Author: Sainte-Marthe, Scevole de
Biography:
SAINTE-MARTHE, Scévole de (1536-1623: NBG)
As a “prior” and foreign author, Sainte-Marthe has only a summary headnote; his translator H. W. Tytler is noted separately, q.v. He belonged to minor French nobility as the son of Louis de Sainte-Marthe and Nicol le Fevre, and was born at Loudun, Vienne, on 2 Feb. 1536. He was at first named Gaucher after his paternal grandfather, who had been physician to François I, but after studying at the university of Paris he took the name Scévole instead (after Quintus Mucius Scaevola, d 82 BCE), as better suited to a learned man. He continued his studies in languages and jurisprudence at Poitiers, Bourges, and Paris and began to develop a reputation for his skill at writing poetry, both in French and in Latin. He went on to have a long and honorable career in the service of the monarchy and his district, notably as an administrator: controller-general of finances at Poitou (1571), mayor of Poitiers (1579, 1602), and Treasurer-General of France in the area (about 1580). He married an heiress, Renée de la Haye, about 1570, and they had eight children—the experience that led him to the composition of Paedotrophia, which he dedicated to Henri III. It was recognized as his masterwork with ten editions in his lifetime. If that seems remarkable for a didactic poem in Latin intended for mothers and nurses about the care of babies and young children, the poem was admired as a fit successor to Virgil’s Georgics and, as Tytler points out in his preface, in sixteenth-century France both sexes could learn Latin. Sainte-Marthe retired to Loudun about 1616, died there on 29 Mar. 1623, and was buried in the cathedral church of St. Peter. (NBG 43 cols. 148-50; H. W. Tytler, “Preface” to Paedotrophia [1797], pp. xxxvii-clxxvi) HJ
Other Names:
- Scevole de St. Marthe