Gilles Ménage (; 15 August 1613 – 23 July 1692) was a French scholar.

Biography

He was born at

Angers Angers (, , ) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is the prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Anjou until the French Revolution. The inhabitants of both the city and the prov ...

, the son of Guillaume Ménage, king's advocate at Angers. A good memory and enthusiasm for learning carried him quickly through his literary and professional studies, and he practised at the bar at Angers before he was twenty. In 1632, he pleaded several causes before the ''

parlement A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the oldest and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While both the modern Fre ...

'' of

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

. Illness caused him to abandon the legal profession for the church. He became

prior Prior (or prioress) is an ecclesiastical title for a superior in some religious orders. The word is derived from the Latin for "earlier" or "first". Its earlier generic usage referred to any monastic superior. In abbeys, a prior would be l ...

of Montdidier without taking holy orders, and lived for some years in the household of

Cardinal de Retz Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...

(then coadjutor to the

Archbishop of Paris The Archdiocese of Paris (Latin: ''Archidioecesis Parisiensis''; French: ''Archidiocèse de Paris'') is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France. It is one of twenty-three archdioceses in France ...

), where he had leisure for literary pursuits. Some time after 1648, he quarrelled with his patron and withdrew to a house in the cloister of

Notre-Dame de Paris Notre-Dame de Paris (; meaning "Our Lady of Paris"), referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité (an island in the Seine River), in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The cathedral, dedicated to the ...

, where he gathered round him on Wednesday evenings those literary assemblies which he called "Mercuriales."

Jean Chapelain Jean Chapelain (4 December 1595 – 22 February 1674) was a French poet and critic during the Grand Siècle, best known for his role as an organizer and founding member of the Académie française. Chapelain acquired considerable prestige as a l ...

Paul Pellisson Paul Pellisson (30 October 1624 – 7 February 1693) was a French author. Pellisson was born in Béziers, of a distinguished Calvinist family. He studied law at Toulouse, and practised at the bar of Castres. Going to Paris with letters of intr ...

Valentin Conrart Valentin Conrart (; 1603 – 23 September 1675) was a French author, and as a founder of the Académie française, the first occupant of seat 2. Biography He was born in Paris of Calvinist parents, and was educated for business. However, afte ...

Jean François Sarrazin Jean François Sarrazin (c. 1611 – 5 December 1654), or Sarasin, was a French writer. Biography Sarrazin was born at Hermanville, near Caen, the son of Roger Sarasin, treasurer-general at Caen. He was educated at Caen, and later settled in ...

and Du Bos were among the ''habitués''. He was tutor to

Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette (baptism, baptized 18 March 1634 – 25 May 1693), better known as Madame de La Fayette, was a French writer; she authored ''La Princesse de Clèves'', France's first historical novel ...

, later the great writer, to whom he was very attached. He was admitted to the

Accademia della Crusca The Accademia della Crusca (; "Academy of the Bran"), generally abbreviated as La Crusca, is a Florence-based society of scholars of Italian linguistics and philology. It is one of the most important research institutions of the Italian language ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, but his caustic sarcasm led to his exclusion from the

Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

. Ménage made many enemies and suffered under the satire of Boileau and of

Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...

. Molière immortalized him as the pedant Vadius in ''

Les Femmes savantes ''Les Femmes savantes'' (''The Learned Ladies'') is a comedy by Molière in five acts, written in verse. A satire on academic pretension, female education, and préciosité (French for preciousness), it was one of his most popular comedies and ...

'', a portrait Ménage pretended to ignore. In 1664 he published at London an edition of the ''Lives of Eminent Philosophers'' by

Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Ancient Greece, Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a ...

that contains an unedited anonymous life of Aristotle; this life was known as 'Vita Menagiana' before the critical edition by

Ingemar Düring Ingemar Düring (2 September 1903 - 23 December 1984) was a Swedish Classical Philologist. From 1945 to 1970 he was a professor at Gothenburg University The University of Gothenburg ( sv, Göteborgs universitet) is a university in Sweden's se ...

, (''Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition'' Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957; reprinted New York, Garland, 1987, pp. 80–93) with the title 'Vita Hesychii' (the attribution to

Hesychius of Miletus Hesychius of Miletus ( el, Ἡσύχιος ὁ Μιλήσιος, translit=Hesychios o Milesios), Greek chronicler and biographer, surnamed Illustrius, son of an advocate, lived in Constantinople in the 6th century AD during the reign of Justinian. ...

is controversial). In 1690, he also published a supplement to the work of Diogenes Laërtius titled ''Historia Mulierum Philosopharum''. It is more than a scholarly compilation of 65 women philosophers he had found from his studies of the books of ancient writers. He intended to create a history for these women and dedicated his work to Anne Lefevre Dacier (1654 – 17 August 1720), whom he described in his introduction as "the most learned of women whether of the present or the past."''The History of Women Philosophers'' translated from the Latin with an introduction by Beatrice H. Zedler, Lanham: University press of America (1984) Ménage died at Paris in 1692. After his death his friends published, under the title of ''Menagiana'', a collection of his witticisms and table talk. The edition of this collection by

Bernard de la Monnoye Bernard de La Monnoye (15 June 1641, in Dijon – 15 October 1728) was a French lawyer, poet, philologue and critic, known chiefly for his carols ''Noei borguignon'' ('' Borguignon Christmas''). Biography La Monnoye began his studies in Jesuit ...

(2 vols., 1693/4) has found favor.

Works (partial list)

*''Poemata latina, gallica, graeca, et italica'' (1656) *''Observationes et emendationes in Diogenem Laertium'' Paris 1663 (reprint: London, 1664; Amsterdam, 1692) *''Origini della lingua italiana'' (1669) *''Dictionnaire etymologique'' (1650 and 1670) *''Observations sur la langue française'' (1672–1676) *''Histoire de Sablé'' (1686) A second part of this work was edited from the manuscript and published by J. B. Haureau in 1873. *''Anti-Baillet'' (1690) *''Historia mulierum philosopharum'' (1690) - French language translation as: "Histoire des femmes philosophes", Gilles Ménage; 2006, Paris; Editions

Arléa Arléa is a French publishing house created in 1986. Arléa publishes thirty new titles each year, including pocket ones. His catalog contains more than a thousand titles: the great classics of Antiquity (whether Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit or ...

(Translated into French from Latin by Manuella Vaney with an introduction by Claude Tarrene); 96 pages, - (See: https://web.archive.org/web/20141013152817/http://www.arlea.fr/Histoire-des-femmes-philosophes,649 ).

English translations

* ''The History of Women Philosophers'' translated from the Latin with an introduction by Beatrice H. Zedler, Lanham: University press of America (1984)

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Menage, Gilles 1613 births 1692 deaths People from Angers 17th-century philologists 17th-century French lawyers French philologists 17th-century French writers 17th-century French male writers