Part 41

◆Very likely Bernardin Turissan. Brantôme is perhaps referring to the Ragionamento della Nanna, printed in Paris in 1534, without the name of the publisher. The peggio must have been one of those infamous Italian books which the noblemen of the court wrangled over. The Nanna was well known at the French court (see Le Divorce satyrique, t. I. of the Journal de Henri III., 1720 edition, p. 190).

◆Bernardino Turisan, who used as his sign the well-known mark of the Manutii, his kinsmen.

◆Pietro Aretino was born at Arezzo in Tuscany in 1492. The natural son of a plain gentleman he became the companion and protégé of Princes, and their unscrupulous and adroit flatterer. Friend of Michael Angelo and Titian. His works are full of learning and wit,—and obscenity.

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◆This book, entitled La Somme des péchés et les remèdes d’iceux (Compendium of all Sins, and the Remedies of the same), printed at Lyons, by Charles Pesnot c. 1584, 4to, and several times since, was compiled by Jean Benedict, a Cordelier monk of Brittany. He has filled it with filth and foulness as full as did the Jesuit Sanchez his treatise De Matrimonio (on Marriage). It is a singular fact that a work so indecent should have been none the less dedicated to the Holy Virgin. As we see from the text, Brantôme and his fellows quite well understood how to turn such works to their advantage and find fresh stories of lubricity in their pages.

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◆This Bonvisi, a Lyons banker, had had as receiver Field Marshal de Retz, the son of a Gondi, who had become a bankrupt in Lyons. (Notes of the Confession de Sancy, 1720 edition, t. II., p. 244.)

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◆L. Aurelius Commodus (not Sejanus), Emperor A. D. 180–192, was the son of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Faustina. Annius Verus was his brother, and received the appellation of Cæsar along with his elder brother in 166.

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◆Antonomasia, properly.

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◆The Sanzays were a family of Poitou who had settled in Brittany. René de Sanzay, head of the family at the time in question, had four sons: René, Christophe, Claude, and Charles. René continued the line. Claude was his lieutenant in 1569, as colonel of his forces. Charles married and died only in 1646 (?). Christophe, the second son, was a prothonotary. It seems that Brantôme had Claude in mind. Moreover, the constable of Montmorency having died in 1568 and Claude having been a lieutenant of his brother in 1569, we may conjecture that the adventure of which Brantôme speaks had happened to him previously, for the constable is concerned with his ransom. (Bib. Nat., Cabinet des titres, art. Sanzay.)

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◆Cicero, De officis, Bk. IV., Chap. ix.

◆The second son of Charles V.; he was assassinated at the Gate of Barbette, at the end of Rue Vieille-du-Temple, in 1407, by the orders of Jean Sans peur. He had had for a long time adulterous relations with his sister-in-law Isabeau de Bavière. The woman in question here was Marie d’Enghien, wife of Aubert de Cany and mother of the Bâtard d’Orléans. This anecdote has inspired several story-tellers, such as Bandello, Strappardo, Malespini, etc. See also the first of the Cents Nouvelles nouvelles.

◆“Candaules was the last Heracleid king of Lydia. According to the account of Herodotus, he was extremely proud of his wife’s beauty, and insisted on exhibiting her unveiled charms, but without her knowledge, to Gyges, his favourite officer. Gyges was seen by the queen, as he was stealing from her chamber, and the next day she summoned him before her, intent on vengeance, and bade him choose whether he would undergo the punishment of death himself, or would consent to murder Candaules and receive the kingdom together with her hand. He chose the latter alternative, and became the founder of the dynasty of the Mermnadæ, about B. C. 715.”

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◆Jean Dunois, comte d’Orléans et de Longueville, Grand Chamberlain of France, was his natural son by Mariette d’Enghien, wife of Aubert de Cany-Dunois, and is famous in history under the name of the Bastard of Orleans. Born at Paris 1402; died 1468. Distinguished himself at the sieges of Montargis and Orleans (where he was seconded by Jeanne d’Arc) and in many other encounters. The gallant champion of Charles VII. and the great enemy of the English.

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◆Henri III., 1574–1589, last king of the House of Valois; succeeded Charles IX.

◆Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, surnamed Tête de fer. He had married Marguerite, sister of Henri II. It was during this journey that the Duchess Marguerite tried to obtain from her nephew Henri III. the retrocession of several fortresses which France still held. (Litta, t. VI., tav. xiv.)

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◆Sainte-Soline abandoned Strozzi at the battle of the Iles Ter Tercères.

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◆Capaneus was one of the mythical seven heroes who marched from Argos against Thebes (Aeschylus, Septem contra Thebas). “During the siege, he was presumptuous enough to say, that even the fire of Zeus should not prevent his scaling the walls of the city; but when she saw his body was burning, his wife Euadné leaped into the flames and destroyed herself.”

◆Alcestis was a daughter of Pelias, and the wife of Admetus, King of Pheræ in Thessaly. According to the legend, Apollo having induced the Fates to promise Admetus deliverance from death, if at the hour of his decease his father, mother or wife would die for him, Alcestis sacrificed herself for her husband’s sake. But Heracles brought her back again from the underworld, and “all ended well.” The story is the subject of Euripides’ beautiful play of Alcestis.

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