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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 of Nicolas Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s L’Honnêtehonnête homme Homme; ou l’art de plaire à la cour [The Honorable Man; or How to Please at Courtcourt (royal)] marked the transition of nobiliary ethos from the heroic warrior to the worldly courtiercourt (royal)courtier based on a reassessment of the virtuevirtue best adapted to the social and political conditions of courtcourt (royal)ly life. To be sure, the definition of honnêtehonnête hommehonnêtetété [nobilitynobility; dignity; propriety] would significantly evolve over the course of the seventeenth century, and it would be another forty years before the great nobles embraced honnêtehonnête hommehonnêtetété, sometime after 1668, when the recalcitrant Grand CondéGrand Condé (also duke of Enghien) was reabsorbed into Louis XIV’s absolutist regime (Bannister, Condé 155). In the interim, however, before its decline, the older warrior ethosethos, which Mark Bannister identifies with the class myth of the sword nobilitynobilityof the sword, would blaze forth in spectacular fashion. In 1637, Corneille’s Le Cid announced the outbreak of a veritable cult of the hero, which was taken up, amplified, and refined in novels written between 1640 and 1660 as well as in various prose encomia composed for the intrepid Enghien in the 1640s and 50s.1 On the question of noble identitynobilityidentity in the first half of the seventeenth century, Malherbe’s royal odes, published between 1600 and 1627, stake out a clear commitment to the older warrior ethosethos based on the heroic conception of virtuevirtue, the very sort that would ignite the aristocratic imagination a decade after the poet’s death.

This chapter recalls the debate over noble identitynobilityidentity that occurred toward the end of the religious warsreligious wars and that culminated in Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s L’Honnêtehonnête homme Homme because it shows that the concept of virtuevirtue remained indispensable to noble identitynobilityidentity in the first three decades of the century and that the choice between the older warrior ethosethos and the new worldly ethosethos was the choice between two virtuevirtues, magnanimitymagnanimity and moderationvirtuemoderation, respectively. While it is true that, by convention, the function of encomiasticencomiumencomiastic poetry discourse is to praise virtuevirtue, Malherbe’s choice to put magnanimitymagnanimity at the center of the royal odes invites closer scrutiny when one considers that this virtuevirtue underpinned the class myth of the sword nobilitynobilityof the sword, in whose upper echelons Henri of Navarre moved before acceding to the throne. The sword nobilitynobilityof the sword was not only a key constituency that needed to be won over, but its class myth would be used by Malherbe to fashion a nationnational myth. The significance of the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity in the royal odes, I argue, resides in its aptitude for birthing the civic community of the new nationnation. It gives the sequence of odes a logical coherence and a political ground.

A few words should be said about the range of meanings of the term “vertu” [virtuevirtue] in the early seventeenth century. Today in French, as in English, it usually refers to “a disposition or a pattern in someone’s characterethoscharacter or personality that leads them to act morally” (van Hooft 1). This acceptation occurs as the second definition of the word in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie [Dictionary of the Academy] (1694): “Virtuevirtue, means also, A habit of the soul, which prompts it to do good, & to avoid evil.” But the first definition shows that the word used to have a much wider semantic field: “Efficacy, power, strength, property.” For instance, plants and stones had “virtuevirtues,” such as curative properties or magnetic force. The term also implied moral greatness or excellence, a meaning borrowed from the Greek aretē. As Paul Bénichou notes in Morales du grand siècle: “The writers of this period are defined less by their preference for beauty or truth, than the case they make, to a greater or lesser degree, for human virtuevirtue, defined in the general sense of couragevirtuecourage, power, or greatness” (Bénichou 12). Much like the early modern Italian “virtù,” this sense of the French word left its mark on French writers as diverse as Corneille, Racine, and Molière. The heroic novels of Gomberville, La Calprenède, and Madeleine de Scudèry, also use the word in this sense to designate the exceptional qualities or powers that make a monarch or a noble specially fit to protect and to command (Bannister, Privileged Mortals 7-8, 27-33, 47-48). When assimilated to “vertu héroïque,” it could reach superhuman proportions. Nor should we overlook the term’s stylistic implications. Moral excellence is esthetically pleasing. Virtuevirtue is beautiful because it is good. This coupling of the ethical and the esthetic is captured by the Greek term “to kalon,” translated as “the beautiful,” “the fine,” or “the noble”—and one should add the French term l’honnêtehonnête hommehonnêteté [honorable, noble, fine]. Aristotelian scholars signal yet another shade of meaning: “the admirable” (Donahue 69). All these connotations of the term are relevant in Malherbe’s royal odes.

