#madeleine de scudéry

[venicepearl]

Madeleine de Scudéry (15 November 1607 – 2 June 1701), often known simply as Mademoiselle de Scudéry, was a French writer.

Her works also demonstrate such comprehensive knowledge of ancient history that it is suspected she had received instruction in Greek and Latin. In 1637, following the death of her uncle, Scudéry established herself in Paris with her brother, Georges de Scudéry, who became a playwright. Madeleine often used her older brother's name, George, to publish her works. She was at once admitted to the Hôtel de Rambouillet coterie of préciosité, and afterwards established a salon of her own under the title of the Société du samedi (Saturday Society). For the last half of the 17th century, under the pseudonym of Sapho or her own name, she was acknowledged as the first bluestocking of France and of the world. She formed a close romantic relationship with Paul Pellisson which was only ended by his death in 1693. She never married.

[moonbeamwritings]

a parisian date with tendou

pairing: timeskip!satori tendou x gn!reader

wc: 1.4k

warnings: none

the poem referenced at the end is “Les Amoureux” By Madeleine De Scudéry

← prev. date | next date →

“My babbbyyyy,” Satori sing-songs, arms spread wide to greet you at the airport. “My baby’s here!”

You all but slam into his chest and within seconds he’s lifting your feet from the floor, twirling you around as he presses dozens of little kisses wherever he can reach. Satori lets out a pleased sigh as he squeezes you closer, crushing you into a hug. 

“I missed you so much.”

You capture his cheeks in your palms and plant a sweet kiss on his lips. “I missed you more.”

He returns you to your feet, but doesn’t let you slip away so easily. As you start to walk towards the exit, Satori loops his arm around your shoulders, tugging you close until no space remains between you. “Nuh-uh. Not possible. I almost withered away and died without your kisses!”

“You sound like Tinker Bell,” you tease, pinching his cheek.

Satori puffs his chest out a bit as you stop to wait for your cab to pull up. “We’re the same, her and I. We understand each other.”

The two of you make idle chit-chat as you push your weight into his side, his arm curled tightly around your waist, occasionally exchanging kisses to keep Satori alive.

When the cab finally pulls up, Satori is quick to pull your suitcase from your palm and the backpack from your shoulders, carefully packing them into the back of the car. Snapping the trunk of the taxi shut, Satori grins at you eagerly. “Are you ready for a Valentine’s Day in Paris, baby?”

The Valentine’s Day festivities start with a trip to the bakery down the road. On the walk there, Satori tells you he comes nearly once a day for a coffee and to gossip with the sweet older woman who owns the place. Apparently, he started watching her cat in exchange for French lessons and now they’re a dynamic duo. 

She gushes when the bell over the door signals Satori’s arrival, reaching across the counter to smooch both his cheeks. And when she locks eyes with you, she gives you much the same treatment, excitedly rambling in French.

Unfamiliar with the language, all you can do is smile and nod as Satori responds in stride. It flows from his tongue with practiced ease, hands moving animatedly as he gestures to you and then to the display case. You catch a thank you and a chocolate croissant order somewhere in there, but that’s where your French knowledge starts and ends.

When she turns to pull the treats he ordered from the glass display case, Satori worms his arm around your waist, brimming with pride. “She said you’re very beautiful, and she’s mad that I haven’t brought you around before.”

“You talk about me?”

His grin only grows. “Of course I do! Nicolette knows everything.” He pinches your side. “Even about all the times you’ve drooled all over my pillows.”

Scandalized, you reel back. “You didn’t.”

A kiss lands on the crown of your head in an attempt to soothe you. You can feel Satori’s smile against your hair. “I’m kidding. She thinks you’re un ange — an angel.”

Your cheeks burn as he pulls away and takes the box of treats from Nicolette. You both give your thanks, and she tells Satori to bring you back in before you leave. With a promise that he will, you set off to eat your pastries in the park.

