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Louis Leroy's Humanistic OptimismAuthor(s): Werner L.
GundersheimerSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 23, No.
3 (Jul. - Sep., 1962), pp. 324-339Published by: University of
Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708070
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LOUIS LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM
BY WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
In recent years, students of the intellectual history of XVIth-
century France have become increasingly aware of the importance of
Louis LeRoy de Coutances (1510-1577) as classical scholar,
political pamphleteer, and universal historian. Throughout a long
career of scholarly and political publication, spanning decades of
civil and re- ligious crisis in France, LeRoy developed many of the
views expressed in his final work, De la Vicissitude ou Variete des
Choses en l'Univers (1575).1 Written and published during his term
as Royal Professor of Greek, the De la Vicissitude (which Bodo L.
0. Richter has called "LeRoy's summa")2 contains the elderly
humanist's unsystematic, but nonetheless apprehensible views on the
nature of history, political and social institutions, and human
possibilities in a troubled world.
The present study proceeds from a discussion of LeRoy's concep-
tion of historical processes to an analysis of his understanding of
con- temporary problems and possibilities. It is an attempt to
formulate a detailed and coherent interpretation of his thought, as
expounded in the De la Vicissitude, and to point up the organic
relationship of his conception of the Golden Age to his more
generalized view of history. Such an approach is made viable, if
not necessary, by the fact that LeRoy's book does not in any strict
sense narrate a history. It creates, rather, a philosophy of
history, teaching by examples. The flux of history is here at once
the source and the testing ground for the au- thor's
historiographical, anthropological, and theological hypotheses.
De la Vicissitude has frequently been described by
encyclopedists as an "ouvrage curieux." 3 We may seek the cause of
this somewhat evasive dismissal in the fact that it is a book which
in some ways re- sists classification in the conventional literary
categories. It is not, for example, a work of humanist
historiography. Nor is it a universal history in the manner of
Bossuet and his followers, the later religious
1 I have quoted mainly from the English translation by R(obert)
A(shley), Of the Interchangeable Course, or variety of things in
the whole world; & the con- currence of armes & learning,
thorough the first and famousest Nations, from the beginning of
Civilitie, & Memory of Man, to this present (London, 1594).
Wherever I have quoted the original French text, I have used
selections available in Loys LeRoy, De la Vicissitude ou Vari6tt
des Choses en l'Univers, ed. Blanchard W. Bates (Princeton, 1944).
Professor Bates used the second edition, 1577, and made minor
typographical changes. The Ashley translation has been found
generally faith- ful to the sense and style of the original,
despite occasional mistranslations.
2 "The Thought of Louis LeRoy according to his Early Pamphlets,"
Studies in the Renaissance, VIII (1961), 181.
8Nouvele Bibliographie G6ne'rale (Paris, 1862), XXX, 886,
describes the work only as an "ouvrage curieux." Bibliographie
Universelle (Paris, n.d.), XXIII, 257, says of the De la
Vicissitude only that "C'est un recueil d'anecdotes et de traits
singuliers, fruit d'une lecture immense. Les curieux recherchent
encore cet ouvrage."
324
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LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 325
historians. It can instead be seen as a "curious" synthesis of
the prem- ises and theories of causation of both secular and
Christian histori- ography. LeRoy did not write, however, with the
intention to amuse, divert, or confuse. Nor was he interested in
the vicissitudes per se. His purpose, insofar as it may be inferred
from his tone and his own assertions, was seriously explanatory,
and even didactic. He tried to document both his extraordinary
awareness of the variety and muta- bility of things, and his
perception of "the concurrence of armes and learning, thorough the
first and famousest Nations from the begin- ning of Civility, and
Memory to Man, to this present." 4 In addition to performing this
". . . so long, so high, and so difficult an enterprise hitherto
never attempted of any," LeRoy wished to resolve the re- current
question: ... whether it be true or no, that there can be nothing
said, which hath not been said heretofore: And that we ought by our
own inventions to augment the doctrines of the Ancients; not
contenting ourselves with Translations, Expositions, Corrections,
and Abridgements of their writings. (ante fol. i)
It scarcely needs to be remarked that from any individual's an-
swer to the issues LeRoy raised, one might infer something about
the answerer's attitude about ideal places and times. That is, we
could discover how far his mentality was mythical or
historical.5
Louis LeRoy was well qualified to deal with the problems he
posed. At the age of sixty-five, he completed De la Vicissitude,
begun several years before, shortly after his withdrawal from the
world of affairs to the lecture hall in 1572. He had been trained
as both jurist and classicist, and from 1540 on, throughout his
diplomatic and courtly career, he continued to publish translations
and commentaries on the Greek philosophers.6 One sees in LeRoy's
own life, as Professor Weisinger has aptly put it, . . . the
classic picture of the humanist in the best tradition: a student of
the classics who made them available to a large reading public by
means of translations, a writer on various subjects, an active
participant in the
4In raising the idea of concurrent rise and fall of arms and
learning to the level of a universal law of historical change,
LeRoy was-perhaps unconsciously-adopt- ing a topos, or conventional
literary theme, known widely to writers of belles- lettres in the
early Romance vernaculars. E. R. Curtius, European Literature and
the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1953),
178-179, lists uses of the topos by Castiglione, Boiardo, Ariosto,
Rabelais, Spenser, and Cervantes. Curtius probably did not know of
LeRoy's treatise, which in 127 folio pages offers the most
extensive use of the theme in all literature. I Mircea Eliade, The
Myth of the Eternal Return (New York, 1954), makes this
distinction. Chapter Four, "The Terror of History," is especially
suggestive as an aid in recognizing the historic character of
LeRoy's thought.
