#mignons

[dialogue-queered]

Image: Henri III of France, (r:1574-1589), engraving by William Roger, c 1602.

Curatorial Concept: Monarchs with ‘queer’ or unconventional tastes, and their impact.

*One artifact on show in the 2022 ‘Queer: Stories from the NGV Collection’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

[angebleue2]

[mostri-ciattolo]

Oggi ho urlato tutto il giorno a lavoro, quindi ho perso la voce e ora mi brucia la gola. Stavolta però ho urlato tanto non per sgridarli ma perché ho passato tutto il tempo a giocare fortissimo con i miei bimbi piccolini in piscina ed è stata una bella giornata (a parte una cosa, ma dettagli).

[chicot-premier]

Glossary of 16th-century terms related to homosexuality referenced in Cady's essay

(Note: Many of these terms had and still have negative connotations. Although this should be expected because the sixteenth century was a very homophobic time and neither Henri III nor the mignons were very popular, you have been warned that some of these terms are potentially triggering/offensive.)

Bougeron: Negative. "The word no longer exists in modern French, but, since the suffix 'on' often functions in Franch as an intensifier of a root noun, in Renaissance French 'bougeron' seems to have meant something like what in modern terms we might call a 'superbugger.'" ("Bugger" in both Renaissance and modern French is "bougre.") "The word seems to have functioned as a way for commentators either to make a real distinction (say, between a 'average' or 'run-of-the-mill' 'bugger' and a hyper or obsessed one) or simply to underscore their disgust through exaggeration" (p. 137).

Effeminate/Effeminé: Negative. "Did not automatically connote homosexuality, but instead had a diversity of meaning it lacks today. For instance, the term sometimes designated a kind of hyper or helpless male heterosexuality, a usage that, of course, no longer exists" (p. 132).

Fraisé/Fraizé: Literally means "wearing a ruff (fraise)" or "one who wears a ruff," depending on whether it is used as an adjective or a noun. Cady mistranslates it as "poofs" in a poem quoted on p. 141, although the endnote (p. 153n73) indicates that "fraizés" is the word used. I think that this mistranslation would greatly offend the numerous hyper-heterosexual Manly Men™ who also wore ruffs like Henri de Guise and the future Henri IV.

Ganymede: Negative? Gay man, especially "the younger (and putatively passive) partner in a male homosexual relationship or act" (p. 139).

Masculine love: Positive. "A prominent Renaissance language for a male homosexual orientation [given] the Renaissance's practice of using the noun 'love' as a term of desire in a male-female context only" (p. 124).

Posséder: "In its strict dictionary sense, 'posséder' might be translated as 'dominate,' but L'Estoile seems to want the word's suggestion of romantic 'possession' as well, a 'possession' usually characteristic only of what we would now call an orientation" (p. 131).

Sodomy: Very negative. Used in the period to refer to "a general unlawfulness," but already had the specific sexual connotations that it does today (p. 135).

Young man: Translation of "jeune fils" (p. 148n9). Cady notes that this term "usually did not designate actual age-asymmetrical situations but [was] meant to symbolize male beauty in general, as 'girl' in heterosexual literature has often been a metonym for 'female'" (p. 126).

Source: Cady, Joseph. “The 'Masculine Love' of the 'Princes of Sodom' 'Practicing the Art of Ganymede' in Henri III's Court: The Homosexuality of Henri III and His Mignons in Pierre de L'Estoile's Mémoires-Journaux.” In Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West. Edited by Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler. 123-154. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

[apollophile]

Henri III , le dernier roi français de la dynastie des Valois [1574-89] avec ses mignons ☀Images of masculine beauty and light http://apollophile.tumblr.com/☀

[izroomcom]

Quand je tanne mes colocs avec la sortie imminente de Moi, Moche & Méchant 3 !

(Re)découvrez la colocation avec izroom !

[chicot-premier]

Outside of friendship, a common ideal, which seems to have been proposed by the king, united [the mignons]. Henri III, in this regard, was to his mignons as a master to his disciples. He attempted to promote a new model of noble behavior and to introduce a refinement of morals and of the spirit to the court. The first step of this vast program consisted of converting the courtiers to bodily cleanliness and clean linen, which was received with enormous reluctance: one of the eccentricities that the famous pamphlet The Isle of Hermaphrodites (L'Isle des Hermaphrodites) would denounce in 1605 was "changing the shirt each day and night." Henri III was very demanding in this regard towards the mignons. Guillaume Girard recollects that, one day when Jean-Louis de La Valette was presented before the king "detached and unbuttoned, and less neat than usual," he was rudely reprimanded. "The king his master," the biographer comments, "loved cleanliness infinitely, and moreover did not permit anyone into his chamber who did not have white pumps or black velvet mules with silk stockings and other clothing, where it was necessary to keep extremely neat. No one would have found it strange if the favorites who were perpetual objects in the king's view had to follow the rules of this etiquette exactly." If he chose young and elegant, they were required to embody that ideal.

Arlette Jouanna, "Faveur et favoris: L'exemple des mignons de Henri III," in Henri III et son temps (ed. Robert Sauzet), p. 161-162

[chicot-premier]

Marlowe's little-discussed The Massacre at Paris (circa 1592), which survives only in a fragmentary text, is as much concerned with Henri III's reign as it is with the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of its title (August 1572) and seems based on contemporary reports or sources. The play also clearly implies Marlowe's sense of homosexual affinity with his subject, for example, in his decision to write the piece at all (unique among Marlowe's plays for its topicality), in the passionate addresses he has Henri deliver to the mignons ('Our minions, ... / No person, place, or time, or circumstance, / Shall slack my love's affection from his bent'), and in his editing of salient historical facts (he neglects to give Henri a wife in the play). Since so much remains unknown about Marlowe's life, and since we lack a full text of The Massacre at Paris, we may never know its exact origins in his experience. The play none the less [sic] suggests a knowledge of and strong interest in Henri III and his homosexual milieu among educated, artistic, and political British male homosexuals of the period. For reasons like this, and for the other, major, ones documented here, the previously unexplored materials about the homosexuality of Henri III and his mignons in Pierre de L'Estoile's Mémoires-Journaux must be a central point of reference in any future discussions of the Renaissance's awareness and language for a homosexual orientation.

Joseph Cady, "The 'Masculine Love' of the 'Princes of Sodom' 'Practicing the Art of Ganymede' in Henri III's Court: The Homosexuality of Henri III and His Mignons in Pierre de L'Estoile's Mémoires-Journaux," in Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West (eds. Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler), pp. 146-147