THE AUTHORSHIP OH; THE V6NDICIAE

CONTRA TYRANNOS

BY ERNEST BARKER
H E authorship of the Vindicine has been a vexed question for 350 years, and perhaps it is not likely to be solved. The book belongs, in the main, to a body of Huguenot literature which appeared after 1572 and was concerned with the dangerous question of the right of resistance. A good deal of this literature was sedulously and obstinately anonymous. There was a reason. If a writer advocated resistance, and, still more, if he advocated or even condoned " tyrannicide," he would be committing himself to something as abhorrent to the general opinion of his age as "Bolshevism" is to the general opinion of ours. If in addition he backed his opinions by his name, and his name were that of a known adherent of the Calvinist cause, he would be committing that cause to certain obloquy and possible danger. He would be trespassing beyond the bounds of cautious and guarded discretion which Calvin had imposed upon himself in this matter : he would be giving to the enemies of Calvinism the very handle which they desired. In these conditions anonymity flourished: pseudonyms were rife; and calculated puzzles were set to baffle future ages. Not only are we confronted by problems of authorship : we have also to face other and lesser problems. Sometimes, for example, the place and the date of publication are falsified. There was indeed a particular reason for such falsification. Printers as well as authors-perhaps even more than authors-had to be wary; and a genuine place and date of publication afforded too easy a clue. On the title-page of the first edition of the Vindicine the date of publication is stated as 1579, and the place as Edinburgh. The date may be accepted as genuine, in spite of some testimony of the seventeenth century which, as we shall see, would suggest a date after 1581. It may be accepted for a conclusive reason. The Vindicine is quoted, again and again, in the annotations to a volume recording the "Acts of the Congress of Cologne," of the year 1579, which appeared at Leyden in 1580. I t must therefore have already been published when the compiler of these Acts, a certain Aggaeus Albada, an envoy from the Netherlands, was writing his annotations during the winter of 1579-80. The place of

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publication, however, was certainly not Edinburgh. Edinburgh appears 011the title-page of at least two other Huguenot writings of this period ; on one of the two tve even find the name of the printer, " Jaques James," and the two jesting words, " avec permission"; but the use of the name of the Scottish city is only a blind. Fortunately we,have evidence which enables us to discover, almost to a certainty, the place of the publication of the Vindiciae. That evidence is the evidence of the initial letters at the head of each section; of the type used in the text; of the type used for the sidenotes; and of the type used for the Greek quotations. By the kindness of one of the sub-librarians in the Cambridge University Library I have been enabled to compare, in all these respects, the De Nuptiis Liber paradoxz~sof Etienne de Malescot, printed by Thomas Guerin at Basle in 1572, with my own copy of the original edition of the Vindiciae of 1579. I am bound on this evidence to accept the statement, made by a Genevese Professor named Tronchin in 1628, that Guerin of Basle was the printer of the original edition of the Vindiciae. It should be added, because the fact may prove to have some bearing on the subsequent argument, that Guerin was a Belgian Protestant from Tournai, Belga Tornaco patria ob pietatem profugus. We have now the date of the publication, 1579: we have the place, Basle: we have the printer, Guerin. What is the evidence in regard to the authorship? Who was the real person behind the pseudonym of Stephanus Junius Brutus Celta which appears on the title-page? I n the first place there is the evidence of tradition. This is conflicting; but there is a certain development of the tradition which is interesting, and perhaps suggestive. (I) T h e original tradition, which lasted till the end of the sixteenth century, seems to have ascribed the authorship to Hotoman. Hotoman, Professor of Law in the University of Geneva, and one of the many French Protestants who had found refuge in Switzerland, was the author of the famous Franco-Gallia (1573), in which he sought to vindicate the constitutional liberty of France by a study of French constitutional history. He was also a pamphleteer in the Huguenot cause, and he may have had some part in the Riveille Matin of 1574. The Vindiciae was a sort of complement to the Fmnco-Gallia (it is curious, by the way, to notice that they both served, in English translations, to buttress the cause of the Whigs between 1688 and 1714): it added a lore of comparative politics and general European constitutional history to Hotoman's ~ u r e l yFrench learning: it showed legal knowledge and a power of close reasoning worthy of Hotoman; why should it not actually be his work? But there is no evidence that it was; and there are ttvo pieces of evidence to the contrary. I n 1580