8 A. H. Becker, Un Humaniste au XVIJ Siecle. Loys LeRoy de
Coutances (Paris, 1896). This is the only recent thorough study of
the life and works of LeRoy, and is very rich in bibliographical
and biographical information.
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326 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
affairs of life outside the study, an acute observer of foreign
customs, a teacher, and a philosopher. To him scholarship was not
an end in itself; it was the means of achieving an understanding of
the history and motives of men.7
But though the career of LeRoy's worldly life adheres closely to
the ideals of the civic humanists of the Italian quattrocento, his
histori- ographical notions differ from their secularized and
rationalized cate- gories of causation.8 To open LeRoy's book is to
be confronted im- mediately by the Hand of God as the most
effective causal agent in human affairs. On the fifth line of the
first folio, LeRoy intones: ... I most humbly acknowledge the
divine providence of God to be above all, beleeving assuredly, that
God almighty, maker, and governour of this great worke so excellent
in beauty, so admirable in variety and so singular in continuance,
(to whom I pray to ayde me in this so long, so high, and so
difficult an enterprise hitherto never attempted of any) is
carefull of all affairs happening therein, even to the least:
contayning in himself the be- ginning, the end, and the meanes of
them all, and pursuing the order which he hath given to the world,
from the beginning in creating it, will that it be tempered by
alternative changes, and maintayned by contraries, his eternall
essence remayning alwaies one and unchangeable. (Ashley, folio ir)
This long fragment of LeRoy's opening sentence contains, in typical
emphasis, the principal elements of the author's philosophy of
history. Significantly, LeRoy has accepted the classical theory of
cyclical decline and regeneration. But he has accounted for these
"alternative changes" in terms of the Divine Providence of
Christian tradition which sub- sumes all terrestrial mutations
under its agency. His rhetoric in so doing is Augustinian-it can
hardly be distinguished from a great number of passages in the De
Civitate Dei.9 Moreover, this passage is by no means a mere sop
thrown to the ecclesiastical authorities, or a conventional,
Christianized invocation to the muse. Throughout the course of the
work, LeRoy tells us time and again of the pervasive efficacy of
Providence, both in the general functioning of the cosmos, and in
particular historical situations. One finds throughout the work
similarities with St. Augustine's monumental philosophy of history,
similarities which may well result from direct imitation.10
7H. Weisinger, "Louis LeRoy on Science and Progress," Osiris, XI
(1954), 200. 8 For comprehensive discussion of historiographical
theories in the Renaissance,
see W. K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought
(Cambridge, Mass., 1948), chs. 1-3.
9 I make this remark only on the basis of reading St. Augustine
in translation. I have used The City of God, tr. Marcus Dods, D.D.
(New York, 1950). Further- more, in using the word "Augustinian" to
characterize LeRoy's philosophy, I refer only to St. Augustine's
well-known notions about historical causation, and not to his
theology in general. I plan to document the point in a future study
by comparing the original texts.
1 In Books IV-VII, when LeRoy is dealing with ancient history,
the debt to a book LeRoy must have known is most evident. The same
causes are at work for
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LEROY S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 327
There is, however, a crucial difference. The God of Augustine
guides history along a linear course, from its beginnings at the
Fall, through its moment of redemption on Calvary, and on to its
telos- the "end without end"-at the Last Judgment. But LeRoy's
theory of alternative risings and fallings is a variant form of
ancient cyclical models for political histories, which Augustine
had taken great pains to discredit. LeRoy, writing precisely 150
years before Vico, places providential control over the cyclical
course of history.
This attempt of LeRoy's to reconcile antithetical models for
order- ing the flux of human events is in a sense reflected in the
organization of the De la Vicissitude. The structure of the book is
itself, loosely speaking, both linear and cyclical. In general,
LeRoy's method of ex- position is to discuss in more or less detail
the arms and learning of any excellent nation, and then to follow
this account by an extended series of comparisons with earlier
powers. At each stage in the alterna- tive rise and decline of
nations, LeRoy attempts to "take stock" of the new vicissitudes (a
modern sociologist might consider them "variables") which the
concurrence ("correlation") of arms and learn- ing had produced.
Having brought a given cycle up to date, he moves on to the next,
more complex, cycle, and performs the same recapitu- lary
operation.
LeRoy's reason for proceeding in this way is simply, in his
words, to make an ultimate ". . . comparison de ce siecle aux
precedens plus illustres, pour sgavoir en quoy il leur est
inferieur, ou superieur, ou egal." The most striking feature of
this intention, as well as of the way in which he chooses to
implement it, is LeRoy's lawyer-like in- clination for "getting
down to cases." He eschews blanket evaluations of cultures, based
on general qualitative comparisons. Indeed, he seems determined to
replace the airy generalizations of wishful think- ers-of habitual
admirers of an illud tempus-by a consideration, un- impeded by a
priori norms, of the 'facts.'
The analogy which can be drawn between the structure, both
repet- itive and progressive in time, of LeRoy's book on the one
hand, and his model of historical motion on the other, suggests the
profound ambivalence into which the author is led. He recognizes
the plausi- bility of the biological metaphors of flourishing and
decay which Greek and Roman historians came to apply to the "life"
of nations.
both authors. Consider, for example, the problem of the rise and
fall of Empires. LeRoy accounts for the success of Cyrus completely
in terms of God's favor (42v- 43). Under Darius, overweening pride
preceded destruction, for at "the top of the worldly power ...
ariseth the spring of pride, arrogancy, over-weening, and extreme
insolency. And there is the slippery path . . . where sovereign
felicity falleth head- long into extreme calamity" (48). A similar
retributive justice fell upon the Roman Empire, "which being clymed
up to an incomparable greatness, and inestimable wealth; did fall
eftsoones into great calamities; and was finally overthrowen; as
others had been before it...." Cf. The City of God, Book V, passim,
and indeed, all of the narrative sections of the work.
