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did serve to rank one noble above another.

      While the notion of virtuevirtue exercised considerable influence on noble identitynobilityidentity in the early decades of the seventeenth century, there existed ideological confusion about which virtuevirtue was most important. The contest was essentially between magnanimitymagnanimity and moderationvirtuemoderation, and this choice reflected the contest between the older warrior ethosethos and the newer worldly ethosethos. Scholars have traced both virtuevirtues to the reception of the Nicomachean EthicsAristotleNicomachean Ethics (NE) in seventeenth-century France.2 Prior to Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s treatise, a military hero could be described as honnêtehonnête hommehonnêteté [honorable, noble] and could even be an honnêtehonnête homme homme [honorable man]. But the term would be increasingly reserved for performances within a specific context. It was understood that the battlefield or military camp required different virtuevirtues than the courtroyal court or the aristocratic salonsalons. Magnanimitymagnanimity leads one to perform heroic exploits, whereas moderationvirtuemoderation is a virtuevirtue that describes the right attitude toward pleasure, implying not just self-control but, and above all, enjoyment of to kalon (AristotleAristotle, NEAristotleNicomachean Ethics (NE) 4.3 & 3.11). The ideological triumph of the honnêtehonnête homme homme [honorable man] was prepared by the introduction of Greek and Latin authors in the sixteenth century and by the social, political, and theological upheavals of the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion. Christian values and beliefs still dominated the early seventeenth century, and strict conformity to Christian morality and intellectual and religious dogma was enforced by the Jesuits and the Paris ParlementParlement. Feeling the need for a new ethical outlook and way of life, but one that would not disturb dogmatic opinion, educated elites of the early seventeenth century returned to the humanist res literaria [literary canon]. It allowed them to pull ideas from a range of ethical systems, including Christianity, to fashion the ethosethos of honnêtehonnête hommehonnêtetété [nobilitynobility] that responded to the changed political and social environment.3

      A simple but sharp contrast between magnanimitymagnanimity and moderationvirtuemoderation emerges from a comparison of Rodrigue in Corneille’s Le Cid (1637) and Philinte in Molière’s Le Misanthrope (1666). Both these virtuevirtues of characterethoscharacter presuppose the assistance of an intellectual virtuevirtue, phronēsisphronēsis, often translated as practical wisdomphronēsispractical wisdom, or more loosely, good judgment, defined as the ability to reason correctly about means and ends (NE 4.6). Whereas phronēsisphronēsis enables Rodrigue to make correct judgments that lead to life-and-death feats of valor, it allows Philinte to make correct judgments productive of pleasure in social situations. In Le Cid (Act 1, Scene 4), Rodrigue reasons that failing to fight Dom Gomès, his fiancée’s father, will cost him both his honor and his fiancée (she will not love him disgraced), and so he fights the duel to preserve his honor, resigning himself to the enmity of his beloved. Similarly, in Act 4, Scene 3, outnumbered by the Moors invading Seville, Rodrigue has the presence of mind to lay an ambush, lulling the enemy into a false sense of security, and turning the unfavorable circumstances to his advantage. By contrast, in Le Misanthrope (Act 1, Scene 1), Philinte displays practical wisdomphronēsispractical wisdom through worldliness: he adapts himself and his discourse to his interlocutors; he censures his own reactions of dislike or displeasure; and he regards human failings with generosity of spirit. The self-effacing moderationvirtuemoderation of Philinte, in spite of his own and everyone else’s insincerity, procures a civilized pleasure for imperfect human beings engaged in conversation.

      From these examples, one could extrapolate that magnanimitymagnanimity and moderationvirtuemoderation are virtuevirtues suited to distinct sociopolitical configurations. Magnanimitymagnanimity was well adapted to a Renaissance monarchypolitymonarchy dominated by a constellation of great nobles who either played an active role in affairs of state or revolted when they felt excluded from power, whereas moderationvirtuemoderation was more appropriate to an absolutist regime in which nobles no longer had a share in sovereignty and needed the methods of civility to obtain social distinction and to secure opportunities for advancement in the service of king and country. The predominance of the warrior ethosethos in the early years of the seventeenth century and the emergence and co-existence of honnêtehonnête hommehonnêtetété alongside it, before the triumph of honnêtehonnête hommehonnêtetété in the late 1660s, parallel the messy and unsteady transition of the Renaissance monarchypolitymonarchy to a more absolutist form of rule.

