Ian Maclean - Montaigne and the Humanist Jurists

Montaigne and humanist jurists

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IAN MACLEAN, 14 "The place of interpretation: Montaigne and humanist jurists on words, intention and meaning"Nous doubtions sur Ulpian, redoutons encore sur Bartolus et Baldus. II falloit effacer la trace de cette diversit innumerable d'opinions, non poinct s'en parer et en entester la postrit ...

Il y a plus affaire interpreter les interpretations qu' interpreter les choses, et plus de livres sur les livres que sur autre subject: nous ne faisons que nous entregloser.1This famous passage of 'De l'exprience' hints at the existence of a Montaigne rarely found in the Essais: the lawyer who practised for more than ten years, and who may have undergone professional training at Bordeaux, Toulouse or Paris in the early 1550s.2 In the opening pages of his final essay, Montaigne attacks both the teaching and the administration of law, referring discreetly to his experience ('Combien ay-je veu de condemnations, plus crimineuses que le crime?' (iii. 13,1048) ) but claiming no specialist knowledge of his subject, which is introduced to support and amplify his comments about the relative merits of reason and experience. A rich cluster of oppositions is woven together in these pages (1041-54): not only is reason compared unfavourably with experience, but also general with particular, unity with diversity, philosophy with nature, similarity with difference, immobility with mobility, impersonality with the expression of the self. Such oppositions have permitted modern commentators on this passage to explore its relationship to nominalism, or to textuality as understood by post-structuralist critics;3 but Montaigne's comments, as well as his cluster of themes, relate also to the discussion in his day about the interpretation of laws. Such discussion is found principally in neoLatin commentaries produced for a specialist audience; but a significant number of vernacular texts in France after 1550 contain it also, as Donald Kelley has shown.4 Franois Hotman,

Jean Bodin, Pierre Grgoire and others publish their works in both languages, and illustrate not only the growing influence of the vernacular but also the continuing vigour of the Latin tradition as a medium for European scholarly communication. The purpose of this brief investigation is to place the essayist in the context of this legal discussion and to point to some significant similarities and divergences.

Before the humanist developments of the sixteenth century, scholastic jurists had evolved an intricate and subtle science of interpretation, the mos italicus, inspired both by Aristotle's Organon and the techniques used by medieval theologians.5 The focus of this science is less on the real than on the logical; words are defined and described in terms of words and of systems (genera) of words; accession to 'res' is of secondary importance. Bartolus's gloss on D 12. 1 (De rebus creditis, si certum petetur) makes this clear: 'ad cognitionem specierum debet praecedere cognitio generis' ('The knowledge of genera must precede the knowledge of species'). Accursius is no less certain in his gloss on the rubric of D 50.16 (De verborum [et rerum] significatione):6 'verba significant active, sed res passive. Nam verba significant, et res significantur. Et est significare, demonstrare rem de qua quaeritur, proprio nomine ei attributo' ('words signify actively, things passively. For words signify, and things are signified. To signify, furthermore, is to demonstrate the object of enquiry, having accorded to it its proper name'). Baldus codifies interpretation of words into principles;7 later writers produce treatises on the topic, of which the most notable are by Stephanus de Federicis (De interpretatione legum, late fifteenth century) and Constantinus Rogerius (De iuris interpretatione, same approximate date).8 An influential tract on a small segment of the topic, to which reference is frequently made by subsequent writers, is the De interpretatione legis extensiva by Bartholomaeus Caepolla of Padua (d. 1477).9Humanist jurists, as would be expected, unsettle the scholastic approach. The mos gallicus embodies more refined philological, historical and rhetorical procedures; its presence in French law schools can be traced to before Montaigne's birth. In matters of interpretation, Andreas Alciato's De verborum significatione (1530), which contains a long four-part essay on signification as well as a commentary on D 50. 16, seems to start a vogue for such commentaries: Pierre Rebuff i of the Paris faculty, Jean Breche of Tours and Guillaume Forner of Orleans follow in his wake.11 In a different mode, Franois Hotman's discursive essay entitled Iurisconsultus, sive de ptimo genere iuris interpretandi254



255(1559)12 reflects the same interest in reviving the approach of jurists to legal explication; perhaps one should also mention the many lexica published throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, which indicate a new awareness of philological problems and a new attitude to legal phraseology.13 Alciato's work is elegant, and uncompromising in its attitude to scholastic predecessors; Rebuffi, Breche and Forner are less polemical and more eclectic, making fewer claims to originality than either Alciato or Hotman. Rebuffi refers his reader to Caepolla and to Alciato without comment and without a statement of preference (op. cit. 2);commonplaces drawn from de Federicis's tract are found in all three commentators alongside references to (and quotations from) Plato, Horace, Cicero and the Greek text of Aristotle.14 The terminology of medieval linguistics coexists with Ciceronian Latin.15 These writers of textbooks on law may be said to represent, in another age and in a different mode, Marcuse's problem about the recuperability of revolutionary gestures in Western democracy by absorption and toleration; their humanist trappings are grafted on to distinctly neoscholastic roots, and look suspiciously like disarming gestures to the New Learning. This is not the case with Alciato or Hot-man, however precarious may be their claim to originality;16 Quintilian and, in the latter case, Hermagoras are openly proclaimed as inspirations and sources, and are clearly represented in the text.Montaigne's Essais most resemble the preoccupations and opinions of Alciato and Hotman in his prefatory remarks to 'De l'institution des enfans'. There he praises moral philosophy at the expense of the speculative, and claims that 'la science ... est bien plus fiere de prter ses moyens conduire une guerre, commander un peuple, pratiquer l'amiti d'un prince ou d'une nation estrangiere, qu' dresser un argument dialectique, ou plaider un appel, ou ordonner une masse de pillules' (i. 26, 148). Hotman begins his treatise by praising the Romans for their military skills, their oratory and their administrative abilities (including in this the drawing-up and enforcement of laws), all of which he associates with moral philosophy and contrasts with the 'varias et inanes verborum concertationes' of metaphysical speculation (Cynosura ii. 107). Montaigne's insistence on the importance of 'sens et substance' (i. 26, 149) in learning finds echoes in Alciato's tract, from which unnecessary gloss and commentary have been cut away, and in which res take on a new importance and-dignity.17 But the essayist is much less enthusiastic than either Hotman or Alciato about