Bellies full to bursting with fresh pastries and with sunshine warming your cheeks, Satori brings you to what he calls hidden gems. The streets bustle with life as he brings you first to a bookstore with old wooden floors and a creaky staircase that leads to shelves of vintage books that stretch far above your heads. 

Satori plucks a thin book with a red spine and gold lettering from the shelf and smiles. Long, lithe fingers flick through the different pages, his eyes scanning over the letters. In the silence, you crowd his space, peering over the top of the book to catch a peek at the yellowing pages. 

When his eyes meet yours, he taps the tip of your nose. “They’re love poems.”

“Since when are you a poetry kinda guy?”

He tucks the book under his arm and takes your hand. “Mm,” Satori fixes you with a gaze you can only describe as sweet before he leans in to kiss you. “I’m feeling inspired.”

The next “hidden gem” is a tacky, over-the-top souvenir shop close to the heart of the city. It’s jam-packed with tourists, all standing shoulder to shoulder as they peruse the Eiffel Tower-shaped hat options and the gaudy shirts with Paris plastered across the front with an Eiffel Tower as the “A”.

“This is a hidden gem?” You ask, cringing at the neon pink lettering of the shirt in front of you.

“Maybe not hidden,” Satori corrects, plopping one of the hats on your head, “but definitely a gem.”

The moment you’re able to, he crams you into the photo booth in the far corner, taking a little photo with a poorly designed Parisian border, one decorated with baguettes and berets and bright red hearts. In it, he’s squishing your cheeks in his palm to give you a fish face and pushing his nose into your cheek, lips puckered.

You leave that store with a keychain that proudly displays the new photo and a design that reads, “the city of love” plastered in sparkly black font below it.

Satori’s tour of Paris continues with a brief stop at his work for chocolate. There, a photo of the two of you together is pinned on the family cork board behind the counter. And as Satori puts his order in, his co-workers threaten to steal you away from him, friendly affection for your boyfriend glimmering in their smiles and hidden in their jokes.

Next, he brings you to a quiet rose garden tucked away from the hustle and bustle; a spot where you spend a quiet moment, munching on delicious chocolates and taking a break from the onslaught of tourists.

“Act natural.”

“What?”

With the dull snap of a stem, Satori tucks a soft pink, and thankfully thornless, garden rose behind your ear. Once it’s perched in its new spot, he presses a kiss to the shell of your ear before whispering, “You’re really not supposed to pick the flowers.” He pushes a stray hair away from your face, jostling the rose a bit as he does. “But I think they can make a Valentine’s exception, don’tcha think?”

After a long day filled with food and little shops and the warmth of Satori’s hand in your own, the whirlwind tour of his new home city comes to an end at the base of the Eiffel Tower at ten o’clock at night. Tourists and locals alike still meander about, sharing kisses beneath the twinkling landmark, but the cool night air has quieted the sidewalks, giving you a moment of peace. 

The moon sits high and bright in the sky, as you curl up between Satori’s legs, his chin hooked over your shoulder as he reads from the love poems book resting in your lap. Love settles and blooms between your ribs as beams of moonlight decorate the pages and kiss Satori’s fingers where they curl around the book. Your hand moves on its own, coming up to circle his wrist, rubbing a soothing thumb into his skin.

Satori’s voice travels on the breeze, the French rolling from his tongue in soft lilts — a poetry reading just for you. “... Les indifférents n'ont qu'une âme; Mais lorsqu'on aime, on en a deux.”

The concluding line is punctuated with a beat of silence and a kiss to the plush of your cheek.

“What does it mean?” You ask quietly, as if speaking any louder will shatter the moment.

He rereads the poem, kissing your temple every few lines. “... The indifferent have but one soul,” he translates, “but when you love, you have two.”

You nuzzle your cheek into his before turning in his arms, capturing his jaw in your palm and leaning in for a kiss. It feels like a promise, a press of your lips with a sense of finality. At that moment, you decide you never want to do this with anyone else.

