The Erasmian Ideal of Kingship, as reflected in the work of Ronsard and d'Aubigné

In his treatise Institutio principis Christiani, written in 1516, Erasmus elaborated his conception of a Christian monarch who lived and moved within a network of mutual obligations, supporting his subjects and being supported by them, answerable for his kingly charge to God himself. The ideas are not in themselves original, but they are voiced with a combination of feUcitous expression and moral indignation that is unique to Erasmus and gives him his authority. That authority was to prove so durable, on a philosophical if not a practical level, that the Erasmian ideal of kingship would be echoed over the next century in the work of two poets as different as Ronsard and d'Aubigné. This ideal, its imagery, and the way in which they reappear, with variations, in the work of these poets, merit an examination. Erasmus' particular view of kingship is, of course, a blend of the classical and the Christian. In classical terms he is clearly in the Platonic tradition of the philosopher king. The concept of the learned monarch, of the king who is good as well as wise, is a classical one, as are the notions of the king as the earthly counterpart of God in His universe or of the king as a prophet of God. In the Institutio Erasmus expresses these ideas in images, some of which go back to Isocrates and all of which became common currency in the Renaissance.^ There is animal imagery — the king as lion, as eagle; there are images related to the elements — water for example; there is imagery of a cosmic nature, including the all-pervasive imagery of the king as a sun in the heavens; there are those images belonging to the world of men — the king as gardener tending his kingdom, as helmsman guiding the ship of state, as physician caring for his people, as father watching over his family, as shepherd tending his flock. There is also, echoing the organic analogy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the image of the king as the head of the body