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328 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
Yet the "denial of history" 11 implicit in a model of endless
repetition, of constant return to a primeval pattern of events, is
carefully avoided by LeRoy, who is primarily concerned with change,
and in a sense, with development.12 Though we have seen the cycles
and the recur- rences, one never knows what will happen next, for
no man can com- prehend the ways of divine providence.
In accepting the agency of God in history, LeRoy tended to
ignore the conventional humanistic categories of causation.
"Vertue," the ability of a man to meet the demands of a specific
historical situation, is present, but without its traditional
dialectic adversary, fortuna. The stars are thought to exert some
influence in the world, but they do so through providential plan.
LeRoy also has a keen awareness of the r'le of ecological factors
in racial development and social differentia- tion. Though the
problem of free will and determinism is not dealt with
specifically, it is clear throughout that LeRoy wishes in principle
to affirm the efficacy of human action, despite all the
implications of his providential determinism. Men, for LeRoy, are
as real as the in- scrutable forces, and one feels that a
conception of the uniqueness and importance of the individual is
crucial to his outlook.13 Thus in a very real sense, LeRoy emerges
not simply as an Augustinian Chris- tian historian, but also as a
humanist, in his hopeful view of human possibil'it'ies.
Moreover, while he accepted certain crucial conceptions from the
Christian theology of history, and thereby qualified his classical
his- torical model, his broadly affirmative humanism seems to have
led LeRoy to reject certain other aspects of the Augustinian
historical scheme. The fact that LeRoy evades the Augustinian telos
is of the greatest importance. He neither expects, nor concerns
himself with the absolute, sometimes even chiliastic conclusion to
history which a 'medieval' Christian (including not a few men of
the XVIth century) expected and even awaited. Thus, his philosophy
of history is saved from becoming an eschatology, probably by means
of his empirical out- look. And thus, he avoids another kind of
"denial of history" and eliminates another avenue of wishful
thinking.
Professors Becker, Bury, and others have found in LeRoy a fore-
runner of an "idea of progress." This phrase is used in various
senses
11 EHade, op. cit, 110-112. 12 Iwish to preserve a distinction
between development, seen as increase in the
stores of knowledge and materials in any culture, and progress,
defined as the slow and interminable advancement of men in a known,
desirable direction, through their own autonomous achievement.
13 This is most evident when LeRoy discusses the contributions
of men of lear- ing. He believes in the first place that "God
creating Man, gave him for a great and excellent gift, the use of
Reason and Speech; and by these two prerogatives hath separated him
from other creatures. . . " Some men, among whom Pico della
Mirandola is a good example (109), can in any age make major
contributions to humanity.
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LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 329
in the various critical works on LeRoy, but one meaning which is
generaly shared is that humanity by its own striving may move
closer to perfection in social and economic organization, and in
the arts.14 Now if the interpretation of LeRoy's philosophy of
history which I have put forward is correct, and if LeRoy holds to
his own philosophy of history, it follows that glimmerings of
humanity mov- ing toward a "perfection" (however defined) must be
trivial.
Though LeRoy kept the ways open for directed change in the fu-
ture, he had to do so by an essentially humane, humanistic, and
emo- tional act of will, because his theory of the concurrent rise
and decline of arms and letters, magnificently documented, hoisted
him on his own petard. That is to say, if his philosophy of history
was valid, he was logically forced to foresee a decline. And so he
did: . . . if the memorie and knowledge of that which is past, be
the instruction of the present, and advertisement for that which is
to come: it is to be feared, least the power, wisedome, sciences,
bookes, industrie, workman- shipps, and knowledges of the world,
being come to so great excellencie; do fall againe, as they have
done in times past, and come to decay: by con- fusion succeeding
after this order and perfection; rudeness after civilitie;
ignorance after knowledge; and barbarousnes after elegancie. I
foresee al- readie in my mind, many strange Nations, differing in
fashions, colours, and habites; rushing into Europe as did in old
time the Gothes, Hunnes, Van- dales, Lombardes, and Saracens; ....
(126-126v) At this point, LeRoy includes a catalogue of what would
be destroyed in such a devastation. Thus, even in foreseeing a
decline, LeRoy gave an implicit push to progressive assumptions by
identifying his own age with a rise. A few lines later, his cyclic
theory returns him to the sphere of natural phenomena, whence it
was derived by the ancients: I foresee warres arising in all
Countries, both civile and foreine; factions, and divisions
springing, which will profane both divine and humane what- soever;
famines, and pestilences threatning mortall men; the order of na-
ture, the rules of the celestiall motions, and the agreement of the
elements breaking off; deluges, and inundations comming on the one
side; and ex- cessive heates, and violent earthquakes, on the
other; and the world draw- ing towards an end; bringing with it a
confusion of all things, and reducing them againe to their auncient
and former Chaos. (126v) But from the Christian side of LeRoy's
deliberations comes immedi- ately the qualifying deus ex machina:
But howbeit, theis things proceed (after the opinion of the
Naturalists) from the fatall law of the World; and have their
natural causes: yet not- withstanding, the events of them do
principally depend on the providence of God; who is above nature,
and who alone doth know the prefixed time, wherein theis things
shall come to passe. Wherefore, men of good mindes ought not to be
amazed or astonished therewith; but rather to take courage
14 Becker, op. cit., 189. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York,
1932), 44-49.
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330 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
unto them, travailing carefully, every one in that vocation
whereunto he is called; to thend to preserve to their power so
manie goodly things lately invented, or restored; whose losse would
be almost irrepairable; and to de- liver them over to such as come
after us; as we have received them of our auncestours: and namely
GOOD LETTERS, as long as it shall please God that they endure.