rhetoric and language arts; Alciato's reproduction of a treatise on rhetorical figures in what appears to be a somewhat arbitrary way would scarcely have won his approval. Nor does he share these humanists' optimistic vision of jurisprudence as the 'ars aequi et boni':18 'r les loix se maintiennent en credit, non par ce qu'elles sont justes, mais par ce qu'elles sont loix. C'est le fondement mystique de leur authorit; elles n'en ont poinct d'autre' (iii. 13, 1049). More importantly, however, he harbours doubts about the claims of jurisprudence to completeness and to certainty.Both Alciato's and Hotman's treatises offer a method which is claimed to be exhaustive: in the former case it is quadruple ('per proprietatem, per improprium, per usum, per interpreta-tionem'), in the latter tripartite ('triplica ratio [Grammaticorum, Dialectorum, Iurisconsultorum] omnino iuris interpretanda). Montaigne attacks such a claim in the figure of its first perpetrator, Justinian:Pourtant, l'opinion de celuy-l ne me plaist guiere, qui pensoit par la multitude des loix brider l'authorit des juges, en leur taillant leurs morceaux:il ne sentoit point qu'il y a autant de libert et d'estendue l'interprtationdes loix qu' leur faon.(iii. 13,1042)The text to which reference is apparently made here is the opening section (written in the form of letters by Justinian) to Codex 1. 17 De veteri iure enucleando. In these letters, the emperor first instructs Tribonian in the 'almost impossible' {magis impossibile) task of sifting through all extant legal material, eliminating antinomiae and similar laws, and establishing the Digest and Codex as complete and authoritative works. A second letter establishes a teaching programme (beginning with a study of the Institutes), prohibits all subsequent commentary, and provides for changes in the law arising from human imperfection in the project itself and historical evolution in society.Although the progression of the argument is very different, and the conclusion diametrically opposed to that reached by Montaigne, a number of striking similarities emerge from a comparison of these letters with the opening pages of 'De l'exprience'. Justinian's acceptance of chance and mobility as intrinsic features of the human condition has many parallels with Montaigne's strictures on the same topic:Humani vero iuris conditio semper in infinitum decurrit, et nihil est in ea quod stare perpetuo possit, multas etenim formas edere natura novas256



257deproperat, non desperamus quaedam postea emerg negotia quae adhuc legum laqueis non sunt innovata.19(It is the condition of human law always to decline endlessly, no part of it can ever stand unchanged for ever, and nature makes haste to bring forth many new forms; we expect therefore that subsequent [to our endeavours] some situations will arise which thus far are not dealt with by the subtle wording of our laws.)

Even the conclusion to this ('si quid igitur tale contigerit, augustum imploretur remedium': 'if this should happen, the authority of the emperor should be sought') may be seen to be acceptable to a political commentator with arguably royalist and legitimist leanings.20 Furthermore, Justinian begins one letter by declaring that perfect laws are beyond the capacity of man, and lie in the province of God; Montaigne makes the same point on a number of occasions (see ii. 12, 563-4; ii. 8, 365; iii. 13, 1042-3). The essayist cannot but applaud also Justinian's hostility to commentary, and his attempt to 'effacer la trace de cette diversit innumerable d'opinions', to spare posterity by destroying all previous law books and by promulgating a punitive edict against the 'verbosi' who generate 'varia discordia':Alias autem legum interpretationes, immo magis perversiones eos iactare non concedimus: ne verbositas eorum aliquid legibus nostris adferat ex confusione dedecus, quod et in antiquis edicti perpetui commentatoribus factum est, qui opus moderate confectum hue atque illuc in diversas sententias producentes, in infinitum detraxerunt, ut pene omnis romana sanctio esset confusio.(We hereby prohibit [jurists] from producing any other interpretations, or rather perversions, of our laws: lest their verbosity should bring dishonour to our laws by its confusion, as was done by the commentators on the Perpetual Edict, who by extracting new senses from one or another part of this well-made edict, reduced it to a multitude of meanings, causing confusion to arise in nearly all Roman decrees.)

These similarities should not however disguise the fact that Montaigne criticizes Justinian's attempt to 'brider l'authorit des juges'; that he does not subscribe to the emperor's (perhaps nave) belief that antinomiae can be eliminated from law; and that similarity and difference are problematized by the essayist to a point where Justinian's conception of 'similar laws' is rendered invalid.21 The aporias in Justinian's letters (human things are all subject to change, but his law is to be 'peraevum'; all previous commentaries on law are to be effaced, but Tri-bonian's work preserves rubrics, the names of previous jurists,

and elements of commentary itself, notably D 50. 16 De uer-borum [et rerum] signification) may have been perceived by Montaigne; yet even he is unable to 'effacer la trace' of his own opinion, and like medieval and Renaissance commentators, \ finds himself commenting on a text prohibiting commentary, and postulating, like Justinian, a general rule ('humani iuris conditio semper in infinitum decurrit') which makes the project of prohibiting 'diversas sententias' anti-human, since it imposes on mankind an interdiction with which by its nature it cannot comply:

Il n'est dsir plus naturel que le dsir de connoissance ...

Les hommes mescognoissent la maladie naturelle de leur esprit: il ne faict que fureter et quester, et va sans cesse tournoiant, bastissant et s'empestrant en sa besongne, comme nos vers de soye, et s'y estouffe. Mus in pice.22Law must, to some degree, proceed by definition, and medieval glosses are made up in great part of definitions in the scholastic mode, by genus, differentia, species, proprium, accidens. Where definitions are prominent in the works of Caepolla, de Federicis and Rogerius, they are less schematic and apparent in Alciato and Hotman, although Rebuffi, Breche and Forner are not adverse to them. Montaigne's Essais are famous for their forthright rejection of definition:

J'entens assez que c'est que mort et volupt; qu'on ne s'amuse pas lesanatomizer.(ii. 10, 393)Nostre contestation est verbale. Je demande que c'est que nature, volupt, cercle, et substitution. La question est de parolles, et se paye de mesme. Une pierre c'est un corps. Mais qui presseroit: Et corps qu'est-ce? Substance. Et substance quoy? ainsi de suitte, acculeroit en fin le respondant au bout de son calepin. On eschange un mot pour un autre mot, et souvent plus incogneu. Je say mieux que c'est qu'homme que je ne say que c'est animal, ou mortel, ou raisonnable.(iii. 13,1046)

These views show Montaigne to be completely out of sympathy with, for example, the De interpretatione legis extensiva of Caepolla, in which an initial definition of the words of the title ('extensio interpretativa est progressio iusta de dispositivo expresso ad non expressum': 'interpretative extension is the true progression from that which is explicitly set down to that which is not explicit') is subjected to further intensive definition

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of every word, 'quia in diffinitione vis et substantia rei diffinitae et eius materiae consistit, cum diffinitio (ut inquit Boetius) rei essentiam demonstret' ('for in definition resides the substance and force of the defined object and of its matter, since definition, as Boethius says, demonstrates the essence of a thing').23 Caepolla cites not only Boethius but also Cicero as authority to justify beginning with a definition; the same text from the De officiis inspires Montaigne to write that 'sa faon d'escrire [Cicero's] me semble ennuyeuse, et toute autre pareille faon. Car ses prefaces, definitions, partitions, etymologies, consument la plus part de son ouvrage; ce qu'il y a de vif et de mouelle, est estouff par ses longueries d'apprts' (ii.10, 393). Yet he reproduces from Sabundus's Theologia naturalis a conception of the relationship between words and things which is nominalist and which moreover allows for the notion of verbal extension;24 and there are moments in the Essais where a conception of language appears by which words do not merely become devalued but also are able to be infused with new meanings. Such a conception presupposes a science of measuring and understanding the frontiers of words: and while Montaigne would no doubt pour scorn on Caepolla's quasi-tautological definitions of words such as 'extension',25 it is noteworthy that words containing the semantic force of 'frontier' appear frequently in the Essais, and act as a kind of tacit concession of the need for definition.26The bold statements 'j'entens assez . . .' and 'je say mieux . . .' reveal that Montaigne dislikes verbal definition because he believes it to be unnecessary. Alciato, Rebuffi, Breche and Forner engage themselves in a precarious way to write such 'unnecessary' commentaries: that is, commentaries on a commentary on words, the De verborum [et rerum] significatione, which at one point (D 50. 16. 6) implies that verbal analysis can be harmful and parasitic:

Verbum Ex legibus sic accipiendum est, tarn ex legum sententia quam ex verbis.

(The words 'from the laws' are to be taken to mean 'as much from the spirit of the laws as from their letter'.)

Even the rubric De verborum [et rerum] significatione provokes defensive gestures from these commentators, which cause their glosses at these points to take on the same preoccupations as does Montaigne in 'De l'exprience', and to reproduce the same cluster of themes and oppositions. I noted above that like

Montaigne, Justinian in his Letters authorizing the Digest contrasts immobile with mobile, general with particular, unity with diversity, similarity with difference, although he assigns different values to these oppositions; comparison of the Essais and these commentaries reveals, as will be seen, more powerful common resonances.

Some common points may not in themselves be significant: Rebuffi, like Montaigne, argues that Justinian was wrong to attempt to prevent judges from engaging in interpretation (op. cit. 54); most commentators piously condemn those who conduct 'altercationes et disputationes, quae in nominibus magis quam rebus positae sunt' ('altercations and disputations, which are located in words rather than things'); even scholastics inveigh against the 'turba librorum', the 'innumera librorum multitudo' of interpreters and scholars, sometimes quoting such philosophers as Seneca, whose authority is invoked to urge readers to trust only one commentator (the one whose text is in their hands) and to scorn the rest.27 A more important parallel is provided by Forner, who in conceding that general laws do not exist, coincides with the central critique of law in 'De l'exprience':

(In the determination of human situations, which is the subject-matter of civil law, a greater number and wider variety are perceived than can be easily contained within rigid precepts: Plato teaches that no knowledge can be acquired of infinite things. Therefore it is necessary for laws to be made open-ended: since, as Aristotle says in his Politics, the law must dispose in a general way, while individual acts are all relative to the individual will.)

Yet more striking is the insistence in these texts on the practical effects of language and the need for simple and com-monsense rules for the understanding of words. Forner again provides a good example :

Sermo familiaris et quotidianus non cohaereret, si verba inter nos aucu-paremur: Imperium domesticum nullum esset, si servulis hoc concederemusut ad verba nobis obedirent, non ad id quod ex verbis intelligi possit,obtemperarent.(op. cit. 22)

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(Everyday familiar speech would not remain coherent, if we were to chase after words between ourselves: there can be no authority in the home if we concede to our most junior servants that they may obey us in the letter of our words, and not comply with that which can be properly inferred from our words.)

Such sentiments are strongly reminiscent of the closing words of 'Du dementir':Nostre intelligence se conduisant par la seule voye de la parolle, celuy qui la fauce, trahit la socit publique. C'est le seul util par le moien duquel se communiquent nos volontez et nos penses, c'est le truchement de nostre ame: s'il nous faut, nous ne nous tenons plus, nous ne nous entreconnois-sons plus. S'il nous trompe, il rompt tout nostre commerce et dissoult toutes les liaisons de nostre police.29According to Rebuffi, the laws need to be interpreted not as an excuse for teaching Cicero or Aristotle, but for the sake of the laws themselves, and their meaning should be established by their 'proprius contextus'. The insistence on the use of a word as a guide to signification the 'naturalis sensus', the 'communis loquendi usus' found in all of these commentaries betrays the same practical aims as those which are praised by implication in 'De l'exprience'. One may associate this with the growing interest in legal phraseology at the end of the sixteenth century, and in the legislation concerning slander and the drawing up of contracts and wills:30 these topics are mentioned by Alciato, Rebuffi and others, and questioned also by Montaigne:

Pourquoy est-ce que nostre langage commun, si ais tout autre usage, devient obscur et non intelligible en contract et testament, que celuy qui s'exprime si clairement, quoy qu'il die et escrive, ne trouve en cela aucune maniere de se declarer qui ne tombe en doubte et contradiction?(iii. 13,1043)

This question may well be seen to be disingenuous; the rules of how to 's'exprimer clairement' are not established, and it would seem that Montaigne himself did not have complete confidence in his own ability to represent himself correctly ('je crains mortellement d'estre pris en eschange par ceux qui il arrive de connoistre mon nom' (iii. 5, 824)). We are brought back to the rgula from the De verborum [et rerum] signifi-catione (D 50. 16. 6) to which "air our commentators devote some pages.