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a certain Professor Stupanus had published at Basle a work containing both the Prince of Machiavelli (in a Latin translation) and the Vindiciae contra Tymnnos, ut ingeniosus lector, utriusque partis arguments ponderans, . . .sententiam suam interponere posset ; and in Protestant eyes he had crowned his guilt in publishing the Prince (it hardly mattered that there was a counterblast) by dedicating the whole work to a Roman Catholic bishop. Hotoman, who was then living at Basle, exerted himself to procure the suspension of Stupanus from his chair. H e would hardly have done that if he had been the author of part of the compilation of Stupanus-unless, indeed, he disliked the company which his part was compelled to keep. More conclusive is the testimony of Barclay, a Scotsman and a Professor of Law at Angers, who wrote a counterblast to the Vindiciae and similar writings in 1600. (It is called De Regno et Regali Potestate, and it was afterwards quoted by Locke at the end of his second Treatise.) Barclay, who respected Hotoman, if he disagreed with his views, remarked that he could not have been the author of the Vindiciae: it was too full of misstatements which were contradicted by the Franco-Gallia, and it contained misconceptions of Roman Law of which he could never have been guilty. (2) Early in the seventeenth century the idea arose that Beza was the author. Beza, like Hotoman, was a Frenchman who had settled in Geneva, and he was Calvin's successor as the head of the clergy of the city. H e too was a pamphleteer, and it now seems to be certain1 that he was the author of an anonymous pamphlet De jure magistratuum which appeared in French in 1574 and in Latin in 1576. T h e argument of this pamphlet is very like that of the Vindiciae: the latter, in fact, may almost be called an expansion of the former; and Stupanus printed the two, side by side, as a double counterblast to the Prince. Though the authorship of the pamphlet was unknown in the sixteenth century-and indeed until recently-there may have been some suspicion which connected Beza with it; and if he was supposed to be connected with it, it was an easy leap to connect him also with the Vindiciae. At any rate it had become a subject of hot debate, as early as 1614, whether Beza was, or was not, the author of the Vindiciae. The Roman Catholics, and particularly the Jesuits, were anxious to prove that one of the leaders of Calvinism had been guilty of a dangerous radicalism: the Protestants retorted by alleging that the author must have been a Romanist. James I of England, who ought to have known better if ever he had read the Vindiciae, described the author as "perhaps an emissary of the Roman church, used by it for the purl

See Elkan, D e Publizistik der Bnrtholonzausnncht, pp. 46, 5 3 . i

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pose of bringing the reformed religion into discredit with princes2." As late as 1649 there was a debate in London, between a Catholic priest and some Presbyterian ministers, in the course of which the priest reproached the ministers with professing radical principles drawn from the Vindiciae of Beza, and the ministers countered with the reply that the author of the Vindiciae was Parsons the Jesuit. Later still, in 1660, an edition of the Vindiciae was actually printed at Amsterdam with the inscription, Stephano Junio Bruto, sive ut putatur Theodoro Bexa, auctore. After that date the legend of Beza's authorship disappears. (3) Almost at the same time that the Vindiciae began to be attributed to Beza, in the early years of the seventeenth century, another allocation began to appear-or, to speak more exactly, a competition began between two rival attributions, and that competition may still be said to exist to-day. Some attributed the book to one Hubert Languet: others ascribed it to Philippe de Mornay, the Sieur du Plessis. T h e matter became a celebrated literary question. Bayle, in 1692, seemed to have solved the question in favour of Languet, after a careful examination of the available evidence, in one of the articles of his Critical Dictionary; and indeed for almost two centuries, until 1887, his solution, in spite of one or two isolated questionings, was generally accepted. I n 1887, however, Max Lossen, in a paper read before the Royal Bavarian Academy, re-examined the evidence afresh and pronounced in favour of Mornay. For the last fifty years scholars have generally followed his lead; and there the matter stands to-day3. Who was Languet; who was Mornay; and what is the evidence on either side? Languet was a Frenchman from Burgundy, born in 1518 (and therefore 61 years of age at the time of the publication of the Vindiciae), who had lived a great part of his life in Germany, had served as an envoy and agent for one of the German princes, had travelled a good deal, and at the end of his life-he died in 1581-had joined the cause of William of Orange in the Netherlands. He was a man of grave and sober judgement, as one gathers from his correspondence with his great friend, Sir Philip Sidney; and he left, as his epitaph and the literary testimonies written after his death both go to show, a deep impression upon his contemporaries. Mornay was a Frenchman from the Vexin, born in 1549 (and therefore 30 years of age in 1579), who fled to England after the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day in 1572, was
I t is only fair to James I to add that it was a favourite device of controversy in those days for a Romanist to pretend to be a Protestant and vice versa, and under that guise to write something which would damage the cause the writer pretended to espouse. M r J. W. Allen, however, in his recent work on Political Thozight in the Sixteenth Century (p. 319,note z ) pronounces against Mornay and has doubts about Languet.

