Naudé, Gabriel

NAUDÉ, GABRIEL. - Scholar, b. in Paris on 2 Feb. 1600, d. at Abbeville on 29 July 1653. He obtained his degree in medicine at Padua in 1625. He was physician to Louis XIII. He traveled in France, Italy and elsewhere, concerning himself mostly with bibliographical research. He was librarian to Richelieu and to Mazarin and, in Stockholm, to Christina of Sweden.

He compiled numerous prefaces to philosophical and literary texts by Italian authors such as Cardano, Aretino, Doni, Nifo, etc.; he wrote on political and religious history, treating of the times of Louis XI; but the work that spread his name most widely was a defense of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre entitled: Considérations politiques sur les coups d'état (Rome 1639), which became in the 17th century the most famous manual of political art of the Machiavellian type. He abandoned the paths trodden by the Italian literature of "reason of state" and by the literature of the arcana begun by Clapmar (De arcanis rerum publicarum libri VI, 1605), and linked himself anew, besides to Machiavelli, to Justus Lipsius (Manuale di politica, 1589) and to Charron (De la sagesse, 1601), while nevertheless maintaining firmly the principle that the permission to act immorally granted to the statesman does not justify an inwardly unlimited and tyrannical arbitrariness. He also refuted a series of libels written against Card. Mazarin, displaying historical culture and sound doctrine. Singular is the work entitled: Apologie pour tous les grands personnages qui ont esté faussement soupponnez de magie (Paris 1625).

Bruno Brunello