What made the concept of virtuevirtue so attractive to nobles in the early seventeenth century was that it gave them a way to tie outward displays of distinction—feats of valor, good taste, politesse [etiquette]—to what they considered intrinsic merit. To be virtuous was to perform actions, to say words, to observe rules of civility, to possess objects, that were considered noble, fine, beautiful, or admirable. These were not just fitting to one’s social station, they were themselves the marks of virtuevirtue. Causality was turned on its head: to exhibit the mark of virtuevirtue was to be virtuous. By the 1660s, noble identitynobilityidentity had evolved to the point where virtuevirtue was no longer necessary to legitimize the social distinction conferred by the performance, the possession, the consumption, or the appreciation of all things fine. La Rochefoucauld found the notion of virtuevirtue suspect and deconstructed it in his Maximes (1664), while two decades later the Chevalier de Méré replaced it with taste and the graceful mastery of social etiquette.

In From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Ellery Schalk tracks the caste’s changing sense of identity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by examining polemical treatises on nobilitynobility. Nobles and commoners questioned the relevance of a caste held responsible for the devastation of France during the Wars of ReligionWars of Religion. Most of these treatises make it abundantly clear that military service was no longer a sufficient condition for membership in noble ranks. Ennobling titles, offices, and deeds of land ownership had long been for sale, swelling the caste with newcomers. Such treatises therefore aimed to determine what the proper criterion of nobilitynobility should be. The choice was between virtuevirtue and birth. In the early and mid-sixteenth century, the majority agreed that virtuevirtue was the sole criterion, defined as martial valor, physical prowessprowess, and success in fighting (Schalk 21). By the end of the sixteenth century, however, the consensus flipped, with most writers holding that the caste was “simply a group, defined, determined, or justified by birth rather than by virtuous deeds” (Schalk 115). But the two terms were fluid. Noble birth was often considered a variety of “natural virtuevirtue,” the seed of moral virtuevirtue, as it were, a view expressed by Pierre Charron in De la sagesse (1601), while the definition of the polysemic term vertu [virtuevirtue] was stretched to accommodate new social practices. In the late sixteenth century, its meaning came to include the cultural capital conferred by the study of literature. In the early seventeenth century, this extension encompassed the capacity for courtesy and civility. Seventeenth-century opinion would eventually converge on birth as the sole legitimate criterion of nobilitynobility, but Schalk demonstrates the persistence of virtuevirtue in treatises by La Béraudière, Flurance-Rivault, Antoine de Pluvinel, and Nicolas Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas. L’Honnêtehonnête homme Homme is the most famous of these, marking the evolution from warrior to courtiercourt (royal)courtier by detailing new functions and qualities for the nobleman at courtcourt (royal). Yet Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s treatise still sees virtuevirtue as the indispensable quality of the honnêtehonnête homme homme [honorable man], because virtuevirtue is able “to conquer hearts, and to win the goodwill of the better and healthier part of humanity” (Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas 23). In Farethonnête hommeFaret, Nicolas’s view, birth is a necessary but insufficient condition for nobilitynobility. Schalk shows that the concept of virtuevirtue, extended to include such qualities as education and courtesy, still retained its importance as a legitimate source of prestige, especially when it was a question of arguing that the “well-born” deserved their status and privileges by right. The criterion of birth would assist Louis XIV and the old families in stemming the influx of newcomers into noble ranks, but the criterion of virtuevirtue, within the caste, could and often 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 and other “true Frenchmen” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 183-198, 221). According to YardeniYardeni, Myriam, the deplorable state of the countryside, 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 (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 1.2 1253a30-1253b; 3.9 1281a1). Such philosophical claims lurk under the surface of Malherbe’s royal odes when they attribute superlative virtuevirtue to Henri IV or Louis XIII (the claim applied to Marie de Médicis, “one flesh” with her deceased husband, constitutes a special case that is examined in Part II). They invisibly support the favorite argument of the earliest odes in the sequence that even if Henri were not the legitimate successor, he would deserve to rule because of his superlative virtuevirtue. In short, Henri’s demonstrated virtuevirtue makes him the best man for the job, and his leadership most promises to reestablish justicevirtuejustice and to bring about the goodcommonwealththe good life for the whole nationnation.