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fighting in France about 1574, joined the cause of Henry of Navarre about 1576, and acted on Henry's behalf first in England, during I 577 and 1578, and after that in the Netherlands, from 1578 to 1582. He lived till 1623 : the rest of his life was spent partly in politics, and partly in writings; but his writings-unless we ascribe the Vindiciae to his pen-were all theological. We may add that Languet and Mornay had been friends since 1569, and that from 1578 to I 581 they were living in close association in the circle of William of Orange. We may now examine the external evidence on either side. I t is as follows : (a) The first piece of evidence is a passage in the Memoirs of her husband written by Madame Mornay. I t must have been written before 1606, when the 1Memoirs come to an end; but the Memoirs themselves were not published until 1824. I n speaking of her husband's activities in 1574 Madame Mornay says, "he made a book entitled 'Of the Legitimate Power of a Prince over his People, etc.,' which has since been printed and published, without, however, many people having known the author." This book of 1574 has been identified with the Vindiciae, because the sub-title of the Vindiciae runs " De principis in populum populique in principem legitima potestate." But there are some difficulties in the identification. (i) Among the many Huguenot pamphlets of this period there are several with similar titles or sub-titles. The full title of the De jure magistratuum is De jzwe magistratuum in subditos et oficio subditorum erga Magistros. The sub-title of the Dialogue &Archon et de Politie of I 576 is "concerning the authority of princes and the liberty of peoples." The title assigned by Madame Mornay to her husband's book is nearest to the sub-title of the Vindiciae; but that is all we can say. (ii) Madame Mornay states in a later passage, when she is mentioning her husband's beginning in I 578 a treatise "of the Church " (probably the De la vhite' de la religion chrestienne, a long work which appeared at Antwerp in 1582), that he had lost his other manuscripts, including a history of the troubles in France. If that were the case, how did it happen that the manuscript of the work of I 574 was preserved for subsequent publication? (iii) Why was the publication of a work composed in 1574 SO long delayed? (b) T h e second piece of evidence comes from D'AubignA's Histoire Universelle. This is curious. I n the first edition of the first volume, published in 1616, he says in one passage that "Hotoman was long, but wrongly, suspected of (writing) this work, but since then a French gentleman, living as I write, has avowed to me that he was the author." In the second edition, published in 1626, he leaves the words standing,

AUTHORSHIP OF VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANNOS 169 but adds the correction, "But it has been found at last that he had published it, having had it in keeping from Hubert Languet." Again in the first edition of the second volume, published in 1618, he says in another passage, "There appeared another book called Junius Brutus or a defence against tyrants, written (fait) by one of the learned gentlemen of the kingdom, renowned for several excellent books, and still living to-day with authority." I n the second edition of 1626 he again leaves the words standing, with the alteration of "written" (fait) into " avowed9' (advoue'), but adds the correction, " Since then it has become known who was its real author, that is to say Hubert Languet." T h e plain inferences from these facts are: (i) that Mornay, who is not mentioned, but is obviously meant, had told D'AubignC that he was the author of the Vindiciae, and D'AubignC had accepted the statement in the first edition, and (ii) that after Mornay's death in 1623, D'AubignC had found out or got to know (he uses the impersonal words il s'est trouve' and on a sgeu) that Mornay was not the author, and that Languet was. I t looks as if we must hold Mornay guilty of some deception. D'AubignC, however, attempts a sort of reconciliation by stating that Mornay had actually published the book (lui avoit donne' le jour), if he was not its author. (c) A third piece of evidence is a statement made by a scholar of the seventeenth century named Conrart, in his Memoirs (he was the first secretary of the French Academy, 1634-75), that he had heard from one DaillC, who lived with Mornay for seven years, that he was regularly sent by him, when scholars came to inspect his library, to remove a copy of the Vindiciae from a cupboard in which he kept together copies of his own writings. Here again we have a suggestion of mystery: here again we find Mornay as something of a mystery-maker. I n any case the story does not prove that Mornay wrote the Vindiciae. At the most, it may constitute something of a presumption in favour of his authorship. But it may equally be interpreted in a much less positive sense. Does the story, after all, prove more than that Mornay was-or, more exactly, wanted his circle to think that he was-in some way connected with the Vindiciae? Now he may well have had some connexion, and that in more than one way. In the first place, he may have written some of the prefatory or " postscriptory " matter which accompanies the text of the Vindiciae; and he may have put the book with his own writings because it contained something of his own writing. I n the second place, he may have seen the book through the press for some friend who was unable to see to its publication himself; and this may have given him a proprietary interest. Finally, remembering that there was a French

170 ERNEST BARKER translation of the Vindiciae, which appeared at Geneva in 1581 (two years after the publication of the original Latin at Basle), and noting that the story leaves unspecified the exact nature of the copy treasured by Mornay, we may suggest, as Blackburne suggested long ago in dealing with the question in his Memoirs o Thomas Hollis, that f Mornay may have been the author of this translation. I n any of these ways we can explain a connexion of Mornay with the Vindiciae; and all these ways fall short of authorship. (d) A fourth piece of evidence is to be found in a funeral speech, delivered by a Genevese Professor of Theology named Tronchin, in 1628, in honour of a distinguished French scholar and preacher, Simon Goulart, who had lived at Geneva since 1571, and had died there at the great age of eighty-seven. Celebrating the scholarship and the general knowledge of Goulart, Tronchin cites as an example his acquaintance with the history of the Vindiciae. " H e had seen the autograph of the author, and knew that it was the work of Hubert Languet.. .which Philippe Mornay.. .had given to the printer Thomas Guerin to be printed, and which he had published on its having come into his hands after the author's death. But he (Goulart) refrained from telling the facts, in order that the ghost of so devout a man (Mornay) should not be vexed undeservedly." This again is somewhat mysterious; but just for that very reason it fits into the general scheme, and must not lightly be dismissed. The passage contains one plain misstatement. The M S of the Vindiciae cannot have come into Mornay's hands and have been published by him after Languet's death, because Languet died in 1581 and the Vindiciae was certainly published not later than 1579. But even this misstatement, which causes Lossen to reject Tronchin's story, can be used constructively in aid of a general explanation of the mystery. Let us suppose that it was known in Calvinistic circles that Mornay somehow "avowed " some sort of responsibility for the Vindiciae, but that it was also known, in the same circles, towards 1626 (the date of the second edition of D'AubignC's work), that Languet was really the author of the Vindiciae. T o reconcile the contradiction, an idea is developed that Mornay had at any rate published the work, even if he had not written it ;and Tronchin, falling into a natural error, grafts upon that idea, in quoting Goulart's testimony, the further idea that the publication was posthumous. We can also explain the cryptic reference to "the ghost of so devout a man being vexed.'' After the death of Mornay in 1623 D'AubignC, as we have seen, did not hesitate to print the statement that he had not written, but had only published, the Vindiciae. Simon Goulart, we gather from Tronchin, was more cautious, or more

