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Hercule Audiffret (15 May 1603 - 16 April 1659), known as "le Père Hercule", was a French orator, religious writer and Superior General of the Congrégation des Doctrinaires. He was the maternal uncle of Esprit Fléchier.

Life
Hercule Audiffret was born in Carpentras. He died in Paris. He brought up Esprit Fléchier in Tarascon.

He was Superior General of the Congrégation des Doctrinaires from 1647 to 1653.

Works

 * Lettres a Philandre (1637-1638)
 * Collection of 16 letters sent to Valentin Conrart, the first Secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie Française, by Hercule Audiffret, while he was staying in Grasse as the guest of bishop Antoine Godeau (winter 1637 to spring 1638)
 * Questions et explications spirituelles et curieuses, sur le psautier et divers psaumes de David (1668)
 * Ouvrages de Piété (1675)

Collège des Doctrinaires
Depuis 1644, la ville de Tarascon possédait un établissement d'enseignement secondaire : le collège des Doctrinaires. Ce dernier occupait l'ancienne « Osta del Commun » puisqu'il avait investi, en 1653, les locaux laissés vacants depuis qu'un nouvel hôtel de ville avait été construit sur la place du marché. Le collège des Doctrinaires était situé derrière l'église Sainte-Marthe.

CHAUSSY, YVES, ed. Un Devot bel esprit: le Pere Hercule Audiffret (1603-1659). Lettres de direction. Paris: Editions de la Source, 1974. Pp. 191. 39 F.

In his Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France (Paris, 1928), Henri Brémond uncovered a host of unknown or completely forgotten writers among which was his provençal compatriot, Pere Hercule Audiffret (1603-1659), concerning whom he remarked, "J'ai tant de raisons de l'aimer" (VII, 165). Although Pere Hercule's duties in the Congregation of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine (Doctrinaires), of which he became Superior General (1647-1653), never permitted him to give completely free course to his literary talents, it would seem that he might well have been capable of earning for himself a place of high distinction among men of letters. As it was, Guez de Balzac, Chapelain, Conrart, and Godeau were all acquaintances or close friends of his. The famous preacher, Fléchier, was his nephew. He knew Pascal. Now, finally, that enthusiasm for Pere Hercule which prompted Bremond's heretofore fruitless proposal to publish a little volume of his texts, "d'une lecture aussi agreable que pieusement stimulante" (VII, 186), seems to have found its supporters in the editors of two complementary volumes of P. Hercule's letters. While Professors Georges Couton and Yves Giraud have recently brought to light P. Hercule's Lettres de Philandre (1637-1638), written to Conrart in Paris while Hercule was visiting Godeau in Grasse, letters which were essentially intended as a diversion for the writer as well as his reader, Dom Yves Chaussy has also made available a very fine collection of lettres de direction which reveal another side of a fascinating personality and his epoch.

A specialist in the history of the women's branch of the order of Saint Benedict, and author of Les Bénédictines et la réforme catholique en France au XVIIe siècle (1975), Dom Chaussy discovered an unknown manuscript collection (no. 1800) of P. Hercule's letters at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Of them he has carefully selected 127, primarily letters of spiritual direction and counselling, with which he inaugurates the new "Documents et Textes Spirituels" collection of the Editions de la Source. Due to the imperfections of the Mazarine manuscript, modern spelling and punctuation have been adopted. The letters, for the most part updated, are grouped according to their addressees: the Abbess Francoise Renee de Lorraine and the nuns of the Benedictine Abbey of Notre-Dame de Jouarre, the Dominican nuns of Saint-Thomas and of the Couvent de la Croix, and diverse correspondents. The letters in the last group even include one by P. Hercule to his brother-in-law concerning the vocation of his soon to be famous nephew who, it would seem, according to both Bremond and the Abbe A. Fabre (La Jeunesse de Fléchier, Paris, 1882), was to reflect his uncle's influence even in his oratorical style. Dom Chaussy's detailed introduction, richly annotated (as are the texts) and painstakingly researched, sheds light on an often neglected and not insignificant aspect of seventeenth-century society, the milieu devot. The religious houses frequented by la societe devote were far from being a marginal sector of society. Abbesses were often princesses, and the nuns in their charge were often sophisticated, intelligent women who could appreciate the subtleties of fine literary style, and even cultivated their own rhétorique des couvents. These convents were, apparently, spiritual Hôtels de Rambouillet. And, as Bremond puts it, "aussi vite et mieux que Balzac, Conrart et les autres, les couvents ont devine le P. Hercule" (VII, 180). Although the letters treat religious matters, the modern reader will be interested in their literary aspect, the naturalness and variety of P. Hercule's style with which Dom Chaussy amply justifies Bremond's remark made after reading his earlier letters, that "Hercule est d'un demi-siecle en avant sur la prose savante et toute latine de son temps" (VII, 167). The charm of this prose makes all the more pleasurable the discovery of the multiple aspects of a rich intellect and personality and of a whole intellectual, spiritual, and social milieu with its concerns and tastes, which comes alive in this first-rate edition.

