Abstract
Abstract In his educational treatise, the Instruction du prince chrétien (1642), André Rivet, the tutor of the future Willem II (1627-1650), presents his ideal of a virtuous prince well versed in the skills required to govern himself and his subjects. In the educational correspondences surrounding the future Dutch stadtholders we see some of these theoretical principles played out in epistolary practice. Reading the correspondence against the foil of Rivet’s treatise brings to the fore a number of characteristics of his ideal prince: the intimate educational nexus between tutor, parents, and pupil; the way in which the prince is taught to navigate the interrelated spheres of self, household, and society; and finally, the ways in which the dichotomy between public and private is at once dissolved and affirmed in the educational molding of an early modern prince.
Highlights
Before turning to these epistolary exchanges, a brief return to the zones charted in the Instruction and navigated by the princely figura is in order
The Instruction du prince chrétien (1642), André Rivet, the tutor of the future Willem II (1627-1650), presents his ideal of a virtuous prince well versed in the skills required to govern himself and his subjects
In the educational correspondences surrounding the future Dutch stadtholders we see some of these theoretical principles played out in epistolary practice
Summary
Before turning to these epistolary exchanges, a brief return to the zones charted in the Instruction and navigated by the princely figura is in order. Ps 101 has the additional attraction for princely supervisors that it important in our context is the meditation on this psalm published in 1594 by the Huguenot theologian Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1549-1623), who had links both to the house of Orange-Nassau and to Rivet.[23] Duplessis-Mornay states that the psalm expresses David’s decision to become a good prince by first endeavoring to become “a good man, by regulating his person and his private life” (vie privée).[24] Rivet follows Duplessis-Mornay in distinguishing the work on the self from the concern with the household or court and subsuming both under the general notion of a spotless life (via immaculata, Ps. 101:6) He seems even more concerned with the ideally seamless transition between the prince at home and the prince in public.
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