AUTHORSHIP OF VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANnrOS 171 concerned for Mornay's reputation: even after 1623 he did not want Mornay's "ghost to be vexed undeservedly " by an accusation of authorship under false pretences, and he made no public statement at all, as long as he lived, either about authorship or about publication. (e) The next testimony is that of the great Grotius. Before we mention its nature, we may pause to say that whether Languet or Mornay wrote the Vindiciae, in either case the author was living, at the time of its publication, in the circle of William the Silent; for Languet and Mornay were then in the Netherlands, in close contact with one another, and also in close contact with the Prince of Orange and his chaplain Loyseleur. The testimony of Grotius, who like both was a Calvinist, and like both (but far more intimately) was connected with the Netherlands, may thus rest on a good local tradition; and it must be treated with respect. Now that testimony, as we find it given in a letter which he wrote in 1642, is to the effect that "Mornay was the author of the Vindiciae, and Loyseleur was the publisher (editor)." Grotius adds as the grounds of his belief: (i) the evidence of those who had lived with Mornay, and (ii) the congruity of the views of the Vindiciae with the expressions used by Mornay in his will. The grounds which Grotius gives weaken seriously the value of his testimony. T h e will of Mornay contains guarded commonplaces which have little affinity with the views of the Vindiciae. T h e "evidence of those who had lived with Mornay," in the light of what has already been said, must be taken critically before it can be accepted. T h e testimony of Grotius, after all, seems to rest on no good local tradition, but merely on hearsay derived from Mornay's circle and an unconvincing analogical argument drawn from Mornay's will. ( f ) A further piece of evidence comes from a scholar called Boecler, who published at Strassburg in 1664 a commentary on Grotius' De Jure Belli et Pacis. I n opposition to Grotius he states that it seems to him that Languet was the author of the Vindiciae. "There was a scholar at Lausanne, who possessed the MS written in Languet's hand, and written in the way an author himself would write (ita scriptas quasi composuerit) "-that is to say, if one may hazard a guess, written with the erasures and corrections which betray the original author. This statement about an original autograph agrees, we may notice, with Tronchin's statement that Simon Goulart had seen Languet's autograph. As, however, the autograph is lost, we have no way of checking the statement, or of discovering whether the autograph was really written in Languet's hand. (g) The last piece of evidence from the seventeenth century which deserves to be cited comes from Philibert de la Marre's Vita Huberti

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Langueti, written in 1660, but not published till 1700. H e claims the Vindiciae for Languet, but he adduces no direct evidence which is of any particular value. On the other hand, he makes one statement which deserves to be noticed. I t is that Languet wrote the famous Apology published by William of Orange in 1580, and that he sent copies of the Apology quasi a se exaratas to his heirs, a little before his death4. Now the analogy between the Apology and the Vindiciae has often been remarked; if we accept Languet as the writer of the Apology, we may also accept him as the author of the Vindiciae. On the other hand it is only fair to add that Grotius assigned the Apology to the same koyseleur whom he also regarded as the editor of the Vindiciae. All we can say, therefore, is that there is an analogy between the Apology and the Vindiciae, and that those who believed Languet to have written the Apology ascribed to him also the Vindiciae, while those who believed Loyseleur to have written the Apology ascribed to him also a share in the Vindiciae. This is the external evidence with regard to the authorship of the Vindiciae. Before we turn to the internal evidence, we may try to summarise the results of the external evidence. (a) I t seems to be clear that Mornay, in the last twenty years of his life (1603-23), had given out, or in some way avowed, the fact of his being connected with the Vindiciae, and further that he had led the world to think that he was actually its author. T h e testimonies of his wife, of D'AubignC, of Conrart, of Simon Goulart, and of Grotius, all suggest this conclusion. Down to Mornay's death his avowal, or claim, was generally accepted. (6) After his death in 1623, there is a change. Whether the change was due to Simon Goulart, and D'AubignC drew from Goulart the information that led him to make corrections in his second edition, or whether Goulart and D'AubignC are independent witnesses, we do not know; but the fact remains that Mornay was now, as gently as possible, dismissed from the position of author of the Vindiciae, though he was left with some sort of complimentary connexion with it, and Languet took his place. (c) Grotius still believed in Mornay's authorship in 1642, and continued to do so aftemards; and the prestige of Grotius lent weight to his view among his contemporaries. On the other hand Grotius' belief rests on no cogent grounds : it was definitely rejected by Boecler ; and it is an exception to the general current of opinion after 1623. (d) The
I would add, in corroboration, that I have noticed that Languet sent to George Buchanan a copy of the Apology, with a letter, reminding him that they had once met some twenty years ago, in the course of 1581. One naturally thinks of an author's way of sending out copies of an off-print or pamphlet of his own-particularly when one reflects that Languet had not had any contact with Buchanan for twenty years.

