Aubigne Theodore-Agrippa D

Aubigne Theodore-Agrippa D

Aubigne Theodore-Agrippa D,

a French writer and historian, born the 8th of February, 1550, at Saint- Maury en Saintonge. He showed at a very early age signs of what he was afterward to become. At six years of age he studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; at ten he translated the Crito of Plato, on his father's promise to print it with his portrait. A year after, his father, who was a zealous Protestant, made him swear (upon the scaffold on which some Protestants were executed) eternal hatred to Rome. He kept the vow. At fifteen he was a student at Geneva under Beza, but soon quit his studies to serve in the army under the Prince de Conde and the King of Navarre. He soon rose to the first rank of Protestant warriors, and did not lay down his sword till Henry IV was established on the throne. He served his king only too faithfully, and by his plain rebukes often brought down upon his head the wrath of the monarch. After the death of Henry he published l'Histoire universelle de son temps de 1550 a 1601 (Paris and Amsterdam, 1616-26, 3 vols. fol.). The book was condemned to be burnt by the Parliament, and the author took refuge at Geneva, where he died the 29th of April, 1630. He was a species of Admirable Crichton, combining the statesman's skill, the warrior's intrepidity, the scholar's learning, and the poet's genius with all the sterling virtues of the Christian. His daughter became afterward the mother of Madame de Maintenon, who inherited many of the qualities of her ancestor, but not his religion. A new Life of D'Aubigne, from a MS. found in the library of the Louvre in 1851, was published in 1854 by M. Lalanne (Paris, 8vo), who also published reprints of the minor writings of D'Aubigne (Les Tragiques, 1857; A ventures de Faeneste, edited by Merimee, with a sketch of D'Aubigne, 1855). — Haag, La France Protestante, s.v.; Herzog, Real-Encyklopadie, Suppl. p. 117; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, 3, 576.