Everything about Guillaume Du Vair totally explained
Guillaume du Vair (
March 7,
1556 -
August 3,
1621) was a
French author and
lawyer.
He was born in
Paris. After taking holy orders, he exercised only legal functions for most of his career. However, from
1617 till his death he was
Bishop of Lisieux. His reputation is that of a lawyer, a
statesman and a man of letters. In 1584, he became counsellor of the
parlement of Paris, and as deputy for Paris to the Estates of the League he pronounced his most famous politico-legal discourse, an argument nominally for the
Salic law, but in reality directed against the alienation of the crown of France to the Spanish
infanta, which was advocated by the extreme Leaguers. King
Henry IV of France acknowledged his services by entrusting him with a special commission as magistrate at
Marseille, and made him master of requests.
In
1595, Vair published his treatise
De l'éloquence française et des raisons pour quoi elle est demeurée si basse, in which he criticizes the orators of his day, adding examples from the speeches of ancient orators, in translations which reproduce the spirit of the originals. He was sent to England in 1596 with the
marshal de Bouillon to negotiate a league against Spain; in 1599 he became first president of the
parlement of
Provence (
Aix-en-Provence); and in 1603 was appointed to the
see of Marseille, which he soon resigned in order to resume the presidency. In 1616 he received the highest promotion open to a French lawyer and became
keeper of the seals. He died at Tonneins (
Lot-et-Garonne).
Both as speaker and writer he was highly regarded. Like other political lawyers of the time, Du Vair studied
philosophy. The most famous of his treatises are
La Philosophie morale des Stoiques, translated into English (1664) by
Charles Cotton;
De la constance et consolation ès calamités publiques, which was composed during the
siege of Paris in 1589, and applied the
Stoic doctrine to present misfortunes; and
La Sainte Philosophie, in which religion and philosophy are intimately connected.
Pierre Charron drew freely on these and other works of Du Vair.
Ferdinand Brunetière points out the analogy of Du Vair's position with that afterwards developed by
Blaise Pascal, and sees in him the ancestor of
Jansenism. Du Vair had a great indirect influence on the development of style in French, for in the south of France he made the acquaintance of
François de Malherbe, who conceived a great admiration for Du Vair's writings. The reformer of French
poetry learned much from the treatise
De l'éloquence française, to which the counsels of his friend were no doubt added.
Du Vair's works were published in folio at Paris in 1641.
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