AUTHORSHIP O F VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANNOS 173 weight of evidence tells heavily, on the whole, against Mornay's authorship. D'AubignC, who knew Mornay, and had at first accepted his statement, altered his view. This seems to me a highly significant fact. Goulart, who had been living at Geneva from 1571 (nine years before the publication of the Vindiciae), and whose evidence is thus that of a contemporary, had apparently always believed in Languet's authorship. Briefly we may say that the testimony in favour of Languet does not come from himself, but from reputable scholars; while that in favour of Mornay comes, with the one exception of Grotius, from Mornay himself, and even Grotius says that he derived his information from Mornay's circle. (e) We are thus driven to the conclusion that Mornay exaggerated any share he may have had in the publication of the Vindiciae. He did not indeed make any explicit claim to its authorship (the Vindiciae was not a book to be avowed openly), but he let it be understood-mysteriously and yet suggestively-that he knew, that he was concerned, that he had published, in a word, that it was his. This involves, of course, a serious charge of wholesale plagiarism-the plagiarism, in fact, of a whole book. I t is a charge that can only be made with reluctance; but if we come to the conclusion that the balance of external evidence is in favour of Languet, it is a charge which cannot be avoided. I t can only be said that Mornay was not the most accurate of scholars, and that he was prone to believe what he wanted to believe. We may remember, for example, that when, on May 4, 1600, he held a public disputation with the Bishop of Evreux on theological matters, a great trouble arose about the authenticity and accuracy of some of the quotations he had used: that he not only suffered a rebuff in the course of the disputation, but a voluminous pamphlet literature ensued, in which Protestant apologists attempted " a. . .refutation of a certain calumnious relation of the conference"; and that his wife, in one of the passages of her Memoirs, found some difficulty in defending her husband's handling of his cause. There is one hypothesis, already mentioned above in connexion with Conrart's testimony, which seems to do most justice to Mornay's claims and to be most probable in itself. I t is the hypothesis that he may have been the author of the French translation of the Vindiciae which appeared at Geneva in 1581. All Languet's known writings (which consist of Letters to Sir Philip Sidney, Secret Letters to the Elector of Saxony for whom he acted as agent, and Letters to the Camerarii, father and son) are in Latin. Mornay published his own theological writings both in French and in Latin: his treatise De la ve'ritk de la religion chlrestienne, for example, which had been his main preoccupation from I 578 onC H J I11

I2

ERNEST BARKER wards5, appeared first in French in 1582, and then in Latin in 1583. I t is a simple conjecture that he may have suggested, and have executed, a French translation of the Latin text of the Vindiciae. I t was a work worthy of a wider public than the scholars' circle of readers of Latin; why should it not be presented to that public? There is one curious argument in favour of this conjecture. We have seen that Madame Mornay ascribes to her husband a treatise De la Puissance ldgitime d'ung Prince sur son peuple, etc. Now the French translation of the Vindiciae of 1581 has almost exactly the same title. T h e main Latin title is not translated, perhaps because it was difficult to turn into simple French; and the title given is a translation of the Latin sub-title in the following terms De la Puissance ldgitime du Prince sur le Pez~ple,et du Peuple sur le Prince. T h e similarity is striking. Madame Mornay puts d'ung for du, son for le, and abbreviates the latter half of the title into etc. That is all. May we not then conjecture that Madame Mornay's story relates to a translation, which she somehow made into an original and ascribed to a wrong period of her husband's life, and again that the mysterious copy of the Vindiciae kept among Mornay's writings was simply this translation ? I t is, as we have noticed, an old conjecture. But it seems to deserve consideration.

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3Y:

If the external evidence leaves a strong presumption against Mornay, and a strong presumption in favour of Languet, the internal evidence of the text of the Vindiciae may be said to be absolutely conclusive against Mornay's authorship, and (at the least) very strongly suggestive of Languet's. T h e Vindiciae, in its original Latin text, with its thick garniture of abundant references in the sidenotes, is a work of mature, if not perhaps always exact scholarship. In the first place, the author has a knowledge of comparative institutions and of general constitutionel history, in Poland and the Empire, in France and the Yetherlands, in England and Scotland, in Spain and Scandinavia. I n the second place, he has a knowledge of Roman Law and in particular of the writings of Bartolus of Sassoferrato, of canon law, of the Sachsenspiegel, and of other texts. In the third place, he has a considerable classical scholarship: he quotes rare Greek (for instance, a passage from Philonides, which must be taken from Stobaeus, as well as another from the socalled Pythagoras): he knows Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics,
This of itself seems to exclude his having written the 240 pages of the solid Latin argument of the Vindiciae contra Tyvannos, or even his re-writing of some old draft of the argument, during this period.

