Jacques Amyot

Jacques Amyot ( born October 29, 1513 Melun, † February 6, 1593 in Auxerre ) was a French cleric, humanist and writer, and (as of 1560) Bishop of Auxerre. With his much-read transfers of Greek works he has greatly influenced the development of French literature.

Life

Amyot came from relatively humble beginnings, but was able to gain a theological and above all a good humanistic education in Paris. Like so many humanists these years he also sympathized with the Reformation, and came in 1534, when its suppression in France began shortly into trouble. To 1536, he was for a time lecturer ( Privatdozent a kind ) of Greek at the University of Bourges, before he became tutor to the children of a 1540 royal secretary who dabbled as Euripides translator. About him, he got in touch with King Francis I, who commissioned him in 1542, written with a transfer of Plutarch about 110 AD " parallel biographies " of famous Greeks and Romans and assigned him shortly before his death in 1547 a profitable church benefice.

The first transmission that made Amyot appear, however, was in 1548 the Äthiopika of Heliodorus (3rd century AD), the adventurous story of Theagenes and the beautiful Chariklea. The anonymously published book ( because romance novels are not lawful for him for a clergyman ) was in France, and not only here, read infinitely imitated and parodied by Voltaire in 1758 and still in Candide.

Between 1548 and 52 undertook Amyot several longer trips to Venice and Rome, there to view manuscripts of his Greek authors. In 1554 he brought out a transfer of seven books of the monumental Universal History of Diodorus of Sicily ( † 30 BC).

In 1557 it was ordered by King Henry II and his wife Catherine of Medici from the house tutor to her sons Charles and Henry. After the former in 1560 when Charles IX. came very young to the throne, Amyot was promoted by him for the " Grand aumônier ( = Grand Almoner ) de France ".

Shortly before ( 1559 ) he had brought out the transmission, which is regarded as his most important: Les vies des hommes illustrious grecs et romains, comparées l' une avec l' autre par Plutarque, a 46 historical figures in pairs (eg, Alexander and Caesar ) linking Biography Collection. The today's standards very freely translated text was adapted apparently the expectation horizon French reader succeeded and was immediately a huge success book. While still alive, Amyot published numerous reprints and four of his revised editions. Over the next centuries the Plutarque was reprinted again and again, was compulsory reading for all educated and an important fuel source for novel and playwrights.

Also published in 1559 Amyot, again anonymously, a transfer of Longos ' idyllic little romance to the young shepherd Daphnis and Chloe ( around 200 AD ), who helped establish the Shepherd literature in France in the time.

1572 he took the title Oeuvres morales out a transfer of mixed moral philosophical writings of Plutarch. She was also a great success, for example, was Montaigne admired by and influenced the subsequent French essay writing and mores.

Shortly before, in 1570, Amyot was appointed bishop of Auxerre. In this role, he developed into a vigorous advocate of Catholic -oriented state centralism in France, in his opinion the only remedy was against the 1562 constantly blazing new Huguenot wars between Protestants and Catholics ( the end of 1598, he did not live ).

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