Jacques Furrier of Mans

Biography

Jacques Peletier of Mans studied with the Collège of Navarre where his/her Jean brother was mathematics professor and of philosophy. He then studied the Droit and the Médecine. He attended the literary circle of Marguerite de Navarre and was secretary of Rene of Bellay of 1541 with 1543. He is the author of many scientific and mathematical treaties.

The mathematician

While preserving the original system of Nicolas Chuquet, he proposed names for the intermediate numbers, when the grouping by six digits migrated towards the modern grouping by three digits. (The hexadecimal numbers should be grouped by five digits. The modern internal bus 64 bits can record 2⁶⁴ or F FF FF FF units and the zero. Sixteen trillion of hexadecimal units). Thus it created, beside the words with illions existing already, the words with illiards . This convention is used throughout the world, except in the anglophone countries, the Brésil, the Greece, the Turkey, the Russia and Puerto Rico.

The poet

As a poet, he is in particular the author of the first translation of the poetic Art of Horace

In 1547, it pronounced the funeral oration of Henri VIII and published its first poetic Œuvres , which included/understood translations of the first two songs of the Odyssée of Homère and first book of the Géorgiques of Virgile, twelve sonnets of Pétrarque, three odes of Horace and an epigram in the style of Martial; this collection of poetry also includes the first poetries published of Joachim of Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard. It then started to attend a group of humanistic around Theodore de Bèze, Jean Martin, Denis Sauvage.

It tried to reform the French orthography victim of the regrettable attempts, with the Renaissance, to model the French vocabulary on its Latin roots, in the Dialog of the ortografe E pronunciation françoese (1550) where it recommends a phonetic orthography using of new typographical signs which it continued to employ in all works that it published. This is why “Furrier” is always spelled with only one “L”.

After last years with Bordeaux, Poitiers and the Piedmont (where he was perhaps the tutor of the son of the marshal of Brissac) and with Lyon (where he attends the humanistic poets and the Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Olivier de Magny and Pontus de Tyard). In 1555, it publishes the poetic Art there French in the workshop of the printer Jean de Tournes (workshop also attended by Louise Labé), workshop of which it also was in some kinds one of the persons in charge. In this handbook of poetic composition, it stresses that poetry proposes a true “recreation to him” and that she is “a exercise of a quite soft madness”. In the dedication with Zacharie Gaudart, it also states that “the love is an able subject”. In this work, he undertakes to define the various poetic kinds of his time and the attitude which the poets must have. He has in particular the “project to be able there to apply natural things, Cosmographie, Astrologie, and other things worthy of clearest and serious ears”.

He then published a solemn Latin speech calling with the peace between Henri II and of Charles Quint and a new collection of poetry made up of a series of sonnets and encyclopedic poetries describing of the meteors, planets and the skies entitled the Love of the loves which was to influence the poets Guillaume of Bartas and Jean Antoine de Baïf.

He spent the last years of his life to travel in Savoy, Germany, Suisse and perhaps in Italy like various areas of France and to publish many Latin works on the Algèbre, the Géométrie and the Mathématiques, the Médecine (a refutation of Galien on the Peste).

In 1572, he is briefly director of the university of Aquitaine (Bordeaux), but resigns of this station which annoys it. For this period, it was in good terms with Montaigne and Pierre de Brach. In 1579, it returns to Paris and is director of the college of the Mans. It published a last collection of poetries Louanges in 1581.

Orthography

Here an extract of Dialog of the ortografe E pronunciation françoese :

Madam ɇ, L ɇ large D ɇ to ſir qu ɇ I auoę̀ D ɇ to deſſe̱ruir (has all ɇ my poßibilite) the grac ɇ ſouu ɇ kidney ɇ D ɇ fire ɇ the Kidney ɇ votr ɇ tre D ɇ bonner ɇ E tre R ɇ grette ɇ sea ɇ, me auoè̱t induìt has vouloę̀r to dedicate to him a mien Dialogu ɇ D ɇ Ortograf ɇ E Prononciation Françoȩſ ɇ. Mȩ́s I E be priuè of the good, L ɇ which I etoe̱ all pré̱t rear ɇ C ɇ uoę̀r: it ȩ́t D ɇ C ɇ good E auantageus rakkeulh that ȩll ɇ ſouloę̀t fe̱rɇ has all ɇ S pȩrſonn ɇ S which auoȩ́t L ɇ kor has good ɇ S choſ ɇ S, E ſingulier ɇ mant aus lȩttr ɇ S.

Works

Arithmeticae praticae methodus facilis per Gemmam Frisium, medicum ac mathematicii
Of the use of geometry
Dialog of the ortografe E pronunciation françoese
Discours either melancholic persons that various
Euvres poetic of Jacques Peletier of Mans
Of Occulted leaves numerorum: quam algebram vocant
the algebra
love of the loves
art poetic
the art poetic of Horace translated into worms François
Savoye, a long poem published in 1572 with Annecy, dedicated to the Marguerite duchess, protective of Arts and letters but especially in Savoy. It described its natural wealths there (medicinal plants, fish of the lakes, cheeses of mountain, mountain geography, but also abysses, glaciers and avalanches) and life of its population (in particular Bessan, Bonneval-on-Arc and Saint-Jean-of-Maurienne), her simplicity of life and its ingeniousness. Happy balance that it knew to find between the hardness of the nature which remains wild and the evils of the civilization perverted by the ambition and the desire, announcing Jean-Jacques Rousseau already.

See too

List of the numbers

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