“I love you,” you tell him the moment you part.

He regards you with honeyed affection, snuggling close to peck your nose and then your cheek before finally meeting your lips again. As the light of the Eiffel Tower casts his face in pretty, amber shadows, he assures you, “I love you more.”

[jahsonic]

An English, French and Dutch version of the Map of Tendre.

The Map of Tendre (Carte du Tendre) is a map of an imaginary country called Tender.

It was published as an engraving and included in the first volume of Madeleine de Scudéry's 1654-61 novel Clélie.

It shows a geography entirely based around the theme of love: the river of Inclination flows past the villages of "Love Letter" and so forth.

It shows the process of falling in love as a journey.

[mariacallous]

Is it ever acceptable to lie? This question plays a surprisingly important role in the story of Europe’s transition from medieval to modern society. According to many historians, Europe became modern when Europeans began to lie—that is, when they began to argue that it is sometimes acceptable to lie. This popular account offers a clear trajectory of historical progression from a medieval world of faith, in which every lie is sinful, to a more worldly early modern society in which lying becomes a permissible strategy for self-defense and self-advancement. Unfortunately, this story is wrong.

For medieval and early modern Christians, the problem of the lie was the problem of human existence itself. To ask “Is it ever acceptable to lie?” was to ask how we, as sinners, should live in a fallen world. As it turns out, the answer to that question depended on who did the asking. The Devil Wins uncovers the complicated history of lying from the early days of the Catholic Church to the Enlightenment, revealing the diversity of attitudes about lying by considering the question from the perspectives of five representative voices—the Devil, God, theologians, courtiers, and women. Examining works by Augustine, Bonaventure, Martin Luther, Madeleine de Scudéry, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and a host of others, Dallas G. Denery II shows how the lie, long thought to be the source of worldly corruption, eventually became the very basis of social cohesion and peace.

[adarkrainbow]

If you have read the recaps of madame Levesque’s fairytale you’ll have noted that both tales have a moment that is not relevant to the plot, and is just a visit to an allegorical place where the hero is being taught a lesson about the nature of love. It is the Island of Lovers in “The Invisible Prince”, and the Vengeful Palace of Love (though maybe I should have rather translated it as “The Palace of the Revenge of Love”) in “The Prince of the Aquamarines”.

As I will explore more French fairytales, this tendency to invent magical and supernatural places that actually reflect human feelings (with a clear focus on love) will pop up frequently. 

It might seem weird to someone unused to the French literature of the time... but if you know your stuff, it is won’t surprise you. Because this tendency is actually a leftover of a massive phenomenon in the culture of the 17th century French culture: what is known today as “La carte de Tendre”. 

Ah, La carte de Tendre... If you study either literature or art in France, you are bound to have heard of it. La carte is “the map”, because it is a map as you can see above. “Tendre” is the name of the country this map supposedly describes - which literaly means “tender” yes, but shouldn’t be understood as a “tender meat”. Rather it is a “tender heart” - we could also translate that as “sweet”, for “sweet heart”. Because this map is actually the map of the country of love.

This map was actually a collaborative work among the circles of the “Précieuses” (the Precious - one of the driving literary-culture movements of the second half of the 17th century, and who had a big influence over French fairytales), led most notably by the famous madame de Rambouillet, the most famous “salon holder” of the time. The Precious Ones (or “Preciouses”) were people (mostly women) who argued and defended a more refined, civilized, delicate, ornamental form of culture. This map started out when Precious circles and people of the salon discussed about a famous novel by Madeleine de Scudéry, “Clélie, a Roman story”. One of the big topics of discussion, debate and wrting among those parts of French society was love - what was love, where did it came from, what were the different forms and levels of love, what is the proper way to seduce, how can one’s heart be touched, what destroys love... And upon discussing of this novel, the processes of love and seduction were discussed - debates upon what where the “roads to the hearts” or the “way to love”, which ended up in a work of classification and division, which then led to the idea of using the metaphor literaly and turn it all into a big geographical work...

