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the fragmentation of political authority, the abuse of seigneurial power, and the cozying up of the LeagueLeague to the Spanish were at the root of the patriotic propaganda that exploded between 1589 and 1593 supporting the Salic Law and extolling the legendary qualities of Henri IV (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 265-273). “The birth of the legend of Henri IV occurs in this period and undoubtedly responds to a national necessity” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 263). Monsieur d’Aubray, for instance, writes in La Satyre Ménipée: “He alone, and no other, like a natural HerculesHercules, born in Gaul, can defeat these hideous monsters, who make France frightening and horrible to her own children. He alone and no other will exterminate these petty half-kings” (ctd. in YardeniYardeni, Myriam 273). “Everyone understands,” writes YardeniYardeni, Myriam, “that the greatness of France resides in its national unitynationnational unity, under a sole French king” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 273). That Henri felt the need, however, to abjure his ProtestantProtestant faith and return to Catholicism in 1594, even if merely a cynical ploy to undercut moderate Catholic support for the LeagueLeague, shows how important religious affiliation remained in the minds of monarch and subjects. Paradoxically, the arrival of Henri IV—with his abjuration, his fervent patriotismpatriotism, his heroic feats of valor, his legitimacy, his credentials as a Frenchman—canalized this embryonic national consciousnessnationnational consciousness but arrested its further development. The complete secularization of the state could not come to pass due to the monarchy’s traditional association with God (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 281), from whom absolutist theorists derived the king’s power (Keohane 17-18). But a significant shift of emphasis had nonetheless taken place. Religion was no longer the essential common denominator but only one thread among many in the fabric of the nationnation (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 281). Henceforth, “the State’s unifying thread is its nationnational characterethoscharacter, while the unifying thread of France is its specifically French characterethoscharacter. So it is the king who embodies not only the essence of France but also its continuity” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 281). King and kingdom, ideologically torn asunder during the civil war, were reunited but on a new basis, a collective national sentimentnationnational sentiment or patriotismpatriotism arising out of what was initially personal loyalty to Henri IV. In other words, YardeniYardeni, Myriam shows that the monarch who had been separated from the kingdom was reunited with something larger—the patrienationla patrie [nationnation]. Malherbe’s royal odes seek to perfect this unification.

      In a climate where national consciousnessnationnational consciousness has displaced but not eradicated religious loyalties, national unitynationnational unity finds its center of gravity in the person of the monarch, still intimately linked to God, but now endowed with natural qualities that appear all the more exceptional. Take, for instance, Jean BodinBodin, Jean’s formula for sovereignty: “he is absolutely sovereign who holds nothing, after God, but from his own sword.”5 Published in 1576, Les Six Livres de la République [The Six Books of the Republic] so tirelessly repeats that the absolute sovereign, whose unbounded powers BodinBodin, Jean takes great pains to enumerate, must obey divine law, that one cannot help but think the jurist doth protest too much—as though the king’s conscience were the last safeguard against the omnipotence BodinBodin, Jean feels compelled to unleash.6 Claude d’Albon’s definition of sovereignty in De la majesté royale [Of Royal Majesty] (1575) exhibits a similar distribution of divine and human powers: “What has placed kings in such veneration has been above all the virtuevirtues and divine powers which have been observed in them alone” (ctd. in YardeniYardeni, Myriam 18). By the late 1580s, however, this formula receives a different emphasis in the minds of royalist apologists. The powers that the king holds from God are deemphasized, and thus his natural powers increase. In 1594, in d’Aubray’s formulation, the monarch has become “a natural HerculesHercules.” The link to God need not be utterly suppressed for the king’s natural virtuevirtue—in BodinBodin, Jean’s image, the sword—to augment considerably, especially in a political climate where the king himself becomes the focus and the catalyst of a new national consciousnessnationnational consciousness. One must bear in mind, of course, that Henri, prior to his accession, had been publicly slandered as a relapsed heretic, and thus he was concerned to demonstrate the sincerity of his conversion and did not neglect to cultivate the sacerdotal aura of kingship—he touched for scrofula, for example, and he reasserted his authority over the Gallican Church. But aware that his conversion was viewed with suspicion, he did not privilege the sacerdotal route to authority. Or at least, he knew that he could not rely on the monarchy’s mystical rituals and symbols in the same way his predecessors had.7 Malherbe’s royal odes reflect this unusual state of affairs. While not neglecting the monarch’s special relationship to God, they stress instead the human couragevirtuecourage, power, or greatness that makes a monarch particularly fit to command and to protect—in short, they underscore the monarch’s natural virtuevirtue.