(126v) Perhaps favorable providential forces will enable men to
maintain the level of social order and good letters which exists
nowadays. How- ever, in order for this to happen, there must
clearly occur a radical departure from the direction of history
since the times of Sesostris, Ninus, Cyrus, Alexander, Augustus,
Trajan, and the Arabians. It is obvious to LeRoy that men cannot
affect those areas of historical causality which are beyond their
control by definition. In spite of this elementary and depressing
recognition, he affirms the equally obvious tautology that we can
do what we can, and he is cheered by the same evidence which, to
his contemporaries, brought only despair.2
Louis LeRoy probably would never have had many reasons to have
considered writing a book in the Utopian genre. In the first place,
he rarely thought in terms of social amelioration, but as a
classicist confined his interests mainly to "bonnes lettres" and
the military prowess with which he believed learning rose and fell
con- currently. Secondly, but equally important, his historical
awareness- his recognition of the ever increasingly complex
vicissitudes and varieties of things-must have caused him to regard
the simplified idealizations of the utopists as native and
impractical. Finally, he was a loyal subject of the King of France,
and a practical defender of the nascent Gallican nation-state
organization, during a period of acute religious and political
crises."6
Yet, as I have shown, LeRoy was at least in one sense committed
to wishful (i.e., unreasonably hopeful) thinking. We may describe
him in analogy to the paradox of his own philosophical position, as
a despairing optimist. Such a characterization is of course
extremely imprecise. It was Professor Karl Mannheim who gave the
basic out- lines for a typology of social and political thinkers.'7
He identified first the ideologist who typifies the psychology and
rhetoric of con-
15K. Koller, "Two Elizabethan Expressions of the Idea of
Mutability," Studies in Philology, XXXV (1938), 228-237, shows how,
on the basis of the Ashley trans- lation, John Norden wrote his
long and pessimistic poem on mutability, Vicissitudo Rerum
(reprinted, Oxford, 1931). LeRoy was fortunate never to know that
flowers culled from his own hopeful garden were used to adom this
cemetery of despair.
I6LeRoy's role as a political theorist and propagandist during
the violent and complicated struggles of the 1550's and 1560's is
outlined in J. W. Allen, A History of Politica Thought in the
Sixteenth Century (London, 1928) 377-383, and in the recent precise
studies of Vittorio de Caprariis, Propaganda e Pensiero Politico in
Francia durante le Guerre di Religione, I (Naples, 1959), 245-56,
etc.
17 Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1936), 192-263.
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LEROY' S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 331
servatism, in his attempt to rationalize things as they are.
Mannheim then juxtaposed against the ideologist's mentality that of
the utopist. The utopist's ideas are incongruous with the world in
which he lives. Yet his wishful thinking, whether chiliastic or
more temperately im- aginative, may indicate the direction of
future changes in social organization. It remains to be noted that
on an imaginary scale of wishful thinkers, on which we find
ideologists at one extreme and utopists at the other, there is a
large area in which less extreme posi- tions may be found. Many
gradations are possible here, combinations of acceptance and/or
wish of all kinds and degrees. The despairing optimist may be
placed somewhere in this middle region of the scale. It must be
remembered, though, that while LeRoy rejects despair, he is
prepared, like his contemporary Bodin, to reject as unrealistic
cer- tain kinds of wishful thinking. And as one might expect, LeRoy
re- jects such sorts of wishful thinking as do not embody the
mature historical awareness which is so characteristically his
own.
For LeRoy, these kinds of wishful thinking are typified by the
various conceptions of a "Golden Age" which were common literary
currency in his day, both in historical discourse and in belles
lettres. The literary embodiments of the idea of a "great time"
generally utilized features of the topos to which Hesiod had given
early ex- pression, and to which Greek and Roman writers frequently
returned. The many artistic ends which this classical topos was
used to achieve in the literature of the late XVIIth century are
outside the scope of this essay. For our purposes, it is enough to
realize that primitivism- that sentimental and sophisticated
longing for life in its simpler (i.e., more "natural") state-is
completely antithetical to LeRoy's concep- tion of what is
desirable for modern man.
It is for this reason that LeRoy introduces into Book III a
number of phrases descriptive of men in their primitive state which
seem to refer directly to the classical features of literary
primitivism. LeRoy's characterization of early man may be compared
with that of Lucretius on the one hand, and of Voltaire on the
other. There are no primitive sentiments or evocations in LeRoy. We
see in Book III simply the humanist historian's view of the birth
of civilization. The possibility of an Eden is rejected by
omission; the account is, in the strict philo- sophical sense,
Epicurean. The Christian element of human depravity through
original sin, and the resultant regression from a pristine state of
grace are rejected in favor of a more naturalistic explanation: At
the beginning men were very simple and rude in all things, little
differ- ing from beastes. They did eate in the fieldes and
mountaines, the rawe fleshe of beastes, or herbs, with their
rootes, stalkes, and leaves, which the earth brought foorth of his
owne accorde, and in the woodes the fruictes of wilde trees; or
venison.... They clad them selves with skinnes, in stede of
garments; to bee defended from heat and colde, from winde, raine,
and
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332 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
snow, they withdrewe themselves into great holow trees, or under
their thick leaved branches.... They abode ever almost in the open
aire, in continuall travaile, and lying on the hard ground,
wheresoever sleep overtooke them. (27v-28r) That LeRoy attaches a
solely negative value to this natural state is evident from the
title of the book, viz. "De la Vicissitude et Inven- tion des Ars,
et comment les Hommes de leur Simplicit6 et Rudesse Premiere sont
parvenus 'a la Commodite, Magnificence et Excellence Presente."
