Jacques-Auguste de Thou

Jacques-Auguste de Thou (born Oct. 8, 1553, Paris, France—died May 7, 1617, Paris) was a French statesman, bibliophile, and historiographer whose detached, impartial approach to the events of his own period made him a pioneer in the scientific approach to history.

Born into a family noted for its statesmen and scholars, de Thou studied law at Orléans, Bourges, and Valence. He had, however, first been intended for the church and succeeded his uncle as a canon of Notre Dame (Paris). As a councillor of state, he faithfully served both Henry III and Henry IV, becoming director of the royal library in 1593. On becoming president of the Paris parlement in 1595, he used his authority in the interests of religious peace, negotiating the Edict of Nantes (1598) with the Protestants, while in the name of Gallicanism (a rejection of papal supremacy) opposing recognition of the Council of Trent. This attitude incurred the animosity of the Catholic hierarchy, which increased its persecution when the first edition of his history appeared in 1604. After the death of Henry IV (1610), the queen regent, Marie de Médicis, refused him the position of premier president of the parlement, appointing him instead a member of the conseil de finances.

The primary activity of de Thou’s life was the writing of his history. His object was to produce a purely “scientific” and unbiased work chronicling his era. Perhaps to achieve a necessary distance, he wrote Historia sui temporis (“History of His Own Time”) in Latin. The first 18 books, embracing the period up to 1560, appeared in 1604, when they were immediately attacked by those de Thou called “the invidious and dissentious.” The second part (dealing with the first wars of religion, 1560–72) was put on the church’s index of prohibited books. When the third part (to 1574) and the fourth (to 1584) appeared in 1607–08, they caused a similar outcry, in spite of the historian’s efforts to remain impartial. In answer to his detractors de Thou wrote a useful complement to the Historia, his series of memoranda (translated into French as Mémoires de la vie de Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1711).

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The first complete edition of the voluminous history, including the fifth part (to 1607), was published in 1620 by the scholars Pierre Dupuy and Nicolas Rigault. Five years later, the six volumes of memoirs were appended. The standard French translation, Histoire universelle de Jacques-Auguste de Thou, depuis 1543 jusqu’en 1607, 16 vol. (1734; Eng. trans., 2 vol., 1724–34), was published by the abbé Desfontaines and other scholars. Carefully researched, drawn from reliable sources, de Thou’s Historia is a model of great erudition and exacting scholarship.