And thus “The Map of Tender-Heart” was born. The map you see above, describing the country of love. Each city, each road, each river has its name, which is the one of a human emotion or action, and by looking at the different possible travels, you actually have a detailed manual of courtship and human emotions as understood at the time. This shows the duality of the “Precious spirit” which at the same time was very serious about what it did (hence the complete classification and organization of the different steps and regions of love), and yet also was light-hearted and second-degree with everything (hence making it the map of a fictional country, which could almost be used as a sentimental board game).

There are three different cities in this city, three capitals that represent the three different ways one can gain the love of someone - each located by the shores of a river which represents the three emotions related to the creation of one. One is “Estime” (respect, admiration, esteem), 

one is “Tendre-sur-Estime”, so called because it is located by the shores of the river “Estime” (respect, admiration, esteem), another is “Reconnaissance” (gratefulness) and the third is “Inclination” (natural inclination). These three rivers are quiet and calm, but one should beware not to follow them down into the sea outside of the country - because this wild sea represents the savage and destructive “Passions” (strong, violent, untamed emotions). The first time anyone arrives in when reaching the country is the little village of “Nouvelle-Amitié” (New Friendship) and for example, to go from this little village to the city of “Tendre-sur-Estime”, one must travel various little towns such as “Billet-doux” (sweet letter/message) or “Jolis vers”, (Beautiful verse). Aka it means: if you want to gain the respect and admiration of a person, if you want them to esteem you enough to love you, exchange sweet, galant, beautiful messages with them, and compose good and excellent poetry... One should also be careful of the big lake you see on the map: The Lake of Indifference. It is a stale water that goes nowhere, and similarly it represents the dreaded “indifference”, aka, when someone is bored with the other, does not feel any kind of attraction or desire for them, Indifference is as the name says the lack of any movement, reaction, affection or emotion towards another. And you’ll end up in this Lake is you follow the wrong towns, such as “Oubli” (Forgetfulness) or “Négligence” (Neglect). 

I can translate more of the map if you want, but I think you get the main idea. 

This map was hugely popular in the second half of the 17th century - many other writers or men of letters (or women) making their own sequels or equivalent to the map ; many more parodying this map and rewriting it in mockery. Molière, in his plays, talked about the Map. And even today the Map is still talked about and reinvented today. 

All of that to say, this Map clearly set a trend that found itself appearing again in French fairytales - the allegorical geography, or the “emotional geography”. 

[beatrice-otter]

The Story of Sappho: Free Ebook from the University of Chicago

I think this is probably up the alley of a number of people around here, so I thought I would share!

University of Chicago’s Free Ebook of the Month this month is The Story of Sappho. Here’s what they have to say about it:

The Story of Sapho makes available for the first time in modern English a self-contained section from Madeleine de Scudéry’s (1607-1701) novel Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, best known today as the favored reading material of the would-be salonnières that Molière satirized in Les précieuses ridicules.

Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, de Scudéry (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly by the literary establishment. Yet her multivolume novels were popular bestsellers in her time, translated almost immediately into English, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Arabic.

The Story tells of Sapho, a woman writer modeled on the Greek Sappho, who deems marriage slavery. Interspersed in the love story of Sapho and Phaon are a series of conversations like those that took place in Scudéry’s own salon in which Sapho and her circle discuss the nature of love, the education of women, writing, and right conduct.

You can get it here during the month of March, 2023.

[p--a--s--s--i--o--n]

Comme il n'est pas aisé de cacher le feu, il n'est pas facile de cacher l'amour.

Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie, histoire romaine

Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926)

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 11.15

Beer Birthdays

Grant Wood (1962)

Five Favorite Birthdays

J.G. Ballard; English writer (1930)

Daniel Barenboim; Argentinian-Israeli pianist & conductor (1942)

Georgia O'Keeffe; artist (1887)

Wayne Thiebaud; artist (1920)

Sam Waterson; actor (1940)

Famous Birthdays

Franklin Pierce Adams; journalist & author (1881)

Eusebius Amort; German poet (1692)

Edward Asner; actor (1929)

Gemma Atkinson; actor, model (1984)

Joanna Barnes; actress (1934)

Cynthia Breazeal; computer scientist (1967)

Kevin S. Bright; director (1954)

Carol Bruce; singer & actress (1919)

Mary E. Byrd; astronomer (1849)

Văn Cao; Vietnamese composer, poet & painter (1923)

Jimmy Choo; Malaysian fashion designer (1948)

Petula Clark; country singer (1928)

Gerry Connolly; Australian comedian & actor (1957)

Beverly D'Angelo; actress (1951)

Emma Dumont; actress and model (1994)

Tibor Fischer; English author (1959)

Gloria Foster; actress (1933)

Felix Frankfurter; U.S. Supreme Court justice (1882)

Judy Gold; comedian and actress (1962)

René Guénon; French-Egyptian philosopher (1886)

Arthur Haulot, Belgian journalist and poet (913)

Gerhart Hauptmann; German writer (1862)

William Herschel; German-English astronomer (1738)

Joe Hinton; singer (1929)

Rick Kemp; English singer-songwriter, bass player (1941)

Yaphet Kotto; actor (1937)

Emil Krebs; German polyglot (1867)

Johann Kaspar Lavater; Swiss poet & physiognomist (1741)

Virginie Ledoyen; French actress (1976)

Joe Leeway; English pop singer-songwriter (1955)

Curtis LeMay; air force general (1906)

Anni-Frid Lyngstad; pop singer (1945)

Mantovani; Italian composer (1905)

C.W. McCall; country singer (1928)

Clyde McPhatter; singer (1932)

Bill Melendez; Mexican-American animator & director (1916)

Jonny Lee Miller; English-American actor (1972)

Marianne Moore; poet (1887)

Kevin J. O'Connor; actor (1963)

Ol' Dirty Bastard; rapper and producer (1968)

Daniel Pinkwater; author & illustrator (1941)

William Pitt "the Elder"; English politician (1708)

Alvin Plantinga; philosopher (1932)

Seldon Powell; jazz saxophonist, flautist (1928)

Joseph Quesnel; French-Canadian poet, playwright & composer (1746)

Erwin Rommel; German field marshall (1891)

Randy Savage; wrestler (1952)

Madeleine de Scudéry; French author (1607)

Johannes Secundus; Dutch poet & author (1511)

Sacheverell Sitwell; English author (1897)

Antoni Słonimski; Polish journalist, poet & playwright (1895)

Randy Thomas; singer-songwriter, guitarist (1954)

Rachel True; actress (1966)

Joseph A. Wapner; television judge (1919)

James Widdoes; actor & director (1953)

Thomas Williams; author (1926)

Shailene Woodley; actress (1991)

[alonewolfr]

Quando si fa quel che si può, si fa quel che si deve.

|| Madeleine de Scudéry

[myavilotte]

lire de nouveaux poèmes

je voulais lire plus de poèmes en français alors j'en ai cherché différents sur la vie et l'amour et j'en ai lu plusieurs de Madeleine de Scudéry appelé Les amoureux.

[infactforgetthepark]

[Free eBook] The Story of Sapho by Madeleine de Scudéry [17th C Greek Classics-Inspired French Literary Philosophical Story]

The Story of Sapho by Madeleine de Scudéry, a 17th century French writer and literary salon hostess now fallen into obscurity but a popular and bestselling novelist at the time, edited and translated by Karen Newman, a professor of comparative literature at Brown University, is a philosophical literary tale inspired by ancient Greek history and the classics, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher The University of Chicago Press.