LeRoy accepts the Lucretian explanation that men grew softer as
their lives became more civilized, but modifies it by suggest- ing
that their increasing softness caused them to seek means of easing
the battle for survival. When they waxed weaker, and could not
digest such meates, nor dwell in the open aire naked, and
uncovered, they were constrayned to seeke by little and little, to
soften this wild and savage maner of lyving, which they could no
longer endure: learning to sow Corne, which before grew up un-
known amongst herbes and weeds, and to dresse the vines, which
likewise the earth brought forth amongst other plants; to
transplant, and to graffe [sic] fruict-trees, to thend to make the
fruicts better, and to dresse and season both flesh and fish: and
then to build, and to assemble themselves in companies, that they
might live the more safely, and commodiously. In such maner were
they reduced, from that brutish life which they led, to this
sweetnes, and civilitie; beginning from that time forward, to feed,
cloath, and lodge themselves in better sort, and more commodiously
(plus honneste- ment). (28r)
Plainly, LeRoy, like Voltaire, with whom he would have shared
not a few attitudes and interests, would call the weakness that
produced these changes a felicitous one.
This passage is characteristic of LeRoy's excursions into
historical narrative, because it reflects his interest in the
development of cul- ture, including the culture of fields and
gardens, as well as that of manners, laws, and "honneste" behavior.
The following pages of Book III document in great detail men's
technological and social evolution from the forests to the loaded
tables, libraries, and cannons of Europe. In keeping with his
method of including and cataloguing the increas- ing vicissitudes,
LeRoy reconstructs the early development of archi- tecture,
cookery, drink, furniture, clothing and its role in the estab-
lishment and maintenance of increasing social and political
distinc- tions, the plastic and military arts, music, the natural
sciences, and so forth. The primitive state of man embodied no
virtues in LeRoy's scheme. It was, as Voltaire was to remark over
one hundred sixty years later, a state of "pure ignorance."
It is significant that in LeRoy's discussion of primitive men he
eschews any reference to the poets, of whom Jean Bodin spoke
con-
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LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 333
temptuously in his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem
(1566).18 Bodin, in suggesting what he took to be a new method for
the right understanding of history, found it necessary to censure
poets for their sentimental, ahistorical primitivism. But LeRoy,
writing nine years later and obviously familiar with Bodin's famous
work, does not find it necessary to join that argument.
There are a number of possible reasons for this. In the first
place, LeRoy is not creating a Methodus, but rather, constructing
an entire "Weltanschauung." He therefore shows little of the
self-conscious concern for justifying his historical approach as
Bodin had done. Sec- ondly, in tracing the concurrent development
of arms and learning, LeRoy assumes the supreme importance of
culture, of laws, and of increases in the level of civilization.
Thirdly, it is conceivable that LeRoy thought that the point had
been adequately treated by Bodin, and could almost be taken for
granted. Finally, such a discussion would have been difficult to
incorporate in the third chapter, devoted as it is to description,
entirely free of scholarly litigation.
LeRoy's main descriptive device is the list, or catalogue.
Professor Bates wisely observes that these enormous lists of people
and things (which to some modern readers may become tedious) are
not simply displays of the author's erudition, but are a
significant support for his thesis.19 In them the full range of
vicissitudes in any period may be compactly presented. The
techn'ique of the catalogue is both an opportunity for learned
pyrotechnics and a strongly persuasive device. Perhaps the didactic
function of the lists has occasionally been over- looked by writers
who have seen in the De la Vicissitude simply an "ouvrage curieux."
20
18 T have used J. Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of
History, tr. B. Reynolds (New York, 1945), ch. vii, for purposes of
comparison here.
19 Bates, op. cit., xii. 20 Reader of Rabelais wil not need to
be convinced that the list was a popular
device of literature in the XVIth century. The origins of the
list are deep in the humanist tradition, and may be traced at least
to Petrarch. In Petrarch's letter to M. Varro in Petrarch's Letters
to Classical Authors, tr. M. E. Cosenza (Chicago, 1910), 73, we
read: "There is, 0 Varro, a long line of illustrious men whose
works were the result of an application equal to thine own, and who
have not been a whit more fortunate than thou. And although not one
of them was thy peer, yet thou shouldst follow their example and
bear thy lot with greater equanimity. Let me enumerate some, for
the mere utterance of illustrious names gives me pleasure." He then
lists names of seventeen Romans, all but the first two obscure
("their very names are scarcely known today, . . . men once
illustrious and now mere ashes blown hither and thither by every
gust of wind"). There are implications here for the psychology of
humanism. Cf. in this connection the words of J. A. Symonds who in
1877 wrote in his Preface to The Revival of Learning (Scribner,
190): "To me it has been a labor of love to record even the bare
names of those Italian worthies who recovered for us in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 'the everlasting con- solations'
of the Greek and Latin classics."
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334 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
While LeRoy rejects the possibility of a primitive golden age
with- out ever using the phrase "age d'or," he does not reject the
idea of great ages. Indeed, they are an integral part of his
historical plan: ... the Starres have some power towards the
disposing of inferiour things; the situation of places, and
temperature of the seasons of the year do helpe, concerning
understandings and maners; the reward and honour proposed unto mans
industrie; the learned ages, and liberall princes, give great ad-
vancement unto arts; and emulation serveth for a spur thereunto:
Notwith- standing for my part, I think that God being carefull of
all the parts of the world, doth grant the excellencie of Armes and
of Learning, something unto Asia, sometimes unto Africk, sometimes
unto Europe; establishing the sovereign empire of the world, once
in the East, another time in the West, another time in the South,
another in the North: and suffering vertue and vice, valiancie and
cowardize, sobrietie and delicacie, knowledge and ignor- ance, to
go from countrie to countrie, honouring and diffaming the Nations
at diverse times: to the end that everyone in his turn might have
part of good hap and ill; and that none should waxe proude by
overlong pros- peritie.... (32v)
The passage nicely summarizes LeRoy's views of historical
causes. More important, it shows why, for LeRoy, no past period of
great- ness can provide norms for right action in the present.
