Slavery and Freedom in a Time of Civil War: La Boétie, L’Hospital, and Montaigne

Abstract

The modern ‘neo-Roman' or ‘republican' concept of freedom as liberty from the arbitrary will of another is the starting point for a discussion of three French Renaissance magistrates for whom freedom is paramount political question: La Boétie, L'Hospital, and Montaigne. The first of these sees freedom in ontological terms, the foundation of being as well as of any political system in the form of freedom of expression and amitié. The article shows that that these values are severely tested by the French Wars of Religion. L’Hospital claims that personal and collective liberty is compatible with monarchical rule and submission to the will of another. This attempt to reconcile domination and non-domination is then greatly refined by Montaigne who re-frames the premises of this debate in terms which develop the role of historical figures such as Socrates and Lucan in the defence of individual and civic freedom.

KEYWORDS:

• freedom
• slavery
• will
• domination
• Wars of Religion

Notes

1 Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Government and Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). For an overview, see Rachel Hammersley's introduction, ‘The Historiography of Republicanism and Republican Exchanges,’ History of European Ideas, 38 (2012), 323–37. For the Classical background to these ideas, see Valentina Arena, ‘Libertas’ and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

2 Jean Terrel, ‘Républicanisme et droit naturel dans le Discours de la servitude volontaire. Une rencontre aporétique,’ in Lectures politiques de La Boétie, ed. by Laurent Gerbier, ‘Cahiers La Boétie, 3’ (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), pp. 37–60; Saul Newman, ‘La Boétie and Republican Liberty: Voluntary Servitude and Non-Domination,’ European Journal of Political Theory, 21.1 (2019), 134–54 <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1474885119863141> [accessed December 5, 2020].

3 See John O’Brien, ‘A Book (or Two) from the Library of La Boétie,’ Montaigne Studies, 27 (2015), 179–91.

4 See further Déborah Knop and Jean Balsamo, De la servitude volontaire. Rhétorique et politique en France sous les derniers Valois (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2014), pp. 114–21; La Première Circulation de la ‘Servitude volontaire’ en France et au-delà, ed. by John O’Brien and Marc Schachter (Paris: Champion, 2019), pp. 28, 156; id., ‘La Vive Description de la tyrannie, & des tyrans (1577): suppléments et découvertes,’ Montaigne Studies, 33 (2021), 169–77; John O’Brien, ‘Cicero the Revolutionary: Some Seditious Motifs in the Literature of the French Wars of Religion,’ in Sedition: The Spread of Controversial Literature and Ideas in France and Scotland, c.1550–1610, ed. by John O’Brien and Marc Schachter (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 127–50.

5 See for example Tom Stevenson, ‘Antony as “Tyrant” in Cicero's First Philippic,’ Ramus 38 (2009), 174–86.

6 Knop and Balsamo, p. 115; La Première Circulation, p. 79.

7 Cicero, Philippics, XIII.14.

8 De la servitude volontaire ou Contr’un, ed. by Malcolm Smith, with additional notes by Michel Magnien (Geneva: Droz, 2001), p. 50.

9 Cicero, Philippics, XIII.1.

10 See Geoff Kennedy, ‘Cicero, Roman Republicanism and the Contested Meaning of Libertas,’ Political Studies 62 (2014), 488–501.

11 De la servitude volontaire, p. 42.

12 Collected in Ad familiares, IX.22.

13 Plutarch, Les Œuvres Morales et meslees, trans. by Jacques Amyot (Paris: Vascosan, 1572), fol. 41^v.

14 De la servitude volontaire, pp. 47–8 (Venice), 49 (Athens), 49–50 (Sparta), 50, 53 (Republican Rome).

15 Laurent Gerbier, ‘Maîtrise et servitude: les figures de l’inégalité et le républicanisme problématique de La Boétie,’ in Lectures politiques de La Boétie, pp. 13–33.

16 Christophe Litwin, Politiques de l’amour de soi. La Boétie, Montaigne et Pascal au démêlé (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021), p. 78.

17 Knop and Balsamo, pp. 159–90, 200–04 (senatorial); Jean-Raymond Fanlo, ‘À qui s’adresse le Discours de la servitude volontaire ?’ in La Parole de La Boétie, ed. by Sandra Provini, Agnès Rees and Alice Vintenon, ‘Cahiers La Boétie, 5’ (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), pp. 113–21 (magistrature); Sébastien Charles, ‘La Boétie, le peuple et les “gens de bien”,’ Nouvelle Revue du seizième siècle, 17.2 (1999), pp. 269–85 (rejection of the peuple).

18 On this theme, see especially Mario Turchetti, Tyrannie et tyrannicide de l’Antiquité à nos jours (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), pp. 447–53.

19 Bernard Barsotti, De la servitude volontaire. Pertinence du ‘Contr’Un’ de La Boétie (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2019), p. 53.

