that some, including the one about Cupid's bow quoted below, ‘outrepassent, et de tres loin, les bomes de l'honnêtete’ (p. 23).

10 Epigram LXVIII: ‘Tell why, poets, you have given a bow to Love? A Utile boy is not suited for arms. Of course the shape of an eyebrow is known to me, for often by this love is first caused. Therefore cease to wonder, Candida, why I am mad for you: I have felt the shafts of your eyebrow [with perhaps a pun on ‘pride’]. O gods, grant that after she has wounded one in no way deserving it, she may feel that I also have a shaft.’

11 Epigram IXVII: ‘Recently, greeting my little Candida, I said “Hello, my soul, my delight, and my little heart” [with a pun on culum, Candida's bottom]. She then, desiring to prove her wit to me, said “Hello, my little soul” [i.e., the diminutive of mens but also the word for penis]. O witty lady, and of skilled mind—for if I am used to saying “little heart” why may she not say “little soul“?’

12 Maigron, p. 96.

13 Correspondance, 1, 34-35. The poem to the unusual lady is LXXIV, ‘Ad Quandam”.

14 The preface is also printed in Beza's Correspondance, 1, 200-201. My translation is from A tragedie of Abrahams sacrifice, trans. A. Gfolding] (1577), sigs. A2V-A3V. Beza also seems to aim a slap at Du Bellay when he remarks that ‘othersome intending to inrich our tongue, do powder it with Greeke and Latine tearmes”.

15 Merrill, L.R., The Life and Poems of Nicholas Grimald (New Haven, 1925 Google Scholar, reprinted 1969). Those poems based on Beza's are found in die section ‘Shorter Poems”, nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 19, 22, 23, 30, 37, 39, and 40. Merrill also gives Beza's Latin. H. H. Hudson first pointed out these borrowings in ‘Grimald's Translations from Beza”, MLN XXXIX (1924), 388-394. See also, Tottel's Miscellany, ed. H. R. Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 2 vols.

16 The epigrams from Beza are on pp. 156-166. Kendall could also have used the 1576 edition, but he would have had to work fast. The phrase about tears comes from the epitaph on Budé, p. 156.

17 Sig. 3V. He adds that his gardens are ‘sine Priapo’ ;. The poems from Beza are on sigs. A3V-A8.

18 Sigs. s6-s8. Heywood also translates an epigram on Mary Stuart's diamond from the poems by George Buchanan published with Beza's Poemata.

19 An exposition of the dominical epistles and gospels used in our English Liturgie (1610) in Works (1638 ed.), sig. Yy1. The poem which first appeared in the 1569 Poemata, is also in Wright.

20 The epigram was printed in the section called ‘Icones’ in the Poemata but it was also included in Icones, id est verae imagines virorum … illustriutn (Geneva, 1580). Beza's emblems did not go unnoticed in England, as see the notes to Whitney, Geffrey in A choice of emblemes (Leiden, 1586)Google Scholar, ed. Henry Green (1866; New York, 1967 edition). Several of them were quoted in Abraham Fraunce's Fransi insignium (1588), sigs. N2V-N3, and in John Willis’ Mnemonica, sive reminiscendi ars (1618), sigs. GIV-G2.

21 Sig. A3. The poem ends: ‘Ecce manus inter medias (si credere fas est) / Vera caro evadit, qui modo panis erat. / Non igitur te Pontificem hunc dixero, verum / Carnificem et pattern dixero carnificum.’

22 ‘… nullo saturatas murice vestes, / Divite nee cocco pallia tincta vides; / Sed quae rubra vides, sanctorum caede virorum, / Et mersa insonti tota cruore madent: / Aut memor istorum quae celet crimina, vestis / Pro dominis justo tacta pudore rubet.’ The epigram had first appeared in the 1569 Poemata.

23 Works, sig. Rl.

24 Hakluyt, Richard, Voyages (Everyman's Library, London, 1907)Google Scholar, II, 401.

25 Hudson, in Epigram, mentions a MS translation by Thomas Evans of Beza's epigram on Paul IV. There are also several quotations from Beza I have not identified. Thomas Farnaby's Florikgium epigrammatum Graecorum (1629) quotes a translation from Lucian (sig. B2V); Bishop Griffith Williams translates some ‘witty verses of Theodore Beza' against adultery in The true church (1629), sig. Nn2v) and Henry Peacham the younger quotes Beza's ‘excellent Epigramme’ on proud stupidity in The valley ofvarietie (1638), sigs. H6V-H7.