There are too many regional, natural, human and divine variables to
make so deriv- ative a course viable, even if unqualified imitation
(as distinct from emulation) were a thing to be desired. LeRoy's
historical relativism goes even deeper. For example he is, like
many of his contemporaries, a great admirer of the political and
social organization and cultural attainments of Venice (121v).
Similarly, he indulges in an almost romantic praise of Turkish
citizens and institutions. Yet, LeRoy never suggests that these
states should provide models for other common- wealths. He does not
do so because for him, in theory, none of the many historical
"great times" or places can be normative, since muta- bility is so
pervasive and universal. On the same grounds, Guicciardini had
criticized the Machiavelli who, in his Discorsi (written in 1517)
had expressed longings for the illud tempus of Republican Rome.
Earlier, in considering LeRoy's intentions, we found that his
tech- nique of extensive comparisons helps him to make distinctions
be- tween various ages and his own, ". . . pour sgavoir en quoy il
leur est inferieur, ou superieur, ou egal." LeRoy saw this problem
of evaluation in the light of his awareness of mutability. For him,
any period of military and cultural efflorescence might be called
golden, since it embodied his own very civilized values. In fact
for LeRoy, as for many a XVIth-century writer, the present age was
as golden as any earlier time. This judgment is supported
throughout the tenth and eleventh books. In constructing his own
position, LeRoy seems to
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LEROY S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 335
make extensive use of Bodin's arguments against those who would
postulate four monarchies and a golden age in accordance with the
famous analogy in the Book of Daniel II, 31-45. LeRoy specifically
mentions Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and attempts to disprove it by
showing how, from any standpoint, there have been more than four
great empires (120v). LeRoy even goes so far as to use Bodin's
famous explanation for why men think about earlier ages of
gold.2"
In arguing for the greatness of his own age, LeRoy must of
course present evidence of a concurrence of arms and learning
comparable to that which he had found in earlier times. This he
does in his tenth book "Of the power, learning, and other
excellence of this age." LeRoy found the perfect model for the new
military prowess in the charis- matic figure of Tamburlaine, who
had consolidated an enormous em- pire in Asia almost two centuries
before. As a student of history, LeRoy must have realized that the
relationship between the military exploits of Tamburlaine and the
intellectual revival of the Renais- sance is entirely and merely
chronological, aside from a far-fetched connection, through his
defeat of the Turks. And indeed, the fact that there appears to be
little perceptible intrinsic relationship between power and
learning in the Renaissance seems to strain LeRoy's argu- ment. He
does not have to face a similar difficulty anywhere in an- cient or
medieval history. This may help to explain in part LeRoy's
extravagant praise of Tamburlaine. In the discussions of Alexander,
Augustus, and Charlemagne, LeRoy included elements of idealization
possibly derived from the speculum principis genre. In the case of
Tamburlaine, this tendency toward effusive idealization is much
more pronounced. Even in comparison with all other great military
leaders
21 Both see the phenomenon as a function of old age. As Bodin
says of the old men who speak of the golden age, "As though
returning from a distant journey, they narrate the golden
century-the golden age-to the young men. But then their ex-
perience is the same as that of men carried out of port into the
open sea-they think the houses and the towns are departing from
them; thus they think that delightful, gentle conduct, and justice
have flown to the heavens and deserted the earth," Ed. Reynolds,
ibid., 302. Cf. LeRoy (124v-125), wherein he says of the ". . . old
complaint that manners waxe every day worse and worse . . . ," that
it is an absurd statement. If it were true, men would by now have
reached the height of iniquity, and this is obviously not the case.
"It is credible," says LeRoy, "that this complaint hath first
proceeded from old men, who having passed the flower of their age
(which was full of joy, and gladness,) when they come to their
extreme old age (wherein is nothing but sorrow, and sadness) they
wish again for the pleasures of youth; seeing their senses become
feeble, and all their members weak- ened . . . they think there is
no faith, nor friendship, nor honestie, remaining among men:
telling to the younger sort many wonders of their former age. To
whom it hapneth no otherwise than it doth unto those, that embarke
themselves on the sea, and beginning to sail, according to the
measure as they are distant from the land, it seemeth unto them,
that the bank, or shore, the hills, trees, and houses do leave
them: thinking in like manner that in their old age, both pleasure,
humanitie, and justice do forsake them, and vanish away."
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336 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
of history (1 19v), Tamburlaine emerges with transcendant
military and charismatic greatness. His success is due to
"especiall favour of the heavens." . . . in knowledge, and
experience of armes, power, authoritie, felicities, quicknesse of
spirit, diligence, hardinesse, and perseverance; [Tamburlaine] hath
excelled not only the Otthomans; but also all the great capitaines,
Assyrians, Egyptians, Medes, Persians, Parthyans, Greekes,
Romaines, Christians, and Sarasens. (119) In LeRoy's hands,
Tamburlaine certainly became a mighty figure to herald the
beginning of a new time. Yet, one feels some heroic strain.
