Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples

Few major figures of the Renaissance are as difficult to capture in the round as Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, b. c. 1455–d. 1536): he does not easily fit into the dichotomies historians have used to understand the period, of humanist or scholastic, medieval or Renaissance, philosopher or theologian, Catholic or Protestant. He began his career teaching at the University of Paris in the 1490s; he traveled to Italy at least three times, and in 1492 met the generation of Italian humanists including Marsilio Ficino, Ermolao Barbaro, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Back in Paris, he set about digesting the medieval philosophy curriculum in new handbooks and commentaries, including all of Aristotle alongside the main branches of mathematics—while also writing privately on natural magic, motivated by an attraction to the more Hermetic teachings of Ficino. From 1499, with a growing circle of students around him, Lefèvre turned his attention increasingly to Church Fathers and medieval mystics, searching out manuscripts by traveling to monasteries and drawing on his expanding network of former students and scholarly friends; this bore fruit in new editions of thinkers such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Richard of St Victor, Hildegard of Bingen, Jan van Ruysbroeck, and Nicholas of Cusa. In 1507 he retired from university teaching to the Paris cloister of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he increasingly concentrated his energies on the Bible, commenting on the text with new attention to Greek and Hebrew, where his skills allowed. In the 1510s his commentaries led to clashes with somewhat younger humanists like Desiderius Erasmus, who faulted his Greek, as well as members of the Paris Faculty of Theology, who faulted his theological authority. A theorist of harmony attracted to the grand metaphysical visions of Pseudo-Dionysius and Nicholas of Cusa, Lefèvre avoided conflict where he could, more interested in teaching and commentary than in developing his own systematic statements. He was nevertheless committed to devotional reform, and his patron asked him to lead a reform of preaching in the diocese of Meaux, near Paris; this led to growing worries that his theological affiliation was in fact Lutheran. An elder statesman of the republic of letters amid a generation of younger firebrands—including Guillaume Farel, the Genevan reformer who would spot John Calvin’s potential—Lefèvre’s approach to these tensions has proved an irresistible puzzle for historians. Forced to flee Meaux for safety in Strassburg, he was recalled to the court of the king’s sister, Marguerite de Navarre, where he tutored young royals and lived in relative peace until his death in 1536.

Reforming the French National Church

Marguerite of Navarre’s evangelical network never abandoned its strategy of pushing for reform within the existing French church. The Meaux group of the early 1520s, led by Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, sought to “bring the Gospel to the people.” Lefèvre and Gérard Roussel made a crucial decision in 1526 to return to France from exile, instead of joining the international Reformed community. This move paved the way for them to continue down the path of internal reform, an effort that hit its peak in 1533, when Roussel preached to huge crowds in Paris. Hopes were dashed the next year with the royal reaction to the Affair of the Placards, but Roussel continued to encourage evangelical reform during his last years as Bishop of Oloron.

Apprenticeship in the Renaissance University: Student authorship and craft knowledge

ArgumentStudents entered Renaissance universities as apprentices in the craft of books. In the decades around 1500, such university training began to involve not only manuscript circulation, but also the production and the use of books in the new medium of print. Through their role in the crafting of books, I show how a circle of students around Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples gained the experience needed to become bookmen. Students took classroom manuscripts and brought them into print – the new print shop offered students a place in which to exchange labor for credibility as joint authors.

Introduction

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples is now best known as an Aristotelian humanist and a founder of the French Reformation. In his day, however, Lefèvre was at the centre of a circle of scholars invested in university reform, then widely known for their interest in mathematics. Among his closest collaborators, first as students and then as university masters, were Josse Clichtove and Charles de Bovelles. After outlining the development of a new mathematical culture, this chapter orients the reader to the circle’s collective biography around the notion of friendship, and positions the book’s argument in relation to the historiographies of mathematics, print, and the university.