Until the nineteenth century Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617)
was among the most famous and most valued of historians. While his
first fame was a succes de scandale - the History of His Time was
placed on the Index in 160g - de Thou's work quickly found favor
with the humanistically-educated learned class throughout Europe.
The esteem in which the History was held transcended religious
divisions. The historian received letters of praise from staunchly
orthodox Spain and Portugal as well as from heretic England and
Germany; through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries his
History was read with enthusi asm by certain cardinals at the very
curia which condemned it; and so staunch a champion of orthodoxy as
Bishop Bossuet did not hesitate to appeal to "such a great author"
for support in his own historical works. ! To the philosophe of the
Enlightenment de Thou's impartiality in de scribing the impassioned
times through which he lived and the exact yet eloquent style with
which he wrote the History of His Time were familiar touchstones.
Voltaire appealed to the "truthful and eloquent de Thou" again and
again in his works,2 William Pitt rose in the House of Commons to
quote the words of the "great historian of France" during the early
years of the French Revolution,3 Lessing 4 and Herder 5 praised him
with poetic hyperbole, and Edward Gibbon re ferred to "the
authority of my masters, the grave Thuanus and the philosophic Hume
. . . .
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