But what does it mean that the megalopsychosmagnanimitymegalopsychos is the “one best man”? First, Henri is not just a man of great virtuevirtue, but of the greatest virtuevirtue. The logic of magnanimitymagnanimity underlying the royal odes demands that the kingdom’s other great-souled men—whom Malherbe calls by various names, “nos rebelles couragevirtuecourages” [our rebellious braves] and “ces âmes relevées” [these towering souls] (“À la reine sur sa bienvenue en France,” vv. 9 & 206)—yield to the great-souled man whose virtuevirtue is superlative. Because every megalopsychosmagnanimitymegalopsychos has the right concern with honor, correctly estimates his own greatness, and deserves whatever recognition he may receive, he is less likely to be deluded about the true worth of others. In his own case, which is the most difficult, he makes the right judgment in the right way. So, the recognition by one great soulmagnanimitygreat soul of another great soul is itself a sign of magnanimitymagnanimity, that is, the capacity to make correct judgments in the right way. Where the megalopsychosmagnanimitymegalopsychos is concerned, “it takes one to know one.” Although the other great-souled men of the political community have some claim to sovereignty on the basis of their outstanding virtuevirtue, the superlative virtuevirtue of the one best man requires, on the very same ground of political justicevirtuejustice, that they yield to him and offer “a willing obedience” (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 3.13 1284b30-35). At the same time, because they are not without virtuevirtue, and it is great virtuevirtue at that, they cannot be said to be completely without that quality which is “peculiar to the ruler” (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 3.4 1277b25)—only, perhaps, that they possess it to a lesser degree. The logic of magnanimitymagnanimity therefore implies not only that the kingdom’s other great-souled men understand true opinion and are able to make judgements in the right way, but also that they, too, possess phronēsisphronēsis (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 3.4 1277b25-30), “the chief intellectual virtuevirtue apart from wisdom and the condition for the possession of all the moral virtuevirtues” (Newell 165).

Second, the politypolity thus envisioned by the royal odes differs from AristotleAristotle’s. Normally, the appearance of the one best man of superlative virtuevirtue, with his justified claim to absolute political authority, “leads to the destruction of the city understood as a community of diverse contributions and interests” (Newell 162). In the political association where “a single person is sovereign on every issue, with the same sort of power that a tribe or a polis exercises over its public concerns,” the civic community of competing claims to political authority gives way to “paternal rule over a household. Just as paternal rule is kingship over a family, so conversely this type of kingship [i.e. absolute] may be regarded as paternal rule over a polis, or a tribe, or a collection of tribes” (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 1285b30). The politypolity of the royal odes, however, is much closer to BodinBodin, Jean’s conception. In Les Six Livres de la République, the kingdom’s civic community, though deprived of sovereignty, is nonetheless identified with the civic body of the monarch. According to the doctrine of the king’s two bodies, the state “did not exist apart from its members, nor was the ‘state’ some superior being per se beyond its head and members” (KantorowiczKantorowicz, Ernst H. 270). The monarch is the head of the body politicbody politic, comprised of various members. By the late thirteenth century, the term patrianationpatria was “synonymous with the whole kingdom or body politicbody politic over which the ‘Crown’ or its bearer ruled” (KantorowiczKantorowicz, Ernst H. 251). What the royal odes propose, therefore, is the birth of a new nationnation, that is, a new body politicbody politic, headed by the one best man. The appeal to virtuevirtue, and to magnanimitymagnanimity in particular, implies that the relinquishment of any claim to political authority by great-souled subjects need not be subjugation and abasement. The logic of magnanimitymagnanimity redirects all competing claims of political authority toward emulation pro rege et patriapro rege et patria, that is, in the service of king and country. By serving the monarch, one serves the nationnation—because the monarch as head of the body politicbody politic serves the common interestcommonwealthcommon interest of the body politicbody politic. But, argues Malherbe, those who claim to serve the nationnation against the monarch are dishonest or deluded: “Nous voyons les esprits nés à la tyrannie, / Ennuyés de couver leur cruelle manie, / Tourner tous leurs conseils à notre affliction” [We see minds born for tyranny, / Weary of plotting their cruel insanity, / Devoting their counsels to our suffering] (“Prière pour le Roi allant en Limousin,” vv. 103-105). They are serving partisan interests, as evidenced by the death and destruction they inflicted on the commonwealthcommonwealth during the Wars of Religion.

