Part 50

◆Marot had arranged this Spanish proverb into a quatrain, and at the time of the Ligue it was applied to the Infanta of Spain:

Pourtant, si je suis brunette, Amy, n’en prenez esmoy, Car autant aymer souhaitte Qu’une plus blanche que moy.

P. 239:

◆Raymond Lulle was a native of Majorca, and lived towards the end of the thirteenth century: he was reputed to be a magician. The story that Brantôme tells was taken from the Opuscula by Charles Bovelles, fol. XXXIV. of the in-4^o edition of 1521. The famous Raimond Lulle (generally known in England as Raimond Lully), philosopher and schoolman, was celebrated throughout the Middle Ages for his logic and his commentary on Aristotle, and above all for his art of Memory, or Ars Lulliana. He was born at Palma, the capital of Majorca, in 1235. He travelled in various countries, and died (1315) in Africa after suffering great hardships, having gone there as a missionary.

P. 240:

◆Or Charles de Bouvelles. His life of Raymond Lulle is a quarto, printed at Paris, and published by Ascencius. It is dated 3rd of the Nones of December, 1511. Several other works by the same author are extant.

◆Arnauld de Villeneuve, a famous alchemist of the end of the thirteenth century; he died in a shipwreck, in 1313.

◆Oldrade, a jurist, was born at Lodi in the thirteenth century. His Codex de falsa moneta is not known.

P. 242:

◆Sisteron, in the Department of the Basses-Alpes, on the Durance. Seat of a Bishopric from the 4th Century down to 1770.

◆Aimeric de Rochechouart (1545–1582) was the bishop of Sisteron; he succeeded his uncle Albin de Rochechouart. As to the “very great lady,” that applies to one of a dozen princesses.

P. 244:

◆Pliny, XXXIII., cap. iv. Brantôme is mistaken about the temple.

P. 246:

◆Claude Blosset, lady of Torcy, the daughter of Jean Blosset and of Anne de Cugnac. She married Louis de Montberon (in 1553), Baron de Fontaines and Chalandray, first gentleman of the king’s bed-chamber. The beautiful Torcy, as she was called, had been presented to Queen Eleonor by Mme. de Canaples, the enemy of Mme. d’Etampes.

◆Hubert Thomas, Annales de vita Friderici II. Palatini (Francfort, 1624), gives no idea of this exaggeration of Queen Eleonor’s bust, who was promised to Frederick Palatine.

P. 248:

◆Suetonius, Octavius Augustus, cap. lxix.

P. 249:

◆Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, nicknamed le Balafré, born 1550. Murdered by the King’s (Henri III.) orders at Blois in 1588.

◆Duc d’Anjou, afterwards Henri III.

P. 250:

◆The personages in question are probably Bussy d’Amboise and Marguerite de Valois.

P. 252:

◆The king was Henri II., and the grand widow lady the Duchess de Valentinois. They thought it was due to a charm.

P. 254:

◆Pico della Mirandola, Opera omnia, t. II., liv. III., chap. xxii., in the 1517 edition.

◆Pico della Mirandola, one of the greatest of all the brilliant scholars of the Renaissance, and so famous for the precocity and versatility of his talents, was born 1463. After completing his studies at Bologna and elsewhere, he visited Rome, where he publicly exhibited a hundred propositions De omni re scribili, which he undertook to defend against all comers. The maturity of his powers he devoted to the study of religion and the Platonic philosophy. He died 1494, on the day of Charles VIII.’s entry into Florence.