A French Jesuit's Lectures on Vergil, 1582-1583: Jacques Sirmond between Literature, History, and Myth

Abstract

An unstudied manuscript in Princeton contains lectures delivered by the youthful Jacques Sirmond at the Jesuit college of Pont-a-Mousson. In contrast to the received picture of Jesuit pedagogues as devoted rhetoricians, Sirmond explained Aeneid books 3 and 12 in a self-consciously historical way, concentrating especially on Roman law and religion and their interaction. His concerns are discussed in light of sixteenth-century scholarship on ancient Rome, contemporary Vergil commentary, humanist interest in the history of culture as a hermeneutic tool, and Sirmond's own later career as a philologist and ecclesiastical historian. Sirmond's comments on Aeneid 12 in particular show how he used religious and legal information in an unusual ethical reading of Vergil's text. Like some other early modern readers, Simond read Vergil's poem, other ancient literary texts, and Roman historical texts and documents as equivalent and interchangeable sources of information.