For LeRoy, Tamburlaine's military ascendancy in the East was
matched by a concurrent revival of learning in the West, so that
... by the industrious perseverance of divers learned men, the
matter hath had such good successe, that at this day our age may
compare with the most learned that ever were. For now we see the
tongues restored; and not onely the deeds, and writing of the
auncient brought to light; but also many goodly things newly
invented. (107v) LeRoy agrees with Bodin that of the three
principal new inventions- the compass, gunpowder, and
printing-printing is the most impor- tant. The fact that it was
discovered in a Christian world proves to LeRoy that it is to
Christians that ". . . the Divine Providence has especially
reserved the consummation of divine and human wis- dom." 22
Although LeRoy stresses innovation as well as restoration, no "idea
of progress" is implied. There is, however, what one might call an
"idea of augment." The store of civilization has been consider-
ably increased, if not necessarily improved, by new discoveries and
inventions. LeRoy implies a rough correlation between the augmenta-
tion of positive and negative vicissitudes, for in addition to
useful in- novations, men are also afflicted with "new and strange
maladies, un-
22 LeRoy's Christianity appears clearly in his great hostility
to Mohammedans, who have no chance for salvation: "The Mahometists,
deprived of this grace do utterly reject printing, not using it
amongst them, neither suffering any to bring them books written of
their affaires in Arabian, and printed elsewhere" (111). He goes to
considerable lengths to disparage Mohammed himself, saying of his
fol- lowers, "They have forged many other lies of him, like unto
these, which I will pur- posely omitt, fearing tedious prolixity:
and least in reciting of scandelous blasphe- mies, I should offend
Christian eares" (99v-100). This is the only instance I have found
where LeRoy expresses a fear of "tedious prolixity" (101-lOlv). Yet
his scorn, compounded with fear, of the Mohammedans, is not allowed
to stand in the way of LeRoy's recognition of their contribution to
civilization: "As the learning of the Greeks and Romaines augmented
with their power; so did that of the Arabians, or Saracens. And
when they were the most mighty of the world, then they became the
most learned: especially in the demonstrative sciences . . .Which I
thought good to speak of by the way; that it might be knowed, that
all learning is not comprised in these two languages, and that the
Arabian ought not to be despised; which com- prehendeth a good
part" (lOlv-102).
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LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 337
knowen of the Auncients. ..." Both the desirable and undesirable
changes were unthinkable to the ancients, who simply had nothing to
compare with them: ... no one could imagine and kind of
unhappinnesse or vice, which is not found in this age, so happy in
the restitution of good learning, and restor- ing of sciences.
Neither is there any amongst all men, either Christian or barbarous
nations, but hath suffered much. No part of the habitable earth, no
person is exempted from affections: which increase from day to day,
and are too much knowen to our damage and confusion.... (112v) An
idea of augment is operating here, as LeRoy characterizes a world
in which "All is turned upside down, and nothing goeth as it
ought." Yet, as I have shown earlier, LeRoy sees some coherence
remaining. He cannot allow despair to get the best of optimism.
Therefore, because of his historical realism and relativism,
which combine to eliminate from his thinking both uchronistic norms
on the one hand, and hypostatised utopian models on the other,
LeRoy is able to place man in the dramatic plight in which we find
him in the twelfth book. Even the title of the chapter-"Whether it
be true or no that there can be nothing said which hath not been
said before . . . " strikes the reader of the whole as a purely
rhetorical question, a de- vice to sustain the dramatic effect of
the concluding pages. The final chapter deals mainly with learning
and its possibilities for advance- ment, and its tone is more
persuasive and hortatory than descriptive.
Basically, LeRoy was advocating a state of mind. He held the
position of the anti-scholastic naturalist that the proper study of
mankind does not consist alone of the dusty intonations of long de-
ceased sages, but of the world as it presents itself to the alert
and searching modern intellect. Time and again the moderns are ad-
monished against undiscriminating imitation of ancient models (127-
130v, passim). Knowledge will increase through our own original
strivings, LeRoy suggests, re-emphasizing what I have called his
"idea of augment." Right conduct for the present man of knowledge
is to try to surpass his immediate predecessors, no matter how
great their stature. The ancients should be admired and emulated,
but not rigidly imitated.23
23 It should by now be evident that LeRoy's attitudes toward
those whose sense of the past is romantically aligned toward some
kind of primitive purity or golden age prefigure the views of
Montaigne and Bacon. In the essay "Des Coches" (1585-1588),
Montaigne asserts that the magnificence of Peru exceeds the glory
of ancient cities, and that the Aztecs excel the conquerors in all
the virtues which dis- tinguish men from beasts. Like LeRoy and
other contemporary historians, Mon- taigne recognized the
historical significance of the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
Still, he was much more impressed by the unknown than by the known:
"Even if all that has come down to us by report from the past
should be true and known by someone, it would be less than nothing
compared with what is unknown. And of this very image of the world
which glides along while we live on it, how puny and
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338 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER
The consequences of this view are profound. Times change, and
all things change with the times. The ancients have their place,
and it is a revered one. Still, the views and solutions of past
problems must give way to the more functional discoveries gained
from present anal- yses of the state of things in the world. Only
in this way will learn- ing avoid staleness and the always imminent
decay, which in previous societies seems to have been inevitable.
Rather than limit themselves to modest works of "small continuance"
men must continue to search out the unknown, if not for their own
sake, then at least for God's: . . . if all men do think that the
future belongeth to them; they that are Learned must not be
negligent in obtaining of that by the durable monu- ments of
Learning, which others do pretend and seeke by works of small
continuance. But they ought to travail to their power, if not in
respect of men (who show themselves often times ingrateful to their
benefactors, and
limited is the knowledge of even the most curious! Not only of
particular events which fortune often renders exemplary and
weighty, but of the state of great gov- ernments and nations, there
escapes more than a hundred times what comes to our knowledge. We
exclaim at the miracle of the invention of our artillery, of our
printing, other men in another corner of the world, in China,
enjoyed these a thou- sand years earlier. If we saw as much of the
world as we do not see, we would per- ceive, it is likely, a
perpetual multiplication and vicissitude of forms (une perpetuele
multiplication et vicissitude de formes)." I have quoted from the
translation of D. M. Frame, The Complete Works of Montaigne
(Stanford, 1948), 692-3. The earlier "Des Cannibals" (1578-1580)
suggests something of the same kind of relativism. LeRoy's
rejection both of the scholastic attitude toward authority and of
the widely- accepted canon of an ancient deposit of normative
knowledge receives its most com- plete expression by Francis Bacon.