      Coexisting with the divine powers of the king established by Christian theology, virtuevirtue is a sort of classical substratum with its own political, metaphysical, and moral implications. Although Malherbe is a poet and not a scholastic philosopher, one cannot help but notice that the royal odes add three key predicates to the portraitethosportrait of the “monarque magnanime” [magnanimous monarch] (“Ode au feu roi sur l’heureux succès du voyage de Sedan,” v. 181). In addition to portraying Henri as possessing great and complete virtuevirtue, and having the right concern with honor (NE 4.3 1123a35, 1123b20, 1123b30), the royal odes characterize this moral quality as superlative, quasi-divine, and heroic. The following example will serve to illustrate: “Qui ne confesse qu’Hercule / Fut moins Hercule que toi? [Who does not confess that HerculesHercules / Was less HerculesHercules than you] (“Ode au feu roi sur l’heureux succès du voyage de Sedan,” vv. 99-100). Henri’s tireless efforts to secure peace, justicevirtuejustice, and prosperity for the kingdom recall the labors of HerculesHercules, but this comparisoncomparison says that Henri is greater than the greatest Greek hero—a form of hyperbole that underscores the superlative nature of the object (QuintilianQuintilian 8.4.4-9; 8.6.76). HerculesHercules, moreover, is a demi-god. All three predicates are therefore implied by the comparisoncomparison. If there were any doubt that they apply to the monarch’s natural powers, later in the same ode, Malherbe depicts Henri’s indomitability with a telling conceitconceit: the reason fortune yields so readily to your acts of valor, he says, is that she is “amoureuse / De ta vertu généreuse” [in love / With your magnanimous virtuevirtue] (“Ode au feu roi sur l’heureux succès du voyage de Sedan,” vv. 115-116). So obedient to Henri’s will does fortune appear, that Henri’s great virtuevirtue must have seduced her. The phrase “ta vertu généreuse” [your magnanimous virtuevirtue] points to a human power, not a divine one. It just is so great that it reaches up into the realm of obscure forces usually beyond human control.

      If the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity supports the heroic idealization of the Bourbons, the three new predicates joined to it reveal an unsuspected logical consistency and political ground underlying the royal odes. Granted, these magnificent poems neither speculate nor meditate directly on abstract political questions, as Jean BodinBodin, Jean does, for instance, in Les Six Livres de la République. However, their praise of virtuevirtue echoes in thought-provoking ways Aristotelian political theory, which Malherbe likely absorbed indirectly from his reading.8 Let us examine what sorts of inferences may be drawn from the addition of the superlative, the quasi-divine, and the heroic as predicates of Malherbian magnanimitymagnanimity.

      1. Superlative virtuevirtue. This notion as applied to the Bourbons is not simply hyperbole. It is the defining quality of the “one best man” (AristotleAristotle, PoliticsAristotlePolitics 3.10 1281a15) whose claim to political authority is so overwhelming that it transforms all other constitutional polities into a monarchypolitymonarchy. “If one man be a better man than all the other good men who belong to the civic body, this one man should be sovereign” (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 3.13 1283b20). According to AristotleAristotle, monarchypolitymonarchy is the form of rule which most completely satisfies the demands of distributive justicevirtuejustice in a political association, since it does not contradict itself in the partial way that oligarchy and democracy do (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 3.9 1281a1-5). It also best promotes the common interestcommonwealthcommon interest (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 3.12 1282b15-25) and the good life of the state, which is based on justicevirtuejustice and virtuevirtue

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