Interpretation is compared, by Rebuffi and by Montaigne, to the act of entering a building; the words constitute the exterior, the intention the interior.31 This relationship of words to meaning or intention can also be described in terms of surface and depth, or posteriority and priority. Before, beneath, inside the words of the legislator is his intention ('sententia', 'mens', 'voluntas'). This is a mentalistic notion, from which Montaigne never departs explicitly.32 The 'reality' or 'substance' of speech lies in the human heart, accessible only to the speaker and to God: 'il n'y a, que vous qui sache si vous estes lche et ' cruel, ou loyal et devotieux; ls autres ne vous voyent poinct; ils vous devinent par conjectures incertaines'.33 This view is attributed to the 'theologi' by Rebuffi: a word is a 'mentis con-ceptus, qui de voce formanda et emittenda concipitur, antequam ulterius ad labia producatur; [hanc] [cogitationem] nullus posset declarare praeter Deum qui solus est cordium scrutator' ('a concept of the mind which is conceived for the voice to form and enunciate before it is brought forth by the lips; knowledge of this concept none can claim other than God who alone sees into our hearts') (op. cit. 3). Elsewhere (55) Rebuffi quotes St Paul (2 Cor. 3: 6 'litera occidit, spiritus autem vivifi-cat') to reinforce this hierarchy.34 Words as names are the servants of things and conceptions: 'Instrumenta rerum substantias docendi discernendique' (3); their raison d'tre is their use. The opening pages of 'De l'exprience' fully endorse this view.

The role of interpretation is therefore to provide access to the 'mens' or 'voluntas' of the speaker, and then to disappear, to leave no 'trace', to be consumed in the act of making intention accessible without ambigiuity. Alciato, Rebuffi, Forner, Breche all echo this view, which is that espoused by Montaigne in the quotation which opened this investigation. The legal commentators all quote Celsus (D 1. 3. 17): 'scire leges non est verba earum tenere, sed vim atque potestatem' ('to know laws is not to possess the words of the laws, but rather their inherent force and power'). The Decretum (ii. 64) adds its authority to the Roman jurist: 'in foliis verborum non consistit evangelium, sed in radice rationis et in sensu' ('scripture does not consist in the leaves of words, but in the roots of understanding and meaning').35 The fifteenth-century jurist Andreas Barbatia produces yet another frequently encountered adage: 'mens se habet ad literam sicut anima ad corpus' ('the meaning is to the letter as the soul is to the body').36 In all of these formulations, th hierarchy of intention over word seems clear; but they all contain a crucial slippage away from the self-effacing role of the

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263interpreter and the instrumentality of words. The vis ac potestas, the ratio, the anima are not explicitly linked to the speaker or writer of the word, but are identified rather as a verbal property (perhaps even an essential verbal property). If words contain an 'anima', a 'vis ac potestas', a 'ratio', they can be thought of as independent, having no origin or authority beyond themselves, possessed of an inherent logic and a self-sufficient force with which they can in turn endow the law: 'ratio legis mens legis est' (Bartolus, in D 24. 3. 17, De soluto matrimonio). Now access to words and to the law requires a mediator who is able to lay bare the intrinsic properties of words.

Through a humanist detour the pursuit of res, the rejection of scholastic logic we have come full circle: Bartolus's stricture about the general science of law ('ad cognitionem specierum debet praecedere cognitio generis') can be applied again in the search for the system of legal language and in the appeal to 'aequitas' as a principle of interpretation. Signification ceases to be a subservient, posterior, self-effacing activity and becomes institutive of meaning, which resides in the nature of words and needs an interpreter to be liberated and expressed. It is now the art of representation 'tanquam in tabula' of that which before was not visible.37 The experts in signification, the interpreters, have wrested authority from testator, legislator and speaker: they declare themselves to be the 'prudentes' who sit in judgement over 'proprietas' and 'usus', who identify improper usage, and who instigate meanings 'per interpretationem'.

The central mechanism in this slippage between 'mens' and 'ratio' is to be found in the manipulation of notions of non-equivalence and priority. Caepolla's influential treatise De interpretatione legis extensiva is perhaps the most complete codification of forms of non-equivalence between meaning and words. He lists thirteen types of 'extended meaning';38 humanist jurists are less ambitious in their taxonomy, but retain those forms of non-equivalence which allow authority to pass from the speaker into the hands of the interpreter. Such forms arise from usage as affected by historical change and context; knowledge of parallel laws; the application of linguistic rules for the understanding of figures; and imperfect expression, by which the speaker becomes prey to the interpreter: 'qui aliud dicit, quam vult, neque dicit, quod vox significat, quia non vult, neque id quod vult, quia non loquitur' ('who says something other than that which he means, neither says what the words mean, because he does not mean it, nor^what he means, because he does not say it').39 From their humble exordia, the humanist

commentators on D 50.16 move to more and more authoritative and confident control of their text : Alciato's first sentence (both to his introductory essay, and to his commentary on the text of the Digest), reads 'cum inventa sint verba, ut dicentis sen-tentiam exprimant, merito eius voluntas in primis spectanda est' ('as words are chosen to express the meaning of their speaker, it is right to look first at his intention'): but within three pages he considers both the topic of definition and the authority of 'prudent men' in deciding word usage. Words can even come to supplant fact: 'plus valet scriptura quam quod actum est' ('what is written has greater validity than what is done'), writes Forner (op. cit. 22), quoting Modestinus, reversing the original priority of sense, intention and word. Rebuffi asks why the title De verborum [et rerum] significatione is placed at the end of the Digest rather than at the beginning, and out of this unpromising question manages to establish that sense is given to words only by interpretation, even though utterances are made to express prior intentions:

Iste titulus in fine Digestorum, et non in principio locatus fuerit, quia non potest elici verborum significatio, nisi prius verbis positis. Et sic necesse fuit leges praescribere, et ex illis postea vocabula colligere, ut Iuris-consulti fecerunt, qui post quinquaginta libros Digestorum haec vocabula ex illis extraxerunt. Nempe ex nihilo nihil colligi potest, arg. 1. decern ff. de verb, oblig. Sic dicit Iuriscons. de tit. de regulis iuris 1.1 in tit. proximo ibi sed ex iure quod est rgula fiat. Ergo oportuit prius ius scribere et postea ex iure verborum significationes, et rgulas elicere, ut factum exstitit. Et sic non est absurdum, sed necessarium eum, qui iura civilia profteri cupit, ab initio hunc titul. audire et memoriae mandare, quamvis Iuris-consulti in fine locaverint.40(This title was placed at the end of the Digest and not at the beginning, because the signification of words cannot be elicited from them until the words themselves are set down. Thus it was necessary to write the laws first, and afterwards to collect together words from them; as was indeed done by the jurists who after finishing the fifty books of the Digest extracted these words from them. For nothing can be extracted from nothing . . . And the jurist says in the title after the De verborum significatione that rules (regulae) are made from existing law. Therefore the law had first to be written and afterwards the meaning of the words of the law and the rules (regulae) elicited from it, as indeed has been done in this case. Thus for any who wish to profess civil law, it is not absurd but necessary to listen to and to commit to memory this title (the De verborum significatione) from the very beginning, although the jurists placed it at the end of the Digest.)Thus the title De verborum [et rerum] significatione, although

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265situated last in the Digest, and although clearly parasitic on the laws on which it comments, none the less gives sense to those laws, and dominates them by authorizing their meaning. In other words, an art which is dependent on and posterior to a set of conventions comes to precede these conventions and to act as their origin. Such phrases as 'nomina sunt instrumenta do-cendi discernendique', in which 'teaching' and 'making perceptible' are subordinated grammatically, now reveal their latent force.

In this brief investigation, there is not space to develop the full implications of this slippage. Rather, its presence in Montaigne's writing will be cursorily indicated. It appears in his treatment of the problem of res, verba and mens; it has its place in the justification for self-study which is to be found in the opening pages of 'De l'exprience' together with the critique of laws; and it can be detected in his preoccupation with originality. The problem of words and things is prominent in the sceptical developments of the 'Apologie de Raimond Sebond'. There, man's access to reality is consistently denied:

Il n'y a aucune constante existence, ny de nostre estre, ny de celuy des objects. Et nous, et nostre jugement, et toutes choses mortelles, vont coulant et roulant sans cesse. Ainsin il ne se peut establir rien de certain de l'un l'autre, et le jugeant et le jug estans en continuelle mutation et branle.Nous n'avons aucune communication l'estre, par ce que toute humaine nature est tousjours au milieu entre le naistre et le mourir, nebaillant de soy qu'une obscure apparence et ombre, et une incertaine etdebile opinion. Et si, de fortune, vous fichez vostre pense vouloirprendre son estre, ce sera ne plus ne moins que qui voudrait empoignerl'eau . . .(II. 12, 586)But even if we do not have access to res, we are ourselves the locus of the imago rerum, and the locus of the desire to know external reality: 'il n'est dsir plus naturel que le dsir de con-noissance'. As has been shown, Montaigne never departs from the doctrine that it is our intention which is the true judge of our words and actions; and the sole trace of our intention resides in words, which are the 'truchement de nostre ame'. Yet in the opening pages to 'De l'exprience', the science of interpretation of words and of legislating for words is exposed to a sceptical critique: even the image 'empoigner l'eau' is picked up again with a slight variation (mercury instead of water) to demonstrate

the wrongheadedness of engaging in definition or in rigid formulaic usage:

Les princes de cet art [legal phraseology], s'appliquans d'une peculiere attention trier des mots solemnes et former des clauses artistes ont tant pois chaque sillabe, espluch si primement chaque espce de cousture, que les voil enfrasquez et embrouillez en l'infinit des figures et si menues partitions, qu'elles ne peuvent plus tomber soubs aucun reiglement et prescription ny aucune certaine intelligence . . . Qui a veu des enfans essayans de renger certain nombre une masse d'argent-vif: plus ils le pressent et pestrissent et s'estudient le contraindre leur loy, plus ils irritent la libert de ce gnreux metal . . . C'est de mesme, car, en subdivisant les subtilitez, on apprend aux hommes d'accroistre ces doubtes.(iii. 13,1043)

Words, implicitly described as 'free' and 'noble' by analogy with mercury, escape all attempts at human control. But the conclusion, that we should trust our intuitive knowledge of the image of things, runs immediately into a major difficulty: we only know things or intentions and are only able to express them by virtue of words which represent them: the being to which we must accede therefore resides in words which are apparently its servants, but which, in this new configuration, are institutive of the very being to which they give access. For Montaigne, the act of communication further problematizes this difficulty, because it is the property both of the speaker and of the listener 'la parolle est moiti celuy qui parle, moiti celuy qui l'escoute'.41 Montaigne does not proceed from this to justify the study of methods of interpretation, nor of the language arts (one may remember the scornful passage about his maid's metonymy (i. 51, 294)), as do humanist jurists; but he concedes at a number of significant points the primacy of words, and may be said also to engage in quasi-definition, albeit of an informal kind.42He resolves this dilemma also by proclaiming triumphantly that his text is inane and devoid of sense, thereby contradicting the legal adage 'nihil ex nihilo colligi potest':

Je dis pompeusement et opulemment l'ignorance, et dys la science megre-ment et piteusement, (c) accessoirement cette-cy et accidentalement, celle l expressment et principalement. Et ne traicte point nomm de rien que du rien, ny d'aucune science que de celle de l'inscience. (iii. 12,1034)

This dazzling paradox is parasitic on scholastic vocabulary, which incorporates in part the science of definition ('accidentalement',

266



267'accessoirement'); the precarious nature of Montaigne's position is clear here, as is his lucid perception of it. To reinforce his stance, he establishes himself as a reader of his own text, and comments on his difficulties of comprehension:

En mes escris mesmes je ne retrouve pas tousjours l'air de ma premiereimagination; je ne say ce que j'ay voulu dire, et m'eschaude souvent corriger et y mettre un nouveau sens, pour avoir perdu le premier, quivalloit mieux.(ii. 12, 549)J'aurai eslanc quelque subtilit en escrivant... Je l'ay si bien perdue queje ne say ce que j'ay voulu dire; et l'a l'estranger descouverte par foisavant moy.(i. 10,42)

One may note here the presence of a stranger (the interpreter) and the reference to priority ('avant moy') which recalls Rebuffi's text quoted above (p. 263).

