Religious Verse in French Neo-Latin Poetry until the Death of Francis I And Marguerite of Navarre

Abstract

Religious poetry inevitably echoes the traditions and trends that are evident in the period. At first there are authors who followed paths that persisted well after the beginning of the sixteenth century, but pre-Reformation and Reformation attitudes were bound to mirror themselves among the writers, both in the vernacular and neo-Latin poetry. The ideas of the Reformation affect the neo-Latin poets especially during the 1530s, but they form, as it were, a bulge in the main current, modifying form and themes, but by the end of the period, conservative attitudes have re-established themselves. Neo-Latin may have benefited from the circumstances: Latin has some resonance beyond the frontiers as well as at home, and Protestant thinkers were not as hostile to the classics as may be assumed. There was perhaps a tendency—I will not say more—for censorship to be more lenient to a language that was not accessible to the menu peuple; and humanism, often associated with the new religious ideas, was open at an early stage to neo-classical and classical fashions. It is well known that the ‘lyric’ Horace, not popular at the closing of the Middle Ages, came first through the neo-Latin poets rather than through the Pléiade and its precursors. Horace was not unfamiliar to authors, even in the 1510s, though it was during the 1530s that his lyric poetry was familiar to poets, many of whom came to see what his metres could do for the psalm paraphrasts. In the 1520s or early 1530s, when the Sorbonne’s influence was mitigated, if not entirely reduced, this coincided with the growing interest in Erasmus and the themes he popularized. Regional centres acquired more vigour than Paris; in any case, pedagogic movement fostered the exchange of ideas. This does not mean a general trend towards Reformation in all neo-Latin circles; it is too simple to divide persons and attitudes by locations: many places had conservative attitudes and advanced views. Some Protestants fled to Geneva and beyond; here and there, authors did not publish all they had written in their lifetime; some were floaters whose thinking was affected by the passage of time or circumstance; for a few, discretion was the better part of valour, and one cannot trust literally what was said at any particular moment. And documents and printings suffered from the ravages of time and fortune.