This competition of the more virtuous subjects for honor in the service of king and country underpins the “universal audienceuniversal audience,” a normative concept of rhetorical argumentation. As Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca explain in The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, a speaker evokes the universal audienceuniversal audience when he presupposes unanimous agreement, by all fair-minded and rational beings, with arguments considered “compelling,” “self-evident,” and possessing “an absolute and timeless validity, independent of local or historical contingencies” (Perelman 32). Such universality is a matter of right, not of fact, since “one can always resort to disqualifying the recalcitrant by classifying him as stupid or abnormal” (Perelman 31 & 33, their emphasis). Consequently, an elite minority, even when limited to one perfect being, may validly serve as a model for the universal audienceuniversal audience, that is, as the norm to which all men should conform: “the elite audience sets the norm for everybody” (Perelman 34). The criteria which elevate an elite group to the level of a universal norm may include rationality, a disinterested commitment to scientific truth, or a state of divine grace—all “exceptional and infallible means of knowledge” (Perelman 33). Virtuevirtue is another such criterion. It, too, is a normative quality that may define the universal audienceuniversal audience, and it is the most relevant of such criteria to the royal odes. The function of the universal audienceuniversal audience is twofold: it preserves the “universalistic” impulses of monarchypolitymonarchy, “capable of swallowing up whole cities and ‘nationnations,’” while mitigating the incompatibility of this form of rule with “any notion of civic community” (Newell 172), and it lays the foundation for the national communitynationnational community. The virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity is the defining characteristic of the national communitynationnational community envisioned by the royal odes. When these poems address the monarch, the nobility and, through them, the French nationnation as a whole, they address a composite audience made up of persons “differing in characterethoscharacter, loyalties, and functions” (Perelman 21). However, given their lofty ambition, they cannot simply reflect the attitudes and values of an existing community. Partisan interests divide these constituencies against one another. The odes must also forge a new community united by a universal value. By making an appeal to the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity, the odes construct a universal audienceuniversal audience of great soulmagnanimitygreat souls who by right will constitute the civic community of the new nationnation. The king’s magnanimitymagnanimity (because it is superlative) precludes any share in sovereignty but (because it is a virtuevirtue) sets the norm for everybody.

Furthermore, the competition for honor in service of king and country is a universal ethosethos because it accommodates all who desire to be virtuous and aspire to be recognized as such. In theory, therefore, even commoners are not excluded. What matters is the function one serves in the body politicbody politic, as this will determine which virtuevirtue one possesses. Of course, not all virtuevirtues count equally as a contribution to the goodcommonwealththe good of the state, and even among those that do count, there exists a sliding scale (Newell 175). Nevertheless, in Les Six Livres de la République, Chapter 6, Book 6, BodinBodin, Jean explains that royal monarchypolitymonarchy, the most perfect form of government, institutes “harmonic justicevirtuejustice” (BodinBodin, Jean 575), an early modern version of distributive justicevirtuejustice that “gently mixes nobles and commoners, rich and poor, with discretion, however, so that the nobles retain some advantage over the common people” (BodinBodin, Jean 575). It is not simply that such an arrangement prevents the masses from becoming embittered and trying to overthrow the state (BodinBodin, Jean 574). Rather, the harmonious distribution of honors and offices is considered the best and most just because, like AristotleAristotle’s golden mean, it incorporates and balances the extremes, that is, the partial and imperfect justicevirtuejustice of democratic and of aristocratic regimes (BodinBodin, Jean 570). A commoner, then, provided he contributes to the goodcommonwealththe good of the state, belongs by right to the civic community of the nationnation. He may not necessarily perform the same functions, nor share in honor to the same degree, as a nobleman, for whom the highest offices of the state were typically reserved. But we know in fact that French kings often promoted talented men from below.