AUTHORSHIP O F VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANNOS 175 Xenophon's Cyropaedia, and indeed the general literature both of the Greek and the Latin classics. Now it is a simple matter, when you have studied the text of the Vindiciae and its characteristics, to inquire, " Do these things square with the life, the character, and the other writings of Languet, or do they square with the life, the character, and the other writings of Mornay?" The curious thing is that the inquiry has not been made by Lossen or any of his successors who have written on the problem of the authorship of the Vindiciae. Once it is made, the answer seems to be beyond a shadow of doubt. Languet may well have written the Vindiciae, in his ripe old age. The young Mornay could not possibly have done so. Consider their careers. Languet, a humanist and the friend of humanists, had lived in Germany from about 1540 to the end of 1578, a member of the Reformed Church, a friend of scholars, a student of law, an agent of princes. T h e fire of religious conviction which burns in the Vindiciae burned also in his life. For some ten years (c. 1550-60) he lived in close association with the great Philip Melanchthon; and when the " Philippists," continuing and extending their master's policy of co-operation with the Calvinists, fell into disfavour at the electoral court of Saxony after 1574, we find Languet, who sympathised with their endeavours, resigning the office he held as the elector's agent, and turning to the service of the Calvinistic cause (1576). But religion was mixed in Languet with law, with travel and observation, and with diplomatic service. He had studied law in Padua and Bologna; he was enough of a lawyer to be offered, though he refused to accept, a chair of law in Heidelberg and another at Wittenberg. This will serve to explain the legal knowledge of the author of the Vindiciae. Again, while he was living with Melanchthon, Languet had regularly travelled in the summer to foreign countries for study and observation: in 1551 he was in Pomerania and Sweden, in 1555 he went to France and Italy to study history in libraries6, in 1557 he travelled through Stockholm to Livonia and Lapland, and in 1559 he accompanied the brother of William of Orange on a tour to Italy, Belgium and Paris. This will serve to explain the knowledge of comparative institutions in the Vindiciae-just as, it should be observed, Languet's long experience of Germany will explain
It may be noticed in this connexion that the author of the Vinrliciae, p. 164, refers to the form of the coronation oath in the chapter library at Beauvais. When, again, the author of the Vindiciae, p. I jo, refers to a form used in the accounts of the French Chamber of Accounts ( T r o p donne', soit rdpdti), and when he refers, p. 62, to documents in the Archiva Camerae Ratiociniorum, we cannot but think of the travelled and inquiring Languet, who lived for some time in Paris as diplomatic agent, and may well have studied archives and forms of account.
12-2

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the numerous references in the Vindiciae to German institutions, German law and German history. Finally, he added to his experience by serving for some fifteen years (c. 1561-76) as the diplomatic agent of Augustus the Elector of Saxony, and by going on missions for his employer to various parts of Germany, to France, to the Netherlands and the European courts in general. During his missions to France he was able to study French affairs and to realise the feelings and ideas of the Huguenots. About I570 he came to Paris, in the name of all the Protestant princes of Germany, to congratulate Charles I X on his marriage. In the "harangue" which he then delivered we can almost hear the author of the Vindiciae speaking. "Consider, sire," he says, "that the multitude of the people, as the sage [Aristotle] says, is the crown of the King, and the principal commandment and the principal law which God and Nature have given to kings and princes is the conservation of their people.'' He was still in Paris at the time of the n4assacre of St Bartholomew's Day, 1572, when he helped to save the life of young Mornay (then twenty-three years of age); and the Massacre, which stimulated so much Huguenot writing, may well have been the original stimulus to the composition of the Vindiciae. Not only is the general life of Languet the natural background of the Vindiciae: the last phase of that life, 1577-81, in the middle of which falls the publication of the Vindiciae, also fits easily and naturally into the book and its history. In January 1577 he quitted the service of the Saxon Elector, and espoused the Calvinistic cause, which we can readily imagine as stirring his mind with the fresh ardour which is everywhere apparent in the Vindiciae. In his letter of resignation he told the Elector how much he loved France; how anxious he was to watch the movement of French affairs; how sure he was that in France and the Netherlands greater events were impending than anywhere else, which might bring gain or destruction to Christianity. In this frame of mind, and at this opportunity, the composition of the Vindiciae may have begun. New incentives to its composition, and new materials for its thought, were added when Languet, towards the end of 1578, threw in his lot with William of Orange in his struggle contra tyrannum, Philip the Second of Spain. T h e political and religious conditions of the Netherlands in 1579 (the time of the Union of Utrecht) speak in the pages of the Vindiciae-the provincial feeling, the municipal independence, the mixture of the cause of religious with that of constitutional liberty, the call for and the justification of the help of foreign princes. We begin to understand the printing of the Vindiciae by a refugee Belgian printer at Basle; and, by no very illegitimate flight of fancy, remarking a visit

