Charles-Jean-François Hénault
Charles-Jean-François Hénault (born February 8, 1685 in Paris , † November 24, 1770 ibid) was a French writer and historian.
Live and act
Charles-Jean-Francois Hénault was the son of Rene Jean Remy Cantobre Hénault (1648-1737), a general financier of the king, Ferme générale , and his wife Francoise de Ponthon († 1738). He attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris before starting to study philosophy at the Collège des Quatre Nations . Initially fascinated by the sermons of Jean-Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742), he sought a similar professional position.
Thanks to the considerable family fortune, he became advisor to the Parlement de Paris in 1705 and President of the First Chamber of Investigations ( président de la Première chambre des Enquêtes ) in 1710 , a position he held until 1731. Therefore he has since been dubbed "President Hénault" and after the death of Montesquieu simply as "President". In 1719, with the help of his friend Madame de Tencin, he succeeded in founding a finance company, Financière Tencin-Hénault , in Rue Quincampoix , which enabled him to quickly increase his personal fortune.
He led an active social life; so he visited the 3rd arrondissement , in whose area the area of the order of the Templars lay. In particular, the Grand Prior of the Order of St. John , Jean Philippe François d'Orléans , celebrated extravagant evenings there, which cemented the temple's libertarian reputation. Here he made friends with Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu , Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Voltaire .
He was often seen in Sceaux with the Duchess of Maine Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon , the so-called Grandes Nuits de Sceaux . In her castle in Sceaux she had a small court, also called La petite cour de Sceaux . In June 1703 she created the Ordre de la Mouche à Miel , a designation that was based on the symbolism of her family coat of arms and attracted numerous writers and artists. Or he visited the salon of the Marquise de Lambert in the Hôtel de Sully . On Tuesday, January 30, 1714, he married Catherine Henriette Marie Lebas von Montargis (1695–1728), granddaughter of the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart and daughter of Claude le Bas de Montargis (1659–1731), a wealthy treasurer, Trésorier Général de l'Extraordinaire des Guerres et de la Cavalerie Légère . Widowed in 1728, he began a relationship with Marie Madame du Deffand in 1731 .
At his home in n ° 7 Place Vendome in Paris, he greeted every Saturday from seventeen to twenty o'clock take guests for dinner at the Club de l'Entresol , which in 1724 by Pierre-Joseph Alary and Charles Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre was founded was and gathered 20 participants who enthusiastically discussed certain topics. The regulars included René Louis d'Argenson , Montesquieu, the Abbé de Bragelonne, Henri Charles Arnauld de Pomponne (1669–1756), Marie Deffand, Madame de Luxemburg, Madame de Pont von Veyle, Claude Adrien Helvétius , Madame de Rochefort, Madame Bernin de Valentinay, Marquise d'Ussé, Madame de Pompadour , Madame de Forcalquier, the Chevalier de Ramsay (1686–1743) and several nobles such as the Marshal Duke of Coigny , Charles Auguste de Goyon de Matignon (1647–1739) and the Marquis de Lassay (1652-1738). These meetings were finally forbidden by the king in 1731.
After the death of Count Samuel-Jacques Bernard (1686–1753) he took over his position as superintendent of the household of Queen Maria Leszczyńska ( surintendant de la Maison de la Reine ), whose close friendship he had previously enjoyed, in 1753 to 1768 .
He composed many songs, some with great success, and poems, and in 1708 received an award from the Académie des Jeux floraux . He also won the Académie française's prize for eloquence ( Le prix d'éloquence ) in 1707 . He also wrote two tragedies, Cornélie vestale and Marius à Cirthe (1713), which were unsuccessful. He became a member of the Académie française in 1723, at a time when he had published very little. He showed himself here as a student of Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, friend of Voltaire and opponent of D'Alembert. In 1749 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .
He published works on the history of France, such as Abrégé chronologique de l'histoire de France jusqu'à la mort de Louis XIV (1744).
Works (selection)
- Cornélie vestale , tragédie, published in 1769 ( online at Gallica. Bibliothèque nationale de France )
- Marius à Cirthe , tragédie, représentée pour la première fois le 15 novembre 1715 (published in 1716 under the name Gilles de Caux de Montlebert )
- Abrégé chronologique de l'histoire de France jusqu'à la mort de Louis XIV , 1744
- Nouveau théâtre français: François II, roi de France , tragédie en 5 actes et en prose, 1747
- Le Réveil d'Épiménide , comédie en prose, 1755
- Le Temple des Chimères , 1758
- Abrégé chronologique de l'histoire d'Espagne et du Portugal , with Jacques Lacombe and Philippe Macquer , 1759
- Le Jaloux de lui-même , 1769
- La Petite Maison , (1769)
- Le Revenant, ou les Préparatifs inutiles , 1788
- Histoire critique de l'établissement des Français dans les Gaules , 1801
- Mémoires , 1854
literature
- Henri Lion, Un Magistrat homme de lettres au XVIII e , le président Hénault , Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1903
- Lucien Perey [Luce Herpin], Le Président Hénault et Marie du Deffand, la cour du Régent, la cour de Louis XV et de Marie Leczinska , Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1893
Web links
- Literature by and about Charles-Jean-François Hénault in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Biography of Madame de Tencin ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Genealogy of Hénault
- ^ Genealogy of Montargis
- ↑ de Montargis ( Memento of the original from May 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Genealogy of the du Deffand
- ↑ Beaurepaire Pierre-Yves: La France des Lumières 1715–1789. Histoire de France. Belin, (2011), p. 112 ISBN 978-2-7011-3365-2
- ↑ Monuments historiques
- ↑ Harvey Chisick, Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment , p. 114
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Members of the previous academies. Charles-Jean-François Hénault. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on April 3, 2015 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hénault, Charles-Jean-François |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hénault, Charles J. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French historian, man of letters and enlightenment |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 8, 1685 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 24, 1770 |
| Place of death | Paris |