2. Quasi-divine virtuevirtue. Closely bound up with the superlative, this second predicate elevates the monarch above and beyond all subjects and gives the scope of his (or her) rule a theoretically universal reach, while at the same time fostering a universal patriotic ethospatriotismpatriotic ethos that encompasses all subjects in a new civic community. In Chapter 13, Book 3, of the PoliticsAristotlePolitics, AristotleAristotle says of the one best man: “a person of this order may very well be like a god among men” (3.13 1284a10). The royal odes unapologetically compare Henri IV and Louis XIII to gods (JupiterJupiter, MarsMars) and demi-gods (HerculesHercules, AchillesAchilles) and Marie de Médicis to goddesses (AthenaAthena, AphroditeAphrodite, AstraeaAstraea). Such comparisoncomparison usually underscores a particular quality—e.g. couragevirtuecourage, phronēsisphronēsis, beautyvirtuebeauty, justicevirtuejustice—which the Bourbon protagonists share with their more illustrious models. But the implicit hyperbole of such a comparisoncomparison is directly linked to the superlative degree of virtuevirtue (aretē huperbolē). What makes the hyperbole apt is the near identity of the one best man with God. In a brilliant article, Stephen Menn shows that “AristotleAristotle takes both ‘the Goodcommonwealththe good’ and ‘nous’ to be names of the essence of God” (Menn 546), identifying the Greek concept nous [mind, thought, intention, rationality] with the virtuevirtue of reason that exists itself-by-itself and orders the universe (Menn 561 & 566). Menn argues that our intellectual perception of this virtuevirtue, that is, our knowledge of it, is identical with the object of knowledge—which is just this virtuevirtue (“its pure immaterial being is pure energeia,” Menn 568). In other words, AristotleAristotle, according to Menn, does not posit an identity of knower with object, but an identity of the activity of knowing with the self-subsisting rational activity that orders the universe (Menn 569). To paraphrase Menn, human beings may possess the virtuevirtue of reason which God possesses, but God possesses it “in a stronger way, by being it” (Menn 569). Human beings possess it “though a nonidentity relation, by perceiving it, since the virtuevirtue we possess is the same as the object we perceive” (Menn 569). Against this backdrop, one can see why quasi-divinity would be predicated of a monarch, that is, the one best man whose virtuevirtue is superlative. On the sliding scale of virtuevirtue, the monarch is not identical with God but participates as fully as any human can. A monarch’s virtuevirtue participates so fully in the self-subsisting virtuevirtue that orders all things as to suggest identity. Hyperbole is the appropriate figure of thought to convey the feelings of wonderwonder evoked by a being nearly identical with God. Rhetorical manuals of antiquity and the Renaissance favored hyperbole for its capacity to strike the imagination, “making speech lively [by] leaving something for the audience to figure out” (BiesterBiester, James 107). Hence Malherbe’s persistent use of hyperbole to praise the virtuevirtue of the Bourbons is not mere exaggeration. The audience is supposed to infer the monarch’s divinity from the superlative degree of his (or her) natural virtuevirtue, although such an identity is logically denied. That is why the royal odes treat the Bourbons as demi-gods.

3. Heroic virtuevirtue. This predicate is likely due to the historical role that Henri played as the savior of the nationnation. Myriam YardeniYardeni, Myriam writes: “Henri IV is the most national king which France had known up to that period. Never had any king been so obligated to base his reign on his French characterethoscharacter. His victory marks the triumph of a reinvigorated national sentimentnationnational sentiment that enters upon its full maturity” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 317). However, any careful reading of the royal odes that takes into account their classical and biblical intertexts is bound to acknowledge that Henri, Marie, and Louis are all portrayed as heroes in the mythological sense of the term. “The hero,” writes Joseph CampbellCampbell, Joseph, “is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to the generally valid, normally human forms. Such a one’s visions, ideas, and inspirations come pristine from the primary springs of human life and thought. Hence they are eloquent, not of the present, disintegrating society and psyche, but of the unquenched source through which society is reborn” (CampbellCampbell, Joseph 14).