AUTHORSHIP O F VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANNOS 177 paid by Languet to the baths at Baden, and a temporary suspension of his otherwise regular and indeed monthly correspondence with Sir Philip Sidney from the end of May to the end of September 1579, we can even guess that Languet was busily occupied, during this residence in close propinquity to Basle, in seeing his book through the press. The accord between Languet's curriculum vitae and the spirit of the Vindiciae may still be traced after the book has been published. By the end of September 1579 Languet is attending a congress held at Cologne for the purpose of the pacification of the Netherlands. Here he would foregather with another envoy, Aggaeus Albada, the author of The Acts o the PaciJication o Cologne; and we begin to understand f f why Aggaeus, in his Annotationes, quotes the Vindiciae on pages 19, 20, 44, 49, 81, 82 and 105. Again in 1580 there appeared the famous Apology of William of Orange in answer to the ban pronounced upon him in that year. If we assign the composition of that Apology to Languet (and we have seen that there is some ground for doing so, even though the opinion of Grotius assigned the Apology to the pen of Loyseleur), we cannot but be impressed by the close similarity between it and the Vindiciae. A number of parallel passages might easily be cited; and indeed the agreement is two-fold-it is an agreement in an earnest eloquent passion of style, and an agreement in the point of view and way of thinking about the privileges of Estates, the duty of a nobility in organising resistance, and the general rights of a free people face to face with a tyrant. I t is time that we turned to Mornay, and inquired whether the Vindiciae squares with his life, his character, and his other writings. Born in 1549, and educated in Paris till the age of nineteen, he travelled in Italy and Germany between 1568 and 1571. In Germany he met Languet, in 1569; and in Germany we find him already, at the age of twenty-two, according to his wife's Memoirs, writing a Latin treatise on the visible church, sending epistles to the Prince of Orange, attending lectures on canon law, and writing a commentary on the Salian and Ripuarian Laws. All these early and precocious writings, attested by his wife, are lost; and we cannot judge their quality. In 1572 he was in the Netherlands ;and his wife ascribes to him, on his return to France, the authorship of a famous pamphlet, presented to Coligny in that summer, and recommending to him the policy of uniting all parties in France in a common warfare against Spain-a policy crushed and broken by the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day at the end of August. I t seems impossible to believe that a young man in his twenty-third year should have been in a moment the inspirer, or even the preacher, of

178 ERNEST BARKER a policy which Coligny had been following since 1570; and we cannot but suspect already, what we are led to suspect even more when we come to the Vindiciae, that Madame Mornay had too generous a belief in her husband's capacities and achievements. At the time of the Massacre Mornay was in Paris. He escaped to England, and remained there, using his pen in some fugitive writings, until the end of 1573. He then returned to France and joined the party of Alenqon; and it is to this juncture, during the months of 1574 prior to the death of Charles I X in May, that his wife ascribes his composition of a work on the lawful power of a prince over his people. He may have written some fugitive piece; but that he could have written anything of the nature of the Vindiciae, away from home (he was living at the time near Sedan) and away from his books, and that in the few months which immediately followed his return from England, is a thing impossible to believe7. Nor do we help ourselves much if we extend, by some license of conjecture, the time which his wife allows for the composition of his work. He was occupied from the middle of 1574 to the beginning of 1576, partly in fighting, partly in falling in love and getting married, and partly in writing, at his fiancde's request, "a discourse on life and death, together with a translation of some of Seneca's letters." It should be added that what his wife tells us of his views at this time contradicts the fundamental arguments of the Vindiciae. I n 1576, we learn, he was "exposing the worthlessness of all Estates, whether provincial or general "--the Estates having recently acted in a manner prejudicial to the Huguenot cause. If there is one thesis fundamental to the Vindiciae, it is that of the value and the rights of Estates. Our confusion grows still more confounded when we remember that from the beginning of 1574 to the end of 1576 (when Mornay crossed over to the side of Navarre) he was acting with the party of Alenqon, which was a party of politiques believing first and foremost in the unity of France-a belief which is entirely different from the loose federalism defended in the Vindiciae, and entirely at variance with the emphasis there laid on the priority of the cause of religion. I n fact a " Remonstrance ? Paix," printed in Mornay's iWhoires et Correspondance, and la i dated in 1576, may be described, in view of its insistence on political unity, as exactly at the opposite pole from the Vindiciae. Mornay's career from 1574 to the end of 1576 is not very clear or consistent. He was young: he was impulsive : he was unsure of himself: he had no settled policy or certain gospel. When he joined the cause of

' I would add that references in the Vindiciae to events which happened in 1574 show that it must have been written after that date.