The justification for self-study which appears in the opening pages of 'De l'exprience' begins also with gestures of humility, and ends with triumphant assertion. The theme is introduced without apparent links with what precedes it: '(b) Combien souvent, et sottement l'avanture, ay-je estandu mon livre parler de soy?' (iii. 13, 1046). This question is answered by Montaigne in a later addition, in which he excuses his 'sottise' by the fact that 'je doy avoir en cela plus de libert que les autres, d'autant qu' poinct nomm j'escry de moy et de mes escrits comme de mes autres actions, que mon theme se renverse en soy'. A little later, and again without immediate connexion with, the preceding text, he picks up the idea of self-study as an enclosed self-referential system, and comments on it in a later addition:

(b) Je m'estudie plus qu'autre subject. C'est ma metaphisique, c'est ma phisique...

(c) En cette universit, je me laisse ignoramment et ngligemment manier la loy generale du monde. Je la sauray assez quand je la sentiray. Ma science ne luy sauroit faire changer de route; elle ne se diversifiera pas pour moi. C'est folie de l'esprer, et plus grande folie de s'en mettre en peine, puis qu'elle est ncessairement semblable, publique, et commune.(ibid. 1050)This is an opaque text, which seems to indicate a sort of cultural conformism which yet allows for-the 'liberty' of self-study. Two pages later, the justification for self-study has become the faculty

of judging others 'passablement'; Montaigne becomes the interpreter of the 'text' of his friends:

Ainsin mes amys je descouvre, par leurs productions, leurs inclinations internes; non pour ranger cette infinie varit d'actions, si diverses et si descoupes, certains genres et chapitres, et distribuer distinctement mes partages et divisions en classes et regions cogneu's . ..

In the space of a few pages, the private, almost solipsistic study of the self, which humbly recognizes its limited sphere of influence, has become the means of access to the 'inclinations' of others: at the same time as specifically rejecting a science of interpretation, Montaigne proclaims one. By a skilful realignment of oppositions, the 'general' science of 'reason' which was contrasted with the 'specificity' of experience in the opening paragraph of the essay has now become the specific science of reason opposed to the general science of self-study: 'Les savans partent et dnotent leurs fantasies plus spcifiquement, et par le menu. Moy, qui n'y voy qu'autant que l'usage m'en informe, sans regie, presente gnralement les miennes, et tastons.' The 'usus communis loquendi' marks here the slippage from one position to another. For jurists, the understanding and regulation of usage lies with the 'prudentes'; Montaigne does not specify his authority, but it can only rest with himself. The servant of usage becomes its legislator.

This mechanism of slippage from a humble, subservient, posterior position to one which is confident, dominant and legislative can also be perceived in Montaigne's comments on originality, quotation and the authority of the ancients. This topic has already been excellently discussed elsewhere;44 I need only indicate it briefly. The many comments disclaiming the value of the Essais or displacing it from the author to his sources are well known: they co-exist with protestations that the Essais are consubstantially Montaigne, and that the quotations and allusions found in them are more than external authority or ornament: 'La vrit et la raison sont communes un chacun, et ne sont plus qui les a dites premirement, qu' qui les dict aprs' (i. 26, 150). The opposition priority/ posteriority appears again; as does an underlying principle ('la vrit') which like the ratio, vis et potestas, anima of words wrests the authority from the speaker or writer and vests it in the interpreter. By this logic all is quotation: 'Tout fourmille de commentaires; d'auteurs, il en est grand chert' (iii. 13, 1046). The origin of sense is not to be sought in the uncovering of the

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intention of the first speaker, but in the ascription of meaning by the reader to an existing text.

The ratio by which legal interpreters pass from being self-effacing servants of intention to becoming themselves the authors and legislators of sense and meaning appears in the Essais as the passage from humble acceptance of parasitism on other authors, from inherited modes of speech and of comprehension, and from a private domain of investigation to the confident declaration of authority (or authorship) situated in the individual speaking voice now endowed with dimensions which are both public and universal:

Les autheurs se communiquent au peuple par quelque marque particulire et estrangere: moy, le premier, par mon estre universel, comme Michel de Montaigne, non comme grammairien ou pote, ou jurisconsulte, (ii. 2, 782)Legal interpreters use the ratio verborum to dominate words and appropriate them; Montaigne uses it to justify his 'dessein farouche et extravagant', and to proclaim boldly the originality of his book, 'le seul livre au monde de son espce' (ii. 8, 364). This claim for originality is precariously even paradoxically built on the oppositions posteriority /priority, general/particular, dominance/subservience.

Although Montaigne, in the key passage at the beginning of 'De l'exprience', rejects the aspirations and the enterprise of legal interpreters, he is none the less caught in the same web of dependence and independence which characterizes much humanist writing, as it struggles to come to terms with the residue of scholastic thought from which it has striven to break free. Because this struggle is perceptible in both vernacular and neoLatin texts, it might be described as a feature of all writing at this time; but one might speculate (with greater ambition and less caution) that it is also not absent from the relationship between neo-Latin and vernacular itself, where the prior, public, authoritative status of Latin as a medium of international communication is threatened by the growing prestige of the vernacular to which it gave birth. In the scope of this enquiry, the claims of this view cannot be pressed; but it may serve to illustrate, if nothing else, the value of an awareness of the interplay between languages in the Renaissance.

Notes1 Montaigne, Essais iii. 13, in uvres compltes, d. A. Thibaudet and M. Rat, Paris, 1962,1044,1045.

2 On suppositions about Montaigne's legal career and training, see Donald M. Frame,Montaigne: a biography, New York, 1965, 42-62.