Catholic University of America Robert N. Nicolich

LE PERE HERCULE. Lettres a Philandre (1637-1638). Ed. by Georges Couton and Yves Giraud. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1975. Pp. 107. 15 FS.

The sixteen letters published for the first time in this slim volume come as a pleasant surprise. Until now this correspondence has remained buried in the manuscripts of the Recueil Conrart (Arsenal, ms. 4116, pp. 1-100), unread but by a few specialists of seventeenth-century literary and religious history. Although the letters are neither signed nor dated, internal evidence and the testimony of the author's contemporaries allow his identity to be established with certitude: Hercule Audiffret (1603-1659), known as "le Pere Hercule," a distinguished member (and later superior general) of the Congregation des Peres de la Doctrine Chrétienne and a close friend of some better known architects of "la doctrine classique" - Balzac, Chapelain, and especially Conrart and Godeau. The addressee, "Philandre," is none other than Valentin Conrart, to whom Pere Hercule writes weekly letters describing his six-month stay in the provinces with "Théopompe," their mutual friend, Antoine Godeau. Recently appointed bishop of Grasse, Godeau had invited Pere Hercule, famed for his preaching, to give the Lenten sermons in his diocese in 1638.

The establishment of the text itself presented few editorial problems since there exists only manuscript copy of the letters, written in Conrart's own clear and familiar hand. But the task of identifying and explaining often obscure references and quotations was a challenging one and admirably handled by the editors. The twenty-page introduction is also a model of scholarship and good judgement. In addition, the editors have provided a bibliography of Pere Hercule's writings, a useful index of letters, several attractive plates, and an appendix including three short works of Godeau which had never been reprinted, an eglogue, and two letters addressed to Pere Hercule.

The letters are interesting for a variety of reasons. As the editors rightly claim, they constitute "un temoignage de valeur sur la vie intellectuelle autour de l'annee 1638" (p. 7). Pere Hercule describes his intellectual pastimes in "le desert grassois," the books he reads (mostly on religious subjects) in Godeau's library, and his lively conversations with his host and another guest on literary issues of the day. The discussions are intelligent, subtle, and refreshingly unpedantic. They consider such subjects as style, both written and oratorical, religious drama, the rules for tragedy, and comment favorably on the recently published Sentiments of the Academy on Le Cid. On all questions their positions place them in the mainstream of the movement preparing classicism. More unusual subjects are broached and treated with considerable originality: the problems of translation, the nature of the eglogue, and especially the art of letter-writing.

The importance of these letters is not limited to literary history. Rather than expose these serious matters in a formal way, Pere Hercule mingles them freely with amusing details on life in the provinces, glimpses of Provencal landscapes, anecdotes and "aventures," such as his encounter with a mysterious stranger on the beach near Cannes, which he relates with evident relish for le romanesque. The tone is one of familiar conversation, revealing the writer's engaging personality. As Pere Hercule himself states, "Qui fait une lettre, fait son portrait" (p. 39). In this he is most successful.

His style, remarkable for the period, gives this charming, human document a real literary value. It is always lively, can be eloquent or witty, and above all seems natural and spontaneous. Unlike the often ponderous, latinate prose pieces of this generation, Pere Hercule's letters truly illustrate the literary values he professes. Lettres a Philandre can be read today for more than the usual archival reasons because their author, decades before Fenelon to whom he can best be compared, had already discovered "l'art de plaire et de toucher."

University of California, Irvine Gabrielle Verdier