This is their featured Free eBook of the Month offer for March, and is a new translation of a topical section from de Scudéry's lengthy novel Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, which tells of Sapho, a woman modeled on the famous poet Sappho, whose love story with Phaon is interspersed with philosophical conversations discussing the nature of love, the education of women, proper conduct, etc. This edition includes an introduction by the translator, as well as another piece by de Scudéry extolling women's writing talents.

Offered worldwide through the month of March, available directly from the publisher's website.

Currently free @ the university's dedicated promo page (PDF available with download options for both Adobe Digital Editions and Readium DRM, follow instructions provided on download link page, requires newsletter signup with valid email address), and you can read more about the book on its regular catalogue page.

Description Ridiculed for her Saturday salon, her long romance novels, and her protofeminist ideas, Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) has not been treated kindly by the literary establishment. Yet her multivolume novels were popular bestsellers in her time, translated almost immediately into English, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Arabic.

The Story of Sapho makes available for the first time in modern English a self-contained section from Scudéry’s novel Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, best known today as the favored reading material of the would-be salonnières that Molière satirized in Les précieuses ridicules. The Story tells of Sapho, a woman writer modeled on the Greek Sappho, who deems marriage slavery. Interspersed in the love story of Sapho and Phaon are a series of conversations like those that took place in Scudéry’s own salon in which Sapho and her circle discuss the nature of love, the education of women, writing, and right conduct. This edition also includes a translation of an oration, or harangue, of Scudéry’s in which Sapho extols the talents and abilities of women in order to persuade them to write.

[histoireettralala]

Condé vs Mazarin: power and legitimacy.

By April 1649 Mazarin had survived the biggest challenge so far to his ministerial rule. A political revolt had briefly united popular unrest with the discontents of the bourgeoisie, the most senior judicial officers, and a large group of the court aristocracy. A combination of military threats and wide-ranging concessions had apparently calmed the situation; most significantly perhaps for Mazarin’s future calculations, it had demonstrated that his opponents would find it extremely difficult to militarize their opposition in any effective way. But relief was premature. For Mazarin’s new problem was that the military support he had drawn upon in early 1649 had cost him his previous near-monopoly over power and influence. Condé’s blockade of Paris had set him, as the defender of absolute royal authority —and thereby Mazarin’s ministry— directly against his own relatives and much of the great nobility. Hitherto idolized as the young military hero, he was now execrated by all those who had regarded the uprisings since August 1648 as a justified attempt to overthrow ministerial tyranny. Setting aside his personal ambitions, it was essential to his reputation that he should demonstrate as publicly and as vigorously as possible that he was no lackey of the first minister, and that his actions had been on behalf of the crown, not Mazarin.

Who then was Louis II de Bourbon-Condé, who was to become Mazarin’s nemesis for a decade from 1649? The duc d’Enghien, as he was titled until his father’s death in 1646, was no stranger to the realities of ministerial power. His father, Henri II, had rebuilt the material and political fortunes of the cadet branch of the Bourbon family on the basis of a close alliance with cardinal Richelieu after 1626. Henri de Condé provided Richelieu and his regime with the legitimizing support of a prince of the blood, and Condé in return benefited from a spectacular flow of political and territorial rewards. The benefits of the alliance were so great that he was ultimately cajoled into marrying his son, Louis II, to Richelieu’s niece, Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé. The marriage, celebrated at the Palais Cardinal on 9 February 1641, was a spectacular mésalliance for the duc d’Enghien, wished upon him by his father’s ambitions. Enghien, who until 1638 had stood only three lives from the throne, shared with his father an authoritarian ideology of an absolute monarchy mediated only by the king’s ‘natural advisors’, the princes of the blood. But the association with Richelieu and his family brought him into a close, stakeholder’s connection with the ministerial regime. Through this channel would flow the financial opportunities, patronage, and influence that had been enjoyed by his father over and above what would have been his as a prince of the royal blood.