When Malherbe’s poetic sequence opens, Henri IV, the HerculesHercules of France, has saved the kingdom from destruction and set sail aboard the ship of stateship of state on a political questhero cyclequest to usher in a utopia of peace, justicevirtuejustice and prosperity at home and French hegemony abroad. As royal consort, Marie de Médicis incarnates the dual aspect of love and justicevirtuejustice—VenusVenus and AstraeaAstraea, respectively—as she will secure the regime by providing a legitimate heir and facilitate the transition from war to peace, from disorder to governance. In the language of CampbellCampbell, Joseph, either she herself is the boon which the hero seeks on his adventurehero cycleadventure and brings back to renew society, or the birth of her son is the magic gift, or both (CampbellCampbell, Joseph 29, 148-165, 211). Later in the sequence, when the hero dies and Marie becomes queen regent, the odes depict her displaying the same magnanimitymagnanimity as Henri in service to the nationnation. Louis XIII, the son, for his part, will be portrayed as completing the unfinished labors of the father, fulfilling the conditions for the return of the Golden AgeGolden Age.

From a mythological perspective, although such heroes maintain contact with the nationnation’s supernatural powers (i.e. God, the fates, and the daemondaemon of France), they do not personify the grand cosmic forces of creation and destruction. Nor do they resemble the archetypal religious hero—like Moses, JesusJesus, or Muhammed—who, as CampbellCampbell, Joseph writes, “found and opened the road to the light beyond the dark” (Campbell 222). Rather, through an act of repetition, that is, by re-founding the monarchy and re-uniting the nationnation, the Bourbons reincarnate the greatest heroes of antiquity, who were also the first kings. In his analysis of the politypolity, and of monarchypolitymonarchy in particular, AristotleAristotle acknowledges such mythological founders and benefactors, situating their kingships in what he calls the “Heroic Age” (PoliticsAristotlePolitics 1.2 1253a30; 3.14 1285b5-15).

The heroism found in Malherbe’s royal odes does not fit the evolution of the conception charted by Mark Bannister in the heroic novels of the 1640s and 1650s. Banister shows quite well how the notion evolves from an emphasis on physical prowessprowess and moral autonomy (underscoring the sort of personal glory that elevates the hero to a realm beyond the human community) toward a more altruistic understanding of these concepts with an emphasis on service to the community (Bannister, Privileged Mortals 36-49). In the royal odes, both poles are already present. On the one hand, Henri’s quasi-divine attributes raise him above the nationnation, as though he were a demi-god or a special being chosen by God or destiny. On the other, despite this glory, he voluntarily serves the nationnation, pursuing the common goodcommonwealthcommon good and conferring the greatest benefits on the national communitynationnational community, while his exampleexample is intended to encourage all his subjects, both greater and lesser, to do the same.

At the same time, independent of the internal design of the royal odes, these three attributes of magnanimitymagnanimity also conform to Henri’s absolutist political agenda. J. Russell Major has argued that Henri’s and Sully’s suppression of the estates of Guyenne in 1603, and their imposition of royal officials who levied and collected taxes directly for the king, should be interpreted as a failed attempt to undermine the traditional rights and privileges of the provincial estates throughout France. Royal finances badly needed reform in the first decade of the century, having been strained to the breaking point. However, “by preventing the provincial estates and towns from taxing as they pleased, an important source of revenue that had been finding its way into the hands of the great nobles would be removed. With less wealth the great nobles could afford fewer clients to do their bidding; with fewer clients they would be less dangerous to the king” (Major, “Henri IV and Guyenne,” 364). Henri’s intention “to transform the Renaissance monarchypolitymonarchy into a more absolute state” (Major, “Henri IV and Guyenne,” 363) goes hand in hand with the ideological efforts of propagandists and political theorists to revise the traditional images of the monarchyimageof the monarchy in France.9 Specifically, the superhuman proportions that magnanimitymagnanimity assumes in Malherbe’s royal odes remodel the traditional image of the king as “the eldest and most favored son of the church” (Keohane 55). Given Henri’s confessional flip-flopping and the still smoldering resentments of France’s sectarian conflict, this traditional image urgently needed revision. Henri’s necessary appeal to the Salic Law deemphasized the traditional reliance on the sacral aura of the monarchy “to reconstruct a sense of national communitynationnational community” (HoltHolt, Mack P., Renaissance 204).10 “Henry realized that his royal person was still the only acceptable focus for national unitynationnational unity” (HoltHolt, Mack P., Renaissance 204). This shift of emphasis accords with Malherbe’s use of supercharged attributes to transform Henri into a “super-man, gifted with all the attributes of an anthropomorphic God” (Keohane 56-57).

