Jean de La Ceppède

Jean de La Ceppède (c. 1550 – 1623) was a French nobleman, judge, and poet from Aix-en-Provence. He was a Christian poet^[1] and wrote Alexandrine sonnets in Middle French during the Renaissance in France.^[2] He is best known for his Les Théorèmes sur le Sacré Mystère de Nostre Rédemption, a sequence of 515 sonnets, published in two volumes in 1613 and 1622.^[1] Taken together, the sonnets are an exegesis on the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ^[1] and take a heuristic approach.^[1]

Jean de La Ceppède was born circa 1550 in Marseille.^[2][3] His father was Jean-Baptiste de La Ceppède and his mother, Claude de Bompar.^[3][4] According to Keith Bosley, the de La Ceppède family was of Spanish heritage and may have been related to Saint Teresa of Avila, who was born a Cepeda.^[5]

He received a Doctorate in Law.^[3]

De La Ceppède became an Advisor to the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence on 22 October 1578.^[3][4] He advised Perrinet de Rouillas.^[3] He became the President of the Court of Audit in 1583, replacing Hughes de Bompar de Magnan.^[4] He became its First President on 14 July 1608, replacing Jean de Rollands de Réauville^[4] and, as the President of a Parliament Court, de La Ceppède was enrolled in the ranks of the Nobles of the Robe.

Despite his devoutly Roman Catholic faith, de La Ceppède was a Politique and supported the claim of the Calvinist Henri of Navarre under Salic Law to the throne of France during the French Wars of Religion. For this reason, de La Ceppède was arrested in 1589, after the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence fell to the armies of the militantly anti-Protestant Catholic League. De La Ceppède attempted to escape disguised as a shoemaker, but was shot and recaptured. De La Ceppède was later released on the orders of a senior member of the League who held him in esteem. It was only in 1596 that Marseilles fell to the armies of the now-Catholic King Henri IV.^[5]

De La Ceppède acquired the estate of Aygalades from Melchior de Fallet on 31 March 1599.^[3] As a result, he became known as the Seigneur (or "Lord of the Manor") of Ayglades.^[2] The estate was home to a community of Carmelites, and de La Ceppède funded the reconstruction of their chapel.^[4]

During the French Wars of Religion, de La Ceppède belonged to a Royalist literary circle which included the son of Nostradamus. During the same period, he began writing the sonnets that appear in the Theorems.^[6]

As France was increasingly reunified by the armies of King Henri IV, de La Ceppède published his first collection of poems, which was an imitation of the Seven Penitential Psalms. According to Keith Bosley, de La Ceppède's book was one of many peace offerings to the new King by the poets of Provence, where support for the Catholic League had been overwhelming.^[5]

Accord to a 2012 article about de La Ceppède by Christopher O. Blum, "It was in 1594, at the end of the French Wars of Religion, that he published his first work, an imitation of the Penitential Psalms of David. In a dedicatory epistle that was an extended meditation upon theme of shipwreck, he declared his desire to 'dispose his soul and, with it, poor France' to look to the Cross for safety and to take 'the good David' as guide for 'this perilous navigation.' To paraphrase or imitate the Psalms was a common undertaking in those days. De La Ceppède's efforts may be likened to those of some of the best-known poets of the period, including his friend Malherbe (Psalm 146), the Castilian friar Luis de Léon (Psalm 130), and George Herbert (Psalm 23). The recitation of the seven penitential psalms (Psalms 6, 33, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143) was then a popular Lenten practice, and de La Ceppède's imitations, each accompanied with a lengthy prayer, succeed in expressing the sentiments of a contrite and humble heart. The work also included a number of other poems, including twelve sonnets that he offered in the hope that 'they would give some consolation to Christian souls amidst the numerous evils that they suffer' and as an advanced offering from a more ambitious task upon which he was already laboring, the Theorems upon the Sacred Mystery of Our Redemption."^[7]

When it was published in 1613, de La Ceppède dedicated the first volume of the Theorems to the queen mother, Marie de Medici. He also sent a copy to Saint Francis de Sales, who had been a highly successful Catholic missionary among the French Protestants of the Chablais and who was then the Roman Catholic Bishop of overwhelmingly Calvinist Geneva. In response to de La Ceppède's frequent comparison of Jesus Christ to figures from Greek and Roman mythology, the Bishop wrote, "[I am] drawn by that learned piety which so happily makes you transform the Pagan Muses into Christian ones."^[5]

When the second volume of the Theorems appeared in 1622, de La Ceppède dedicated it to King Louis XIII, in celebration of both the King's recent coming of age and his military victory against an uprising of the Huguenots of Languedoc, which had been led by Henri, Duke of Rohan.^[5]

According to Christopher Blum, "The Theorems is not only poetry, it is a splendid work of erudition, as each sonnet is provided with a commentary linking it to scriptural and patristic sources and, especially, to the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. The work bears the mark of the Renaissance: the sonnet, that choice mode of expressing romantic love, is here purged and elevated and put in the service of the epic tale of God's love for man. As de La Ceppède put it in his introduction—which can be read in Keith Bosley's admirable translation of seventy of the sonnets—the harlot Lady Poetry had been unstitched of 'her worldly habits' and shorn of her 'idolatrous, lying and lascivious hair' by the 'two-edged razor of profound meditation on the Passion and death of our Saviour.'"^[7]

De La Ceppède married Madeleine de Brancas-Ceyreste, the daughter of Gaspard de Brancas-Forcalquier and Françoise d'Ancezune, and widow of Etienne de Mantin.^[3] The wedding took place on 30 April 1585.^[3] They had a daughter, Angélique, who married Henri de Simiane, Seigneur (or Lord) of La Coste.^[3]

He married a second time, Anne de Faret, the daughter of Accurse de Faret, the Squire of Avignon, on 11 February 1611.^[4]

De La Ceppède died, loaded down with honors, at Avignon in July 1623.^[2][6]

In the year following Jean de La Ceppède's death, Cardinal de Richelieu became King Louis XIII's Minister of State and, largely through the influence of François de Malherbe, Baroque poetry was replaced by Neo-Classicism. To this day, the French poetry and literature of the Renaissance is often looked down on and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux's maxim, Enfin Malherbe vint ("Finally Malherbe arrived"), continues to be taken for granted. De La Ceppède's verses were accordingly consigned to oblivion until 1915, when they were unearthed by Fr. Henri Bremond and appeared in the first volume of his book Histoire littéraire du Sentiment religieux en France. Since then, de La Ceppède's poetry has experienced a revival. It has appeared in multiple poetry anthologies and several scholarly works have been written about its author.^[8]

Following his death in 1623, Jean de La Ceppède's former estate grew into a village called Les Aygalades [fr],^[9] which is now part of the 15th arrondissement of Marseille. In 1689, part of the estate was purchased by the aristocratic de Guillermy family, who built upon it the Bastide de la Guillermy, which is now the oldest building in the city.

• A Poet of the Passion of Christ by Christopher O. Blum. Crisis Magazine, April 2, 2012.