      Malherbe’s royal odes were composed at the early stage of these important cultural and political changes, and so it is no surprise that the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity underpins their ideological ambitions. Furthermore, the unusual circumstances of Henri IV’s accession in the late sixteenth century (the famous battles he won against LeagueLeaguer and Spanish opposition, and his remarkable trajectory from leader of the ProtestantProtestant opposition to Catholic king of France) must have contributed to the centrality of magnanimitymagnanimity in the royal odes. What is surprising and deserves a closer look, however, is the emphasis which the odes place on the monarch’s natural virtuevirtue. This is unexpected because ready-made, competing versions of monarchal sacrality were available in the late sixteenth century. LeagueLeaguers clung to the traditional image of the Most Christian King, while royalists appealed to the tenets of neo-Stoicstoicismism to represent the monarch as the embodiment of divine reason (Crouzet 90-93).

      Contrary to what one might expect, moreover, the neo-stoicstoicism revival of the early seventeenth century does not profoundly influence the royal odes. Malherbe indeed completed a famous translation of the letters of SenecaSeneca; his mentor, Du VairDu Vair, composed treatises on ancient stoicstoicismism; and stoicstoicism arguments clearly inform Malherbe’s consolation poems. However, the royal odes do not present the goodcommonwealththe good, virtuevirtue, or the passions in a way fitting to the ideal of the stoicstoicism sage. On the contrary, the goodcommonwealththe good is what is good for the king, the state, or the nationnation; ambition, love, and glory are unabashedly celebrated in the royal odes; and virtuevirtue receives praise not so much for its own sake as for the benefits of peace, prosperity, and justicevirtuejustice. When stoicstoicismism does make an appearance, it is invariably because some overwhelming dark force threatens the hero and the nationnation (e.g. the failed attempt on Henri’s life in 1605), and similar to what one finds in Corneille’s classic heroic plays, it is a way of accepting the will of destiny without abandoning pride or repudiating the desire for glory (Bénichou 34).

      The royal odes present a third alternative to LeagueLeaguer sacrality and to Politique stoicstoicismism: the monarch’s natural virtuevirtue is portrayed as superlative, quasi-divine, and heroic, while the sacerdotal function of kingship is deemphasized. Of course, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries did not witness anything like the desacralizationdesacralization of the monarchy that occurred in the eighteenth century.4 Rather, during the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion, as Myriam YardeniYardeni, Myriam shows, the outburst of national sentimentnationnational sentiment (whose various streams emerge simultaneously from different milieus, Catholic and ProtestantProtestant, noble and commoner, and progressively converge toward the late 1580s) is accompanied by a relative secularization of the state. “In the common cause made by those who are worried about their country [patrienationla patrie], the idea of the State replaces every other criteria, and reason of State brings about a total separation of the State from every theologically-defined religion” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 177). With respect to the royal succession, YardeniYardeni, Myriam sees the growing polarization, after 1584, between intransigent LeagueLeaguers and royalist Politiques, whose pamphlets share many common themes with those of the ProtestantProtestants, leading to increasingly incompatible mind-sets that opposed two fundamental principles of the monarchy: the Salic Law (favored by the Politiques and ProtestantProtestants) and the crown’s sacerdotal office (underscored by the LeagueLeaguers). While Leaguers still conceived the monarch as the anointed of God and the eldest son of the Church (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 177), religious tolerance in the name of national unitynationnational unity, proclaimed early on by Michel de L’Hôpital, came into its own in 1588 and 1589, taking the form of a passionate patriotismpatriotism espoused by ProtestantProtestants, coopted by Henri of Navarre, and embraced by the Politiques

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