26 Giles Fletcher the elder, The English Works, ed. L. E. Berry (Madison, Wise, 1964), p. 73. A Poetical Rhapsody, ed. H. E. Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 1931-1932), I, 273. Rollins quotes Bullen, an earlier editor, as saying this poem is based on Beza's In Aulam, but the poem in Rhapsody is in fact much closer to Beza's Epigram LXXV, In Gelliatn. Hudson, in Epigram, mentions five quotations and translations from Beza's ‘erotic' poems in Tanner MS.306.

27 Sidney's Defense of Poesy, ed. Lewis Soens (Lincoln, Neb., 1970), p. 43; Meres' reference is in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. G. Smith (Oxford, 1904), II, 322.

28 Fletcher, p. 75.

29 Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow (1904-1910; reprint ed. F. P. Wilson, Oxford, 1958), II 266.

30 For some evidence of this shift in later renaissance England see Fraser, Russell, The War against Poetry (Princeton, 1970)Google Scholar, although I have some reservations about his arguments. I would also stress that the movement I refer to was by no means simple or universal. See also Nelson, William, Fact or Fiction (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 The mouse appears in Gregory Martin's Discoverie of the manifold corruptions of the holy Scriptures (Rheims, 1582), sig. a5v. It should be pointed out that Beza was not alone in eliciting vivid slanders. Many of the authors I quote had a good deal to say about Calvin and Luther. The latter's expressions of dismay at his own carnality were often used against him as evidence of moral degeneracy. On Geneva itself, both as an image and model of the Godly city and as a vision of iniquity, see Dufour, Alain, ‘Le mythe de Genève aux temps de Calvin’, in Histoire politique et psychologie historique (Geneva, 1966), pp. 63–130 Google Scholar.

32 Machard, pp. xxxi-xxxiii.

33 The work is described by Machard, pp. xxii-xxiii.

34 My quotations are from the 1582 French edition, Histoire de la vie, moeurs, doctrine, et deportements de Theodore de Beze (Paris). See particularly sigs. B2-B4V, E3-F2, Hiv, and K2. My text of the epigram is from Machard, pp. 234-235. Bolsec's text is accurate; most of Beza's opponents who quoted it did so correctly, although there were two common variations: Andebert for Audebert and uno for imo, changes easy enough for the author or printer to make when working from manuscript. Beza's poem says: ‘Candida is not here; Beza, why do you delay? Audebert is not here; why do you linger here? Paris keeps your love; Orleans has your delight. And do you continue to stay in Vezelay [Beza's home town], far from litde Candida and love, far from litde Audebert and delight? Nay, Vezelay, from far away farewell, and goodbye father, and goodbye brothers: for I can do without Vezelay, and do without family and without these and those people, but not without little Candida and dear Audebert. But which, I ask, should I prefer of the two? Which should I see first? Should I put anyone ahead of you, Candida? Or may I prefer anyone to you, Audebert? How if I could cut myself into twin parts and then one of them could revisit Candida and one could run towards Audebert? But Candida is so eager, I know, that she wants to hold the whole Beza; so too Audebert is desirous of Beza, so that he longs to have Beza complete. I embrace thus one and the other, as I wholly wish to see both, and to enjoy, while whole, both two whole. Yet it is necessary to choose one. Oh too hard necessity! But since, finally, it is necessary, I set you first, Audebert: and if Candida loudly complain, what then? She will fall silent with a deep little kiss.’ Bolsec's translation seems fair, although at a few places the language may be slighdy heightened.

35 Perhaps the story of the abortion was given impetus by a scandal at Geneva in 1570 involving Beza's niece and her alleged adultery, blasphemy, and murder of her child. See Kingdon, p. 24.

36 Verae et sanae confessionis de praesentia corporis Christi in coma Domini (n.p., 1583). I have not found the date of the first edition; the earliest I know of was in 1562. Hesshus' comments are on sigs. A8V, g5-6, n2-n3. For Calvinist conflict over Beza's role see Kingdon.

37 See 1, sigs. Z4-ai; n, sigs. A2-A3. I have looked in Beza's writings on the Lord's Supper to see if he indeed does make this repellent comparison, but I have not found it. Schlüsselburg, usually careful to do so, gives no precise reference. The problem is complicated by Beza's tendency to tone down such language in the later editions of his works.

38 The phrase from Maldonado is quoted from the preface to the 1607 edition. De Raemond's book was translated into Latin: I have seen the Cologne, 1614, edition. He also takes issue with Beza and Marot over their translation of the Psalms, although he seems to have liked some poetry, for he often quotes Ronsard.

39 Beza's defense in the Confessio (1560) is in his epistle to his friend and teacher Melchior Volmar; see Tractationes theologicae (second ed., Geneva, 1582), I, sigs. B2-B3. The first version (1559) of the Confessio was in French and lacks the epistle to Volmar, as do English translations, although the Latin version printed in London (1575) includes it. The reply to De Sainctes is in Apologia altera ad F. Claudium de Xaintes, in Tract, theolog., n, G6-G6V; according to Gardy diere is no extant edition of the work betore its publication in the first edition of the Tract, theolog. (1573).

40 Charges that Beza was violent were common; Ronsard had complained in his Continuation du discours that Beza preached ‘Un Christ empistollé’ (Oeuvres, ed. G. Cohen, Paris, 1950, n, 552). The reformed clergy's reputation for violence was, moreover, not undeserved. For evidence that ‘the Calvinist church organization was systematically used to mobilize Huguenot armies’ see Kingdon, Robert M., Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France (Geneva, 1956), pp. 110 Google Scholar ff.

41 Reprinted (without the epigram) in Catholic Tractates of the Sixteenth Century, 1573- 1600, ed. Thomas Graves for the Scottish Text Society (1st Ser., XLV, Edinburgh, 1901). In the same volume there is Hamilton, John's Facile traictise (Louvain, 1600)Google Scholar, which says Beza ‘sauld his Priorie tuyse, and tuik Candida a mans wyf with him to Geneva …’, although there is no mention of the epigrams (p. 228). Hamilton here is objecting to the interpretation of Scripture by the unqualified, especially women, on whose shortcomings he has a lot to say.

42 See sigs. L1-L2, P4-P4V. Stapleton reprinted a slightly abridged version of his remarks on Beza's poetry in Antidota evangelica (Antwerp, 1595), sigs. Ppiv-pp2. The text of the poem has been emended to read, correctly, Audebert and into. For a discussion of Stapleton's views, see O'Connell, Marvin, Thomas Stapleton and the Counter Reformation (New Haven, 1964 Google Scholar).

43 Sigs. Rr2v-Rr3V. Rainolds also takes strong exception to the Marot-Beza version of the Psalms and to Beza's Latin paraphrase of Psalm L, which he says is written in the style of Catullus (sigs. S7v-s8).

44 Fitz-Simon says Beza confessed his sins on p. 58 of his Creophagia, but I can find nothing there of that sort.

45 The STC gives the probable author as Lawrence Anderton, but the DNB seems confident that he was James. Brereley's discussion of Beza's poetry is on sigs. Xl-Y3v.

46 So far I have been unable to determine if Brereley is telling the truth here. The 1606 edition filmed for the Ann Arbor series has no such retraction and if Brereley is right would be the false Geneva edition.

47 Brereley refers the reader to Owen's 1607 edition of the Epigrammatum; in the Oxford, 1647, edition I consulted these epigrams were on sigs. B3V and D3. The first says: 'It is unlawful for you to wed a wife according to the new law. So what? It's fine for you (to wed) by the old law. But you've twice violated the law of Moses, too: for your first wife was a whore and this one's a widow.’ The other says: ‘Now when King David was seventy years old he warmed his cold side with a pretty girl; and so that you'd not seem unlike the prophet, Theodore, as an old man you married a girl.’ Owen had apparently read Beza's joking epigrams on marriage, for he plays with Beza's double-entendre about the straight and narrow path: ‘Ducentem ad Coelos Theodoras, conjuge ducta, / Credidit angustam se reperisse viam. / Esse videbatur Theodoro quae via Coeli / Duxit ad infernum: nam via lata fuit’ (sig. BI). ‘Theodore believed that having married he had found a narrow way leading to the heavens. What seemed to Theodore the road of Heaven led to Hell: now the path was wide.’

48 In Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn (Bloomington, Ind., 1957), II, 85.

49 Smith, II, 248.

50 Thomas Browne, Works, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (Chicago, 1964), II, 538. According to the editor, the marginal notes are not by Browne but received his sanction.

51 Parsons, , The doleful knell of Thomas Bell (Douay, 1607)Google Scholar, sig. Q1; Thomas Robinson, The anatomy of the English nunnery of Lisbon (1622), sigs. C2-C3, D1, E2V

52 Two very lerned sermons of M. Beza (1588), sig. H5.

53 A briefe and pithie summe of Christian faith, trans. R. F. (1589 edition), sigs. I4V-L5.

54 Sermons, sigs. E5-E5V, E8T.

55 Beza explains this view that Catholics think words have an inherent magical power at the mass in Summe, sigs. L7V-L8 and in The other parte of Christian questions, trans. John Field (1580), sig. B4.