3 See Antoine Compagnon, Nous, Michel de Montaigne, Paris, 1980; Terence Cave, The Cornucopian text: problems of writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford, 1979, esp. 271-321; Stephen Rendall, 'Mus in pice: Montaigne and interpretation', Modern Language Notes cxiv (1979), 1056-71.

4 See Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of modern historical scholarship: taw and history in the French Renaissance, New York and London, 1970.

5 On the mos italicus and the mos gallicus, see ibid. 23 ff.6 There is a debate as to whether the words 'et rerum' ought to be supplied to this title (the Pandecta Florentina has only De verborum significatione); for an account, see Johannes Goeddaeus, Commen-tarius repetitae praelectionis in tit. xvi libri 1 Pandectarum (1591), Nassau, 1614, 19. It is a matter of some importance to Andreas Alci-ato, who wishes to argue that 'res' can signify actively, and who justifies this by reference to his Emblemata (see De verborum significatione (1530), Frankfurt, 1582, 208-9). Pierre Rebuffi contests this view (In tit. Dig. de verborum et rerum significatione commentaria (1557), Lyons, 1586,4).

7 See his gloss on D 12.1 (De rebus creditis, si certum petetur).8 Both these works are reproduced in the first volume of the Tractatus iuris universi, Venice, 1584, 208v-225vand 386r-394v respectively.

9 This text appeared in Venice in 1557, edited by Gabriel Sarayna, together with a Tractatus extensionis ex utroque iure elucubratus, by Matthaeus Mathesilanus of Bologna (fl. 1435).

10 The dedicatory epistle is dated May 1529; the earliest edition which I could find is dated 1530. It is followed by editions in 1548, 1558, 1565,1581,1582 and 1588.11 Rebuffi was professor of law at Paris (see note 6 for details of his commentary); Breche, Ad titulum Pandectarum De verborum et rerum significatione commentarii, Lyons, 1556 (Breche was an advocate at Tours, and declares himself to be a friend of Andr Tiraqueau); Forner, In tit. de verb, significatione commentarii, Orlans, 1584. I was unable to discover anything about the life of Forner. There are of course many other commentaries on this title published outside France by foreign jurists in this period.12 The text cited in this article is to be found in the second volume of Xeipayoyia sive cynosura iuris, ed. Nicolaus Reusnerus, Speyer, 1588.270



271

13 e.g. Petrus Cornelius Brederodius, Thesaurus dictionum et sententiarum iuris civilis, Lyons, 1582; Barnabe Brisson, Lexicon iuris, Frankfurt, 1587; Johannes Calvinus (Kahl), Lexicon iuridicum, Frankfurt, 1600; John Cowell, The Interpreter, London, 1607; Petrus Praetorius, Lexicon iuris civilis et canonici, Lyons, 1567; Simon Schardius, Lexicon iuridicum, Cologne, 1593; Jacobus Spigelius, Lexicon, Basle, 1577; William West, Symbolaeography, London, 1592. There are many more.14 e.g. Forner, 20-3, quoted in part below, p. 259.15 e.g. Breche, 5, on consignificatio; and G. A. Padley, Grammatical theory in Western Europe, 1500-1700: the Latin tradition, Cambridge, 1976, esp. 12-13. Breche is aware that the term is unfashionable ('sed hic admonitum te velim . . . adsignificare potius quam consignificare (quod barbarum est) dicas. Hoc Graeci dicunt').16 Compare, for example, Alciato's four modes of signification (ex prop-rietate, ex improprio, ex usu, per interpretationem) with those of Baldus (quoted by Rebuffi, 4, as natura, aptitudo, consuetudo lo-quendi, and usus actusve naturae seu figurae dictionis).17 Alciato, 204-9; and see above, n. 6.18 The formula is that of Celsus; quoted by Hotman, in Cynosura ii. 110.19 Cf. Essais ii. 12, 586, quoted below, p. 264; iii. 13,passim.20 See Frieda S. Brown, Religious and political conservatism in the Essais of Montaigne, Geneva, 1963; R. A. Say ce, The Essays of Montaigne: a critical exploration, London, 1972, 233 ff.; David Maskell, 'Montaigne and the victor of Montcontour', French Studies xxxii (1978), 129-44, for differing accounts of the political views of Montaigne.21 See esp. iii. 13, 1046-7. 'Tout exemple cloche' ('omnis similitudoClaudicat') is, in fact, a scholastic adage: see Carol Clark, 'Montaigne and the imagery of political discourse in sixteenth-century France', French Studies xxiv (1970), 338.22 Essais iii. 13,1041, 1044. The former sentence is also the first sentence of Aristotle's Metaphysics.23 Caepolla, De interpretatione legis extensiva, 7V.24 Essais ii. 16, 601 ff.; on this passage, see Compagnon, op. cit. 121-42.25 e.g. De interpretatione legis extensiva, 7V: 'extensio, quod verbum potest exponi id est extra tensio, ad denotandum quod extensio habet duo extreme, unum a quo sit, aliud ad quod sit, sicuti habet fictio translativa sive extensive.'26 For a discussion of the relevant texts in the Essais, see Ian Maclean, 'Le pais au del: Montaigne and philosophical speculation', in Montaigne: essays in memory of Richard Sayce, ed. I. D. McFarlane and Ian Maclean, Oxford, 1982,122-3.27 Rebuffi, 1 ; also Rogerius, in Tractatus iuris universi, i. 394v. The quotations from Seneca are taken from the opening sentences of the De tranquillitate animi and Epistulae ii.