It should be noted, however, that the conception of absolutismabsolutism which these attributes represent is qualitatively different from the sort of absolutismabsolutism that took hold after the Fronde. Mark Bannister, having charted this ideological transformation, distinguishes the later absolutismabsolutism by its “new relationship between monarch and subject, in which all gloire [glory] was vested in the king and in which systems of patronage and fidélité [loyalty] could work only in the same direction as the interests of the centralized state” (Bannister, Condé 155). By contrast, in the early seventeenth century, the class myth of the sword nobilitynobilityof the sword, with its emphasis on the moral autonomy and personal glory of the individual noble, still dominated the French imagination. The royal odes project this myth on the new monarch, so that Henri, a former great noble, appears to have won the crown thanks to his superhuman virtuevirtue, working the will of God for the sake of the nationnation. If the image of a superhuman, great-souled monarch exemplifies the class myth of the sword nobilitynobilityof the sword, it at the same time closes off any legitimate challenge to the new monarch’s authority, redirecting all noble aspirations pro rege et patriapro rege et patria. To the extent, moreover, that the royal odes fashion a new image of the French monarch, underscoring the capacity of Henri to see and to represent the goodcommonwealththe good of all (Keohane 54), the superhuman monarch thus “incarnates and represents all the interests of the patrienationla patrie [fatherland]” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 317). “He is a king who symbolizes not only the greatness of France but also the love which must henceforth unite all the members of the French nationnation” (YardeniYardeni, Myriam 329).

In the limited sense of the term “consent,” moreover, Malherbe’s praise for superlative, quasi-divine, and heroic magnanimitymagnanimity seeks recognition from the universal audienceuniversal audience of great soulmagnanimitygreat souls, in this instance, the civic community or body politicbody politic of the nationnation. As Mark Bannister notes, the heroic class myth of the sword nobilitynobilityof the sword portrayed the nobles as “the defense and bulwark of the state” (Bannister, Privileged Mortals 26). In the royal odes, the Bourbons take over this role. The nationnation’s other great soulmagnanimitygreat souls are invited to recognize the preeminence of their monarch, to follow his (or her) exampleexample, and to win glory pro rege et patriapro rege et patria. By means of this patriotic ethospatriotismpatriotic ethos, based on the virtuevirtue of magnanimitymagnanimity, the royal odes merge the class myth of the sword nobilitynobilityof the sword with the nationnational myth of the sequence. In the overarching conceitconceit of the sequence (where the ship of stateship of state navigates the troubled waters of political discord and conducts the nationnation to a new Golden AgeGolden Age), the Bourbons play the role of captain and/or pilot, while the other great soulmagnanimitygreat souls of the civic community play the role of supporting heroes and crew. Though not entirely apparent at the beginning of the sequence, the myth of the ArgoArgo becomes the primary intertext supporting Malherbe’s poetic sequence.

Thus the conception of virtuevirtue informing Malherbe’s royal odes—magnanimitymagnanimity that is superlative, quasi-divine, and heroic—stands on one side of an ideological fault line. The fact that ideas of virtuevirtue similar to Malherbe’s were finding vigorous expression in novels and theater of the 1630s and 40s suggests that such aspirations had already begun to migrate from the realm of political reality to the symbolic world of nostalgic reminiscence. The heyday of the heroic novel and theatre was an expression of the nobilitynobility’s ideological consciousness, allowing members of the caste to continue to define themselves in traditional ways while adapting to the social and economic realities encroaching on the caste as a whole. Lyriclyric poetry poetry, which by the third decade was for the most part composed in the salonsalons milieu, traveled a separate path, eschewing the heroic in favor of the honnêtehonnête hommehonnêteté [honorable] and the galant [flirtatious]. The ideological ground shifted right under Malherbe’s feet, so rapidly and significantly did the definition of nobilitynobilitydefinition and the caste’s relationship to the monarchy evolve in the first three decades of the seventeenth century.