THOU, JACQUES AUGUSTE DE [THUANUS] (I553— 1617), French historian, was the grandson of Augustin de Thou, president of the parlement of Paris (d. 1544). He studied law at Orleans and at Bourges, where he made the acquaintance of Hotman, and finally at Valence, where he had Cujas for his master and Scaliger as a friend. He was at first intended for the Church; he received the minor orders, and on the appoint ment of his uncle Nicolas to the episcopate succeeded him as a canon of Notre-Dame. As conseiller d'etat he served faithfully both the effeminate, bigoted and cruel Henry III. and Henry IV., a sceptic and given to love-intrigues, because they were both the representatives of legitimate authority. He succeeded his uncle Augustin as president a mortier (1595), and used his new author ity in the interests of religious peace, negotiating, on the one hand, the Edict of Nantes with the Protestants, while in the name of the principals of the Gallican Church he opposed the recognition of the Council of Trent. This attitude exposed him to the animos ity of the League party and of the Holy See, and to their perse cution when the first edition of his history appeared.
This history was the work of his whole life. His materials for writing it were drawn from his rich library, which he estab lished in the Rue des Poitevins in the year 1587, with the two brothers, Pierre and Jacques Dupuy, as librarians. His object was to produce a purely scientific and unbiassed work, and for this reason he wrote it in Latin, giving it as title Historia sui temporis. The first 18 books, embracing the period from 156o, appeared in 1604 (I vol. folio), and the work was at once attacked by those whom the author himself calls les envieux et les factieux. The second part, dealing with the first wars of religion (I56o-1572), was put on the Index librorum prohibitorum.
his detractors, he wrote his Memoires, which are a useful com plement to the History of his own Times. After the death of Henry IV., the queen-regent refused him the position of first presi dent of the parlement, appointing him instead as a member of the Conseil des finances. He continued to serve under Marie de Medicis, and took part in the negotiations of the treaties con cluded at Ste. Menehould (1614) and Loudun (1616). He died at Paris on May 7, 1617.
Three years after the death of de Thou, Pierre Dupuy and Nicolas Rigault brought out, with pt. v., the first complete edition of the Historia sui temporis, comprising 138 books; they appended to it the Memoires, also given in Latin (162o). A hundred years later, an Englishman, Samuel Buckley, published a critical edition, the material for which had been collected in France itself by Thomas Carte (1733). De Thou's history is a model of exact research, drawn from the best sources, and presented in a style both elegant and animated. The standard translation is Histoire universelle, by Le Beau, Le Mascrier, the Abbe Des Fontaines, 1734. The Memoires had already been translated by Le Petit and Des Ifs (1711) ; in this form they have been reprinted in the collections of Petitot, Michaud and Buchon. To de Thou we also owe certain other works: a treatise De re accipitraria (1784), a Life, in Latin, of Papyre Masson, some Poemata sacra, etc.
For his life may be consulted the recollections of him collected by the brothers Dupuy (Thuana, sive Excerpta J. A. Thuani per if. P. P., 5669; reprinted in the edition of 1733), and the biographies by J. A. M. Collinson (The Life of Thuanus, 1807), and Duntzer, (De Thou's Leben, 1837). Finally, see Henry Harrisse, Le President de Thou et ses descendants, leur célèbre bibliotheque (19o5).