AUTHORSHIP O F VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANNOS 179 Navarre, and went as his agent to England in April 1577, matters became somewhat simpler. He stayed in England until July 1578, and occupied his time largely in writing a treatise on the Church-the germ, as we have seen, of the De la vkite' de la religion chrestienne. His real interest, as the rest of his life and the list of his future publications show, was theological; and he was now discovering his real interest. After July 1578, and until 1582, he was engaged in Flanders as the agent of Navarre. He was in close association with Languet and Loyseleur ; but he was busy, so far as writing was concerned, with his theological treatise, and there is no framework in the course of his life, from 1577 to 1579, into which the Vindiciae fits. Neither in I 574, therefore, nor in the period round about 1579, can we find room in Mornay's life for the Vindiciae; nor can we find any congruity between it and his other recorded writings of this period8. Does it square with what we know of his character and ability? Emphatically, "no." He had not the necessary steadiness of judgement or of conviction: he had not the knowledge of comparative politics or of constitutional history: he had not the knowledge of law: he had not the depth of classical scholarship-though he was by no means devoid of such scholarship. Lossen himself, the very scholar who sought in 1887 to rehabilitate the idea of Mornay's authorship of the Vindiciae, makes a curious admission. Facing the difficulty, or the objection, that the substance and style of the Vindiciae "are both too good for Mornay's head and pen," he does not dismiss or deny it. On the contrary, he himself admits its truth; but accepting the story of Grotius that Loyseleur edited the Vindiciae, he suggests that that "excellent stylist" revised Mornay's draft and gave the Vindiciae "the pregnant brevity which marks its argument," and he even propounds the idea that Languet may easily have had a certain share in its redaction. T o begin by banishing Languet in favour of Mornay: to proceed by admitting that Mornay by himself is not adequate; and to end by re-introducing Languet for the purpose of making him adequate-this is surely a gyration of argument. One final word. Languet's career naturally culminated in a political work such as the Vindiciae; and the Vindiciae is worthy of his career. He was a grave, steady, reflective, world-experienced man, versed in state papers and political pronouncements, and yet of deep religious conviction and wide religious experience; and the Vindiciae, which is the
T h e theological bent of his pen is illustrated by a passage in his wife's Memoirs under the year 1579 about his book on the Christian religion. " H e had been turning i t over a long time, and all his early studies had only been a preparation for writing it."

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outpouring of a full mind, inspired by a passion both for religious and for civil liberty, at once reflects his character and completes his career. Mornay had an expansive, abounding temper, but an uncertain balance ; he loved to use his pen, but it ran too freely; and his me'tier in penmanship, after all, was theological disputation. We can safely say that Languet's career naturally culminated in a political work. But if Mornay's career began with a political work-a political work which attracted the attention of Europe and was six times printed in its original Latin by 1600, not to speak of translations-why did he never write anything similar, or even remotely comparable, in the forty-four years that elapsed between the publication of the Vindiciae in I 579 and his death in 1623 ?

I cannot feel that I have definitely proved any conclusion by sure apodeictic argument. But perhaps I have made a conclusion probable. I am reminded, as I end, of the Warden of an Oxford College to which I once belonged. I n his youth he sat for Responsions. As he came out of the examination room a fellow-examinee asked him, "Did you succeed in proving that proposition of Euclid? " " No," he replied, " I cannot say that I proved it. But," he added with a certain modest hope, " I think I can flatter myself that I made it extremely probable."
NOTE The writer would venture to refer his readers, for an account of the substance and history of the Vindiciae, to the third essay, entitled "A Huguenot Theory of Politics," in his Essays on Church, State and Study (1930). The authorship of the Vindiciae is discussed in the following works or articles : P. Bayle. Dictionnaire critique (article on Brutus). 1692.
L.-J. Le Clerc. Remarques critiques sur le Dictionnaire de Bayle. 1748-52.
F . Blackburne. Memoirs of Thomas Hollis. 1780. R. Treitschke. Hubert Languet's Vindiciae contra Tyrannos. 1846. M. Lossen. " uber die Vindiciae contra Tyrannos des angeblichen Stephanus Junius Brutus." Sitzungsberichte der phi1os.-philolog. und historischen Classe der k. B. Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich), 1887, I, 215-54. E. Armstrong. "The Political Theory of the Huguenots." Eng. Hist. Review, IV (1889). M. Waddington. " L'Auteur des Vindiciae contra Tyrannos." Rev. historique, LI (1893). A. Elkan. Die Publizistik der Bartholomausnacht und iWornays Vindiciae contra Tyrannos. I 905.

AUTHORSHIP OF VINDICIAE CONTRA TYRANNOS 181

Among recent writers on the history of political theory in the sixteenth century, G. Weill, Les Thkories sur le pouvoir royal en France pendant les guerres de religion, pp. 118 et sqq., remarks that the testimony of Madame Mornay makes her husband's authorship certain ;but G. de Lagarde, Recherches sur l'esprit politique de la Rqorme (1926), remarks more cautiously, p. 128: "L'auteur (Hubert Languet, disent les uns; Duplessis Mornay, disent les autres) mCrite d'&tremis au premier rang de ceux qu'on a appelCs les monarchomaaues.. . .Les Vindiciae Ctaient sans conteste l'ouvra~ele ~ l u ~ a r f a i taui s put &trepubliC dans ce sens, tant par la tenue du style que par la modCration et la logique des idCes." I have cited this tribute of a distinguished scholar, first, because the higher one rates the Vindiciae, the more one implicitly assigns it to Languet, and secondly, because it contradicts the critical and belittling tone (which I confess astonishes me) adopted by M r J. W. Allen towards the Vindiciae in his Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (pt III, ch. IV). "That pretentious book," "the pretentious character of the whole book," "pompously expandedn-these are phrases which seem to me inapplicable and, I would even add, unjust.
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