PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

misery and dignity of Man proved to be a favourite topic amongst Christian thinkers.
For instance, St. Augustine presented the depravity of Man’s sinful nature in detail, at
the same time stressing his supremacy over all species and the significance of his
intellect and spirituality. 572 Such ideas were later infused by sixteenth-century writers
such as Boaistuau. The earthly nature of Man, represented by a sinful and weak body,
was juxtaposed to the infinite capabilities of human reason and the spiritual dignity of
his psyche. Mind and soul combined to create a portrait of Man’s true excellence.
Therefore, the motifs of man’s misery and dignity were harmoniously incorporated
into Boaisuau’s treatise to support his moralising agenda. The following section will
show how, in order to do this, the writer assembled different features of philosophy
and theology into a humanist framework. Although based on previous models and
reusing most of their material, he wove together a secular and a spiritual view of
Man’s excellence which made his book the most representative example of the genre
in sixteenth-century France: ‘mais l’exemple le plus typique est repésenté, à notre
avis, par un texte plus connu, le traité de Boaystuau faisant suite à son ‘Théâtre du
Monde’, et ayant pour titre De l’Excellence et dignité de l’homme’ de 1558’. 573
An epitome of the idea of Man’s excellence as a being distinguished by reason which
was common in ancient thought, the dignitas hominis took its definite form around the
mid fifteenth century: ‘works specifically dedicated to the condition of Man began to
be written by humanist authors in the 1440s’. 574 Probably the earliest example was
Petrarch’s De Remediis Utrisque Fortunae (c. 1350) which was written in response to
572 See for instance Sullivan, J. E., The Image of God. The Doctrine of St. Augustine and its Influence
(Dubuque, IN, 1963); Teske, R. J., To Know God and the Soul: Essays on the Thought of St. Augustine
(Washington, DC, 2008).
573 Sozzi, L., ‘‘La dignitas hominis’ dans la literature française de la Renaissance’, p. 178.
574 Trinkaus, C., In Our Image and Likeness, p. 173. However, the first usage of linking human and
dignity was by Cicero, who referred to dignitas hominis in his De Officiis.
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