Enghien would have been an important figure in the politics of the 1640s, just as his father had been in the previous decade. But the decision in 1643 to grant him the overall command of the army operating on the north-eastern frontier was not just a reflection of his status and political connections, but a remarkable act of confidence in a young man of twenty-three with no previous experience of overall military command. Enghien was surrounded by experienced lieutenants —most notably Jean, comte de Gassion— yet much would still depend on his untested ability to demonstrate qualities of leadership and decision-making. The French army faced a Spanish invasion, poised to take the town of Rocroi, and previous encounters in the field with the veterans of the Spanish army of Flanders had not ended well for the French. Enghien and his lieutenants took the decision to engage the Spanish army in an all-or-nothing bid to try to save Rocroi. Around 7.30 am on 19 May 1643 Enghien led a cavalry charge from the right flank of the French army which shattered the Spanish horse opposing him and left the infantry centre of the Spanish army exposed to his well-executed flanking attack. The magnitude of the victory over the best troops in the Spanish monarchy was unprecedented. The young duc d’Enghien became a legend overnight, a status that he never lost in the eyes of contemporaries.

Enghien’s successive military achievements through the 1640s in different campaign theatres were not just about heroic, charismatic leadership and calculated risk-taking. There was real tactical skill, partly learnt and partly intuitive, in his military deployments, his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his own and enemy positions, and, above all, his ability to exploit surprise, shock, and speed to devastating advantage. Like his great contemporary, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, he recognized the fundamental importance of keeping his troops fed and equipped, and was free with his own resources to maintain supplies. Unlike Turenne, who had the well-regarded reputation of being thrifty with the lives of his own troops, Condé was unconcerned by heavy casualties in pursuit of his strategic objectives. Yet soldiers serving under his command recognized his remarkable talent for victory. On the eve of the battle of Bléneau in April 1652, one of Condé’s lieutenants wrote of the effect of the prince’s arrival, pulling the army together through the belief, above all among the common soldiers, that he was invincible.

The charisma of a young, brilliant general extended beyond the armies: in the 1640s contemporaries noted that he was regarded with both awe and considerable fear. Madame de Motteville wrote that, even after Mazarin had arrested him, ‘the reputation of M. le Prince imposed itself on everyone, and generated a curious veneration for his person, such that sightseers would go to visit the chamber where he had been imprisoned at Vincennes’. Numerous accounts confirmed that even powerful and well-established individuals found it difficult to stand up to Condé in any face-to-face confrontation, and his anger had an unpredictable character that few wished to test. The legend gained further weight from the fictional, centre-stage representation of Condé in Madeleine de Scudéry’s best-selling novel Le Grand Cyrus, published between 1649 and 1653.

The very particular danger Condé posed to Mazarin, or to any government which sought to control him, was the intractable nature of his own ambitions. His father had been manageable because he was rebuilding the Condé inheritance after its devastation in the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion, and was rehabilitating his own political reputation after rebellion and imprisonment. By the 1640s the Condé had become the wealthiest aristocratic family in France, and more territorial grants, positions, and financial rewards, though demanded, were no guarantee of further tractability. Moreover, a family strategy that aimed to consolidate the pre-eminence of the Condé-Bourbon over any other aristocratic family in France would lead Condé to target further desirable assets, especially lands and governorships, whose possession would challenge the hegemony of the crown in areas of the kingdom.