28 op. cit. 20. The quotation attributed to Plato seems not to be by him but by Aristotle (Metaphysics B. 4, 999a 27). I am indebted to B. F. McGuinness for this information. Cf. Rebuffi, l;Essais,iii. 13,1044-6. The quotation from the Politics is in fact II. 8 (1269a 11-14).29 Essais ii. 18, 650; the quasi-biblical phrase 'le truchement de nostre ame' recalls Rebuffi's formulation 'ex loquela animus hominis iudi-catur, cum linguae imperator sit cor' (4).30 See above, p. 254 and n. 13; there is a copious literature on the formulations of wills, representative of which is Simon de Praetiis's massive De ultimarum voluntatum interpretatione tractatus, Lyons, 1587. It seems that in England, as well as in continental Europe, a new approach to legal language emerges in the course of the sixteenth century, which places more emphasis on the fact of language (defamation is not about intention, but effect), and modifies the medieval habit of including alternative formulations in contracts as a means of establishing identity or obligation. One indication of this phenomenon, which has yet to be fully investigated, is the swift publication of a book on the tort of slander (in fact, the first book to be published on any tort): John March's Actions for slaunder, or a methodicall collection under certain grounds and heads of what words are actionable in the law (London, 1647). See also R. E. Megarry, Miscellany-at-law, London, 1955,192-7.1 am grateful to J. M. Kaye for making accessible to me this information.31 Rebuffi, 1; Essais i. 54, 299; ii. 10, 389.32 See Padley, op. cit. 12; the notion is of course found explicitly in both classical authors and the Bible.33 Essais iii. 2, 785; it is interesting to compare this with no. 155 in the Manuscrit Liancourt version of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes: 'il n'y a que Dieu qui sache si un procd net, sincre, et honnte, est plutt un effet de probit que d'habilet.'34 It is interesting to compare the arguments to be found in Augustine's treatise on this verse (De spiritu et littera liber, PL, ed. Migne, lxiv. 199-216; translated into French in 1551 by Valentin Du Caurroy) with those found in the commentaries on D 50. 16. 6. The connexion with heresy (also found in Decretum ii. 64) is also noteworthy; see below, note 35.35 This is the form which de Federicis, Rogerius and Rebuffi cite; the Decretum in fact reads 'nee putemur, in verbis scriptuarum esse evangelium, sed in sensu, non in superficie, sed in medulla, non in sermonum foliis, sed in radice rationis'. This causa concerns heresy.36 In repetit. 1. cum acutissimi, C. de fideicom. ; quoted by de Federicis, Rogerius and Rebuffi.37 Rebuffi, 4; cf. Alciato's Emblemata, which Alciato himself advertises in his commentary (208).38 De interpretatione legis extensiva, 8v-10r; the thirteen types are 'inter-pretatio respectu praesentis', 'interpretatio largo modo', 'progressio',272 Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France, eds. Graham Castor and Terence Cave (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)


Baf, Lazare de 251 Baldus de Ubaldis 252, 253 Barbaro, Ermolao 13 Barbatia, Andreas 261, 272 Bartolus de Saxoferrato 252, 253,

262 Bekinshaw, John 86, 88 Belleau, Rmy 131, 135, 139,

144-5 Belieferest, Franois (de) 157, 158,

167-8, 169, 170,183 Bergerac, Cyrano de 221-2 Berthelet (bookseller to HenryVIII) 74 Bze, Thodore de 187 Binet, Claude 106 Boaistuau, Pierre 157,167, 169 Boccaccio, Giovanni 133 Bodin, Jean 253 Bodius, Hermann 84 Boece, Hector 86 Boethius 247, 258 Boissard, Jacques 22 Boleyn, Anne 73, 74, 81 Boleyn, Mary 74, 81 Bonvisi, Antonio 84, 86, 89, 93 Bonvisi, Vincenzo 84 Borthwick, Sir John 83-4 Boston, William 73, 90 Bouchard, Amaury 53, 54, 56, 57,

60,61 Bourbon, Nicolas xiv, xv, 71-82,

90, 91, 92,100,103 Bovelles, Charles de 10, 25 Boyssonn, Jean de 49, 68, 103 Breche, Jean 253, 254, 257, 258,

261 Brederodius, Petrus Cornelius 270 Brinon, Genevive 130 Brinon, Jan 129-39,141-55,176

'transgressio', 'productio', 'tractio', 'porrectio', 'prorogatio', 'ampli-atio', *suppletio', 'repletio', 'adaptatio', and 'serptio'. Caepolla discusses but does not allow, 'translatio', 'stipulatio', and 'fictio'.

39 Andreas Barbatia, quoted by Rebuffl, 55.40 op. cit. 3; he quotes in this text from arg. in D 45. 1. 116 (more often found as arg. in D 5. 3. 18 and D 48. 7. 54) and D 50.17.1. It is noteworthy that he makes at least one gesture of embarrassment ('et sic non est absurdum . . .'). For the Aristotelian resonances of this issue of priority, see Categoriae VII (7b 35 ff.) and XII (14a 26 ff.): a biblical parallel is found in Rom. 5: 13.41. Essais iii. 13,1066. On the inherent imperfection in the act of communication, see also ii. 12, 546, and ii. 12,487.

42 For examples of this, see Maclean, in Montaigne, ed. McFarlane and Maclean, 122-3.

43 ibid. 1053-4; cf. iii. 2, 785, quoted above, p. 261.44 See Terence Cave, 'Problems of reading in the Essais', in Montaigne, ed. McFarlane and Maclean, 133-6; Antoine Compagnon, La seconde main, ou le travail de la citation, Paris, 1979, 235-327.

IndexAccursius 253Acron 229, 232

Agrippa, Henry Cornelius 29Albret, Jeanne d' 82

Alcaeus 136Alciato, Andreas (Alciatus) 250,251, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258,

260, 261, 263, 269, 271 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 157, 168, 169,

170 Alealmus, Ludovicus 130 Aleandro, Girolamo (Alandre) 107 Alenon, Franois, duc d' 203, 206 Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara 26, 27,

46 Amboise, edict of 181 Amidenus Aetius 70 Amyot, Jacques 201, 209 Anacreon 131,134-5 Anaximander 69 Andr, Elie 131,135, 145 Aneau, Barthlmy 89, 93, 251 Apicius 62, 70 Aretino, Pietro 221 Ariosto, Ludovico 27, 251 Aristophanes 27, 50 Aristotle 54, 217, 242, 253, 254,

259, 260, 270, 272 Armagnac, Georges d' 51, 52 Armandus, Antonius 157 Aubert, Guillaume 131,135,143 Aubign, Agrippa d' 188,197 Augustine, St 271 Ausonius 166

Bacon, Sir Francis 225 Badius Ascensius, Josse 3 Baduel, Claude 97 Baf, Jean-Antoine de 129, 132, 133,140,148

Documents

Ian Maclean - Montaigne and the Humanist Jurists