François-Eudes de Mézeray

François-Eudes de Mézeray , born in 1610 with IH and dead the July 10th 1683 with Paris, is a French historian and historiographer.

After having made its studies with Caen, Mézeray came to Paris, where its compatriot Of Yvetaux was his guard and an use of police chief of the wars obtained to him. It was in this quality in the two campaigns of Flanders in 1635 and 1636. The following year, it was delivered to the study history and, locked up with the Collège Holy-Bores, worked with a so great heat that it fell sick from there. The cardinal of Richelieu was interested in this still obscure worker and made him hold a purse containing five hundred ecus of gold.

In 1643, it published the first volume of sound French history and in 1649, it entered to the French Academy, to replace Voiture. During the Sling, he wrote lampoons against Mazarin; the Mazarinade S which appeared under the pseudonym of Saudricourt are allotted to him. He nevertheless was named historiographer of the king. The pension which it touched for this reason went up to four thousand books. It was decreased, then removed by Colbert, because of the freedom with which Mézeray, in its chronological Abrégé , had spoken about finances, the taxes and treating. Though it touched other pensions of various characters, Mézeray, pushed by avarice, begged the minister, in several letters, not to deprive it of its salaries, promising to him to modify the accused passages. When he saw his useless steps, placing in a cassette the last term of its pension, he united this ticket there: “Here the last money which I received from the king; he ceased paying me and me speech of him, either in good, or in evil. ”

Its control with the French Academy, of which he became perpetual secretary in 1675, after Conrart, was marked by several features of originality. Known to be the enemy of any label, it had taken the practice always to give a black ball to those which were presented to represent with the posterity the freedom which the Academy in its elections enjoyed. In the Dictionary , he added like explanation to the word Comptable this sentence: “Any accountant is hanging. ” Forced by his colleagues to remove it, it put in margin: “Striped, though true. ” At the time of the visit which with the Company the queen Christine made, he was secretary and, to give him an idea of the Dictionnaire , he him lute the article on the word Jeu , in which this example was: “Sets of princes, who like only those which do them. ”

It is also him which had, the first, the idea of the first literary journal and scientific, which was shown by the founders of the Journal of the scientists of Denis de Sallo and Welsh Jean. He belonged to the management committee of the Gazette .

One concluded from these marks of independence and some spoken with the letter, as well as his licentious control, which it was a free thinker and a skeptic.

The work to which the name of Mézeray is attached, was entitled thus by him: French history, since Faramond until now, work enriched by several beautiful and rare antiquities and a summary of the life of each reign, about which he was almost not spoken above, with the portraits with the naturalness by the kings, regents and dolphins (Paris, 1643-1646-1651, 3 vol. in-fol.). This edition, rare, is extremely beautiful. The first volume offers to the frontispiece the equestrian portrait of Louis XIII; after a dedication comes to the queen Anne Austria. The work is accompanied by portraits drawn from metal France from the Rie engraver, to which quatrains composed per G. Baudoin are joined. One second edition, with author's proofs, was given in 1685. It was reprinted, but without engravings, in 1830. This history contains until the reign of Louis IX many errors, now easy to rectify; but, of Louis IX to Louis XIII, it is generally exact and extremely remarkable by the documents as by the composition. The natural, and at the same time picturesque and animated pen, appears out-of-date, like the language of the time of the Sling; but it of it is not less full with approval and originality. Holy-Beuve rented the work like “a reading of most fertile and more nutritive for the spirit”.

Mézeray also gave its shortened work, under the title of Abrégé chronological or Extracted the French history (Paris, 1608, 3 vol. in-4, often réimpr.). It published also a Traité origin of the French , French history before Clovis (Amsterdam, 1682, in-12). There is moreover of him Vanities of the Court , translation of the Polycraticus , Jean de Salisbury (1640, in-4°); History of the Turks, since 1612 up to 1649 (1650, in-fol.), poor work, drawn from Vigenère and Chalcondyle. One allotted a to him Dictionnaire of France , published in the historical Mémoires and criticisms of Camusat (1732, in-12); History of the mother and the son and Life of Henri IV , published under the name of Péréfixe.

He was the brother of the founder about the Eudistes, Jean Eudes.

Source

Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 1392

External bonds

Biographical note of the French Academy

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