Yet at base the prince was more interested in power and influence at the centre of the state than in local power and quasi-monarchical status built up across the provinces. This desire for influence did not mean that he wished to take over government, to oust Mazarin or supplant the role of ministers in general. Indeed, the detailed, procedural business of government, the workings of the executive, would have been considered by Condé to be beneath his status, and appropriate to (interchangeable or dispensable) professionals of modest birth like Mazarin. What Condé wanted for himself was a decisive influence in the formulation of royal policy, the ability to oversee and, where necessary, shape decision-making without negotiation or compromise with other parties. During the regency he considered that this was his right by virtue of his blood, and by his acquired status as the military paladin of the young monarch. He would expect to maintain this privileged role of high-status advisor and intimate councillor after the king came of age, with the assumption that his voice would naturally outweigh others in royal decision-making. Despite the charges variously made against him by Mazarin and the court, all on the basis of notably scant evidence, Condé was far too deeply committed to the principle of divinely ordained absolute monarchy to wish to replace the king. Such an act of usurpation would radically challenge his own ideology, which linked his own status to a God-given hierarchy headed by the sovereign. Indeed, his hostility to both the Parisian frondeurs and to Mazarin was precisely because they sought to trespass upon what were the fundamental prerogatives of the monarchy.

In seeking to unravel Condé’s personality and his motivation, it is no less necessary to retrieve him from the condescension of posterity. Equipped with hindsight which sees the defeat of the Fronde as a triumph for ministerial government and its modernizing, state-building initiatives, Condé’s fate becomes a facile metaphor for the fate of the traditional ‘sword nobility’ as a whole. His reckless and inappropriate ambitions for political autonomy, personal glory, and immoderate reward were vanquished by the agent of state power, cardinal Mazarin. Defeated, forced into exile and into the service of Spain at the end of 1652, Condé was required to make a humiliating submission to Louis XIV in 1659 as the price of his ‘pardon’. After this he was reduced to an obedient vassal of the monarch. This supposedly parallels the traditional nobility as a whole, whose last irresponsible and doomed act of self-assertion was the Fronde. After this final defeat they were reduced to well-ordered servitude in the court and army of the Sun King, whose powerful, centralized state represented the triumph of bourgeois administrators, the heirs of Mazarin’s victory over the frondeurs. On this interpretation, Condé’s chief crime, if he is relieved of the charge of attempted usurpation, is setting up an ideal of autonomous political action and individual liberty in defiance of the ‘modern’ requirement for disciplined, collective obedience to the crown imposed by its faithful ministers. Indeed, even by the standards of the collective ideal of aristocratic liberty, it is suggested that Condé went too far in pursuit of uncompromising self-assertion, and helped to undermine the very values that he sought to uphold.

The real problem posed by Condé for Mazarin and his regime was not Condé’s uncontrolled individualism, his ‘folle liberté’, but the perception of contemporaries that he held more legitimate right to participate in the decision-making of a regency by virtue of his blood than did a ministerial appointee of the queen mother. Indeed, it is a remarkable triumph of a well-entrenched historiography that Condé’s actions are perceived as illegitimate attempts to challenge what is treated as the legitimate royal government personified in its first minister. By conflating Mazarin with the authority of the crown, the crucial dynamic of the conflict building up from 1643 and climaxing in the Fronde is misunderstood. Mazarin’s attempts to resist Condé’s claims to involvement in the political decisions of the regency did not deny the essential legitimacy of those claims. His approach most frequently relied on alarming both the queen mother and the king’s uncle, Gaston d’Orléans, that Condé would squeeze them out of the decision-making which was no less their right by family. Mazarin hardly needed to be reminded, and the mazarinades would have done the job for him, that his own position enjoyed no such legitimacy.

David Parrott- 1652- The Cardinal, the Prince, and the Crisis of the Fronde.

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Madeleine de Scudéry

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On ne prend pas des cœurs en songeant, quoi qu’on en prenne quelquefois sans y songer. »

Clélie, histoire romaine Madeleine de Scudéry

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« Il est certain que quelque riche, et quelque belle que soit la langue de votre patrie, je la trouve pauvre, et stérile toutes les fois que je veux vous dire, ‘Je vous aime’. »

« Que je vous aime, que je t'aime ! »    | Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie, histoire romaine

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Gucci SS16 • Carte de Tendre from Madeleine de Scudéry’s Clélie, 1654