His position appears in a number of places: Book I The Advancement
of Learning, the preface to The Great Instauration, and throughout
the Novum Organum. In Advancement, I, 1, he says that ". . . God
hath framed the mind of man as a mirror of glass, capable of the
image of the universal world . . . and not only delighted in
beholding the variety of things and vicissitude of times, but
raised also to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees,
which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed."
Bacon's lan- guage here suggests a first hand knowledge of the work
of LeRoy, perhaps in the Ashley translation. Whether there is
positive external evidence for this I have not yet been able to
ascertain. But the internal evidence is very impressive. A little
further on in the book (I, 2) we are told: " . . . experience doth
warrant, that both in persons and times, there hath been a meeting
and concurrence in Learning and Arms, flourishing and excelling in
the same men and the same ages." He goes on to give some of LeRoy's
stock examples, and concludes: "And this concurrence is yet more
visible in times than in persons, by how much an age is a greater
object than a man. For both in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Graecia, and
Rome, the same times that are most renowned for arms, are likewise
most admired for learning, so that the greatest authors and
philosophers, and the greatest captains and governours have lived
in the same ages. Neither can it otherwise be: for as in man the
ripeness of strength of the body and mind cometh much about an age,
save that the strength of the body cometh the more early: so in
states Arms and Learning, whereof the one correspondeth to the
body, the other to the soul of man, have a concurrence or near
sequence in times." The idea is repeated in I, 2, iii, and
elsewhere. Bacon, writing a generation after LeRoy (and only a few
years after LeRoy had become available in English) used the same
language of historical explanation to defend the same propositions
on the development of society and culture.
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LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 339
envious of the present vertue) yet at the least for the honour
of God: Whose will is, that we should carefully preserve the arts
and sciences, as also all other things necessary for life; and
deliver them over from time to time to our posterity, by learned,
and elegant writings in good matters: giving light to the obscure,
credit to the doubful, order to the confused, elegancie to the
unpolished, grace to such as are left of, noveltie to the old, and
authoritie to the new. (130v) Here, in the concluding lines of the
book, LeRoy actually presumes to know the present will of God. I
believe that he claims privileged access to knowledge of God's
mind, solely so that he can use God's will as a sanction for his
most serious affirmation on the survival of civilization. Science,
in a sense, is conceived to be a study of the divine will as
manifested in nature. Bacon and Descartes were to begin their great
works on precisely those foundations which LeRoy had done much to
construct.
We have seen how LeRoy used providential historiography, shorn
of its telos, to modify a cyclic conception of the rise and decline
of arms and learning, leaving the way open for deviations from the
con- sistent pattern of mutability he saw in the past. We have also
ob- served how, for LeRoy, wishful thinking takes the very moderate
form of humanistic optimism, tempered by despair, that man may keep
learning alive through constant efforts at renewal and
augmentation. This kind of wishful thinking (if the term is at all
appropriate) pre- cludes serious utopian or uchronian speculations;
it is too empirical, and too narrowly confined to the intellectual
and military disciplines. If LeRoy had used the term "Golden Age"
himself, he would un- doubtedly not have used it in a normative
way. That is, he would have given us the criteria by which we could
examine various ages, to decide whether or not they were "golden."
LeRoy did not offer such a functionalistic definition, for he was
not particularly interested in the problem of the golden age. He
was probably amused by it, where his predecessor Bodin had been
annoyed.
LeRoy's major work was widely read throughout Western Eu-
rope.24 Some readers, especially in England, accepted his evidence,
while substituting for his qualified optimism a unified conception
of decay in nature and human societies.25 We, however, find in
Louis LeRoy's historically perceptive and far-ranging work an
enthusiasm for examining the achievements of people and the values
of things capable of challenging the minds of both XVIth- and
XXth-century investigators to approach their work with intensified
energy and vision.*
Harvard University. 24This may be inferred from the fact that it
was translated into both English
and Italian not long after its publication in French. There were
French editions in 1575, 1576, 1577, 1579, 1583, 1584. 25 See note
14.
* The author wishes to thank Professor Harry Levin, who
suggested this study, for his help and advice.
Article Contentsp. 324p. 325p. 326p. 327p. 328p. 329p. 330p.
331p. 332p. 333p. 334p. 335p. 336p. 337p. 338p. 339
Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 23,
No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1962), pp. 307-429Volume Information [pp.
]Front Matter [pp. ]The Tradition of the Logical Topics: Aristotle
to Ockham [pp. 307-323]Louis Leroy's Humanistic Optimism [pp.
324-339]Scientific Preconceptions in Locke's Philosophy of Language
[pp. 340-354]Hegelianism in Nineteenth-Century Ohio [pp.
355-378]NotesLassalle on Heraclitus of Ephesus [pp. 379-391]The
Influence of Marsilius of Padua on XVth-Century Conciliarism [pp.
392-402]Some Ideas on Education before Locke [pp. 403-406]Henry
James and the Aesthetic Tradition [pp. 407-419]Burlamaqui and
Rousseau [pp. 420-423]
Books Received [pp. 424-429]Back Matter [pp. ]