NAUDÉ, GABRIEL. — Scholar, born in Paris on 2 February 1600, died at Abbéville on 29 July 1653. He obtained his medical degree at Padua in 1625. He was physician to Louis XIII. He travelled in France, Italy, and elsewhere, devoting himself chiefly to bibliographical research. He was librarian to Richelieu and 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, dealing with the times of Louis XI; but the work that spread his name most widely was a defence of the massacre of St Bartholomew entitled: Considérations politiques sur les coups d'état (Rome 1639), which became in the seventeenth century the most famous manual of political art of the Machiavellian type. He departed from the beaten paths of Italian literature on the «ragion di stato» and of the literature of the arcana begun by Clapmar (De arcanis rerum publicarum libri VI, 1605), and reconnected, in addition to Machiavelli, with Justus Lipsius (Manuale di politica, 1589) and Charron (De la sagesse, 1601), while nevertheless holding firmly to the principle that permission granted to the statesman to act immorally does not justify an inwardly unlimited and tyrannical arbitrariness. He also refuted a series of pamphlets written against Cardinal Mazarin, demonstrating historical culture and assured learning. Particularly noteworthy is the work entitled: Apologie pour tous les grands personnages qui ont esté faussement soupponnez de magie (Paris 1625).