20 Ibid., p. 52.  

21 Loris Petris, La Plume et la tribune. Michel de L’Hospital et ses discours (1559–1562) (Geneva: Droz, 2002), p. 439.

22 Ibid., p. 439, n. 39.

23 Ibid., p. 314: ‘la communauté des Christiani est incluse dans l’ensemble plus grand des Cives […]. Il n’y a pas de séparation des deux appartenances, mais distinction (puisqu’il y a un rapport d’inclusion) entre les sphères politique et religieuse.’

24 Denis Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy. Un rêve perdu de la Renaissance (Paris: Fayard, 1994), p. 210; id., Dieu en ses royaumes. Une histoire des guerres de religion (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2015), p. 364.

25 The ascription is made by Petris, p. 62, preceded by Denis Crouzet, La Sagesse et le malheur. Michel de L’Hospital chancelier de France (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1998), p. 420.

26 ‘Le But de la guerre et de la paix,’ in Œuvres complètes de Michel de L’Hospital, ed. by P. J. S. Duféy, 2 vols (Paris: Boulland, 1824), II, 199. Further references are incorporated in the text.

27 See O’Brien, ‘Cicero the Revolutionary,’ pp. 128–33.

28 Discours de la pacification des troubles de l’An 1567 (Antwerp: Thetieu, 1568); ‘Discours des raisons et persuasions de la paix,’ in Histoire de nostre temps (Imprimé Nouuellement [La Rochelle: Berthon], 1570), pp. 27–59.

29 Les ‘Essais’ de Michel de Montaigne, ed. by Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), p. 184. All further references to this edition will be inserted in the text in the form ‘VS’ followed by a page number.

30 See the account of this episode given by Alain Legros at <https://montaigne.univ-tours.fr/category/oeuvres/servitude/> [accessed December 8, 2020].

31 See [Nicolas Barnaud], Le Reveille-matin des Francois, ed. by Jean-Raymond Fanlo, Marino Lambiase and Paul-Alexis Mellet (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), especially dialogue II, passim.

32 Montaigne. Les ‘Essais’, ed. by Jean Balsamo, Michel Magnien and Catherine Magnien-Simonin, ‘Bibliothèque de la Pléiade’ (Paris: NRF/Gallimard, 2007), p. 1771 on p. 963, n. 1.

33 See Scott Francis, ‘The Discussion as Joust: Parrhesia and Friendly Antagonism in Plutarch and Montaigne,’ The Comparatist, 37 (2013), 122–37.

34 Michael Sandel, Justice. What's the Right Thing to Do? (London: Allen Lane, 2010), p. 261.

35 VS, pp. 9, 359, 382, 469, 801.

36 The Otanes episode in Herodotus was one of the anti-monarchical loci recognised as such in the early modern period. It is referred to by Henri de Mesmes in his retort to La Boétie's La Servitude volontaire: see La Première Circulation, pp. 62–3.

37 See Reinier Leushuis, ‘Montaigne Parrhesiastes: Foucault, Fearless Speech and Truth-Telling in the Essais’ and Virginia Krause, ‘Confession or Parrhesia? Foucault after Montaigne,’ both in Montaigne after Theory, Theory after Montaigne, ed. by Zahi Zalloua (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), pp. 100–21 and 142–60 respectively; Olivier Guerrier, ‘Le Socrate de Foucault et le socratisme de Montaigne. Autour de la parrhêsia,’ in Le Socratisme de Montaigne, ed. by Thierry Gontier and Suzel Mayer (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010), pp. 57–70.

38 It is unclear why Montaigne calls him Greuntius Cordus. I thank Jakob Wisse for confirming that this form, Greuntius, occurs in no obvious Classical source.

39 See Daniel J. Kapust, ‘The Case of Cremutius Cordus: Tacitus on Censorship and Writing under Despotic Rulers,’ in Censorship Moments: Reading Texts in the History of Censorship and Freedom of Expression, ed. by Geoff Kemp (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 17–24; Dylan Sailor, Writing and Empire in Tacitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), chapter 5, ‘Tacitus and Cremutius,’ pp. 250–313; Robert Samuel Rogers, ‘The Case of Cremutius Cordus,’ TAPA, 96 (1965), 351–59.

40 Jakob Wisse, ‘Remembering Cremutius Cordus: Tacitus on History, Tyranny and Memory,’ Histos 7 (2013), 299–361 (p. 299).

41 De la servitude volontaire, p. 53.

42 Les Annales de P. Cornile Tacite, trans. by Estienne de la Planche [and Claude Fauchet] (Paris: Abel L’Angelier, 1581), p. 140.

43 Wes Williams, Monsters and their Meanings in Early Modern Culture. Mighty Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 147.

44 Plutarch, Life of Brutus, XLIV.2, Life of Philopoemen, I.4.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John O’Brien

John O'Brien is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Durham. He is most recently (2022) the editor of ‘Montaigne outre-Manche', a special number of the Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne. He is currently working on a book entitled De la codicologie à l’exégèse. Études sur La Boétie.