The last pages of the manuscript.
Apographe ou Extrait de la Grammaire Gallique de Ian Moreau Lochois Demonstrat la maniere de composer Vers François les quantitez des Syllabes obseruees
Below, a sample verse: Quand iy yute la glace a este rompue en un gue Par l’un des passans, est facile aller apres
And a motto: Noua ego annuncio — Esa[ïe]. 4.
Dedication and Response:
Au Reverend Abbe de Beaulieu