LITMIR.BIZ

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my country [pays]: its interests will always take precedence over my own: and always my own pain, my own loss, my own sufferings will be endured before those of my fatherland [patrienationla patrie]” (ctd. in YardeniYardeni, Myriam 195). Apart from hardline LeagueLeaguers who viewed such a declaration as a self-interested ruse, the majority of Frenchmen responded positively to this rhetoric of self-sacrifice in the name of the fatherland. “Beyond his unquestionable right to the succession, Henri of Navarre knew, perhaps from the start, how to embody the interests of France, how to be not only a partisan leader, but also how to see the interests of the whole nationnation [patrienationla patrie]. There can be no doubt that this quality served, no less than his right to the crown, to attract to his side, after his accession, ‘all good Catholics and true Frenchmen’ who desired to preserve their country” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 196). “The patriotismpatriotism of Henri IV was made of such material that it could reunite, seamlessly, the most diverse threads of his own party with those, no less diverse, of the adverse party” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 196). Henri presented himself as the restorer of the France which was “the communis patrianationpatria of all Frenchmen” (KantorowiczKantorowicz, Ernst H. 247), only recently submerged by the bloody deluge of sectarian violence, and mercilessly attacked by antinationnationalist LeagueLeaguer demagogues (e.g. “Who would not rather be Spanish than Huguenot?” ctd. in YardeniYardeni, Myriam 210).

      The royal odes use this coincidence of magnanimitymagnanimity and patriotismpatriotism, modeled after Henri IV, to create the ethosethos of the new patrienationla patrie [nationnation] reborn from the ashes of civil war. Though expressed in the terms of chivalric nobilitynobility, this patriotic ethospatriotismpatriotic ethos had “nothing feudal about it” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 196). It excluded “no order or individual” and transcended “the narrow loyalism owed to the king” by transforming personal loyalty into “loyalism toward the patrienationla patrie [nationnation], since the bond that united the diverse members of the patrienationla patrie [nationnation] was the fact that all are French” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 197). The choice, however fortuitous, of Henri IV as the initial patron for Malherbe’s royal odes, therefore, determines their representation of the subject of the new nationnation. Henri is the model of the new patriotismpatriotism, and the ethosethos of magnanimitymagnanimity is its form and vehicle. While such an ethosethos portrays the monarch a quasi-divine hero who defends the interests of the nationnation, it also makes possible an ethic of emulation and self-sacrifice in the service of king and country, pro rege et patriapro rege et patria (KantorowiczKantorowicz, Ernst H. 259).

      The ethosethos of magnanimitymagnanimity presents yet another advantage. Henri, a one-time peer of the blood who abjured his ProtestantProtestant faith to rule France, would have wanted to show that he was above mere political expediency. Such an implication is inherent to magnanimitymagnanimity. The royal odes maintain that Henri possesses the right of legitimate succession, based on the Salic Law, but they stress that he has earned that right. His devotion to the nationnation and his achievements on the battlefield were rich premises from which to argue that he deserved the throne. After Henri was assassinated in 1610, Malherbe extended this logic of magnanimitymagnanimity—the logic of intrinsic merit—to Marie de Médicis, whom the Paris ParlementParlement had confirmed as regent. The odes celebrating the magnanimitymagnanimity of the queen regent may be the most interesting of all the royal encomia, not least because, as we will see in Part II, Malherbe uses this traditionally masculine ethosethos to praise a powerful woman, arguing that her sagacious piloting of the ship of stateship of state proves her superlative merit.5 Some years later, after Louis XIII had snatched the reins of power from his mother, Malherbe would use the same ethosethos and apply its implicit logic to a young king whose military campaigns in the south of France were designed to remove any doubt about his readiness to impose his will.

      The royal odes also extend this logic of intrinsic merit to the new patriotic subjectpatriotismpatriotic subject. By arguing that the Bourbons deserve to rule because of their commitment to the nationnation, Malherbe is appealing to the nationnation’s sense of honor, that is, both what the subjects owe to their monarch and what they owe to themselves. As Myriam YardeniYardeni, Myriam explains, during the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion, the embryonic patriotismpatriotism of the diverse constituencies of the nationnation (and this includes the democratic-minded monarchomachs) remained colored by noble ideology, which associated the greatness of France with the chivalric ideals of a caste that had traditionally defended the nationnation and, under the leadership of the king, had enforced God’s will (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 243-244). The logic of magnanimitymagnanimity redirects the desire of the nationnation’s greatest subjects for social distinction away from resentment toward emulation. This is because the sound judgment required to estimate correctly one’s own greatness is the same necessary for recognizing greatness in others (NE 4.3.1123b 1-5, 10-15; 1124a 5-10, 25-30; 1124b 1-5, 10-15 & 20). To recognize Henri IV as a great soulmagnanimitygreat soul is not to lose face but to demonstrate one’s own magnanimitymagnanimity. It takes a great soulmagnanimitygreat soul to know a great soul. In principle, but also as a practical matter, this condition of reciprocal recognition allows the ethosethos of magnanimitymagnanimity to reach through the monarch to address the great nobilitynobilitygreat nobles as a privileged constituency of the new nationnation. “Henri IV understood very well that he must win over the great nobles, first because they were the easiest, but also because the great nobilitynobilitygreat nobles encouraged the less brave to come along” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 252-253). As the form and vehicle of the new patriotismpatriotism, the ethosethos of magnanimitymagnanimity targets the great nobles in particular, but their exampleexample potentially relays it to all the other subjects of the new national communitynationnational community.

      To sum up, the practice of literary patronage in the early seventeenth century supplied an external goal—the characterethoscharacter of the monarch—to which Malherbe adapted himself and his poetic discourse. The perceived magnanimitymagnanimity of Henri IV determines the ethosethos of the royal odes, and this ethosethos in turn selects appropriate arguments and style. Its logic of intrinsic merit helped advance Henri’s political agenda and reinforced Bourbon political authority after Henri’s death. In presenting the monarch’s magnanimitymagnanimity as a patriotic idealpatriotismpatriotic ideal that transcends sectarian loyalties, Malherbe exploits the collective identity of ethosethos to appeal to noble elites and, through them, to the nationnation as a whole. Henri IV may not have taken a strong interest in poetry, but he could not have failed to notice that Malherbe’s “Prière pour le Roi allant en Limousin” (1605; 1607)—the ode which earned the poet a position at courtcourt (royal)—advocates the healing of the wounds inflicted on the French nationnation. The patronage of Malherbe was a practical tool for the dissemination of an ideological public imageimagepublic image which reaffirmed the authority of the monarchy and modeled the patriotismpatriotism of the new nationnation.

      Chapter 2. The Evolution of Noble Identity

      The first three decades of the seventeenth century in France were marked by rapid and widespread change at almost every level of society. A fairly steady economic expansion began. The monarchy by fits and starts more aggressively asserted its power, attempting to centralize authority and to raise revenues with the paulette and through various commercial treaties. The regency of Marie de Médicis saw the great nobles challenge the crown’s authority in 1614, while a sixteen-year-old Louis XIII assumed his office with a dramatic coup d’état that wrested the reins of power from his mother in 1617. Louis XIII’s military campaigns in the early 1620s in the southwest of France, the bastion of ProtestantProtestant resistance, culminated in the siege of La RochelleLa Rochelle in 1628, resulting in the defeat of the ProtestantProtestants and the disarmament of all their strongholds. Monarchal and noble patronage flourished, while new centers of cultural authority and literary production emerged in aristocratic salonsalonss. French literature abandoned the gloomy themes inspired by the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion and embraced larger-than-life heroism in novels, theater, and prose encomia, the amorous intrigue of pastoral, and the social refinements of salonsalons culture.

      Noble identitynobilityidentity was not immune to all these changes. This period was the crucible for the emergence of a new nobiliary ethosethos, the honnêtehonnête homme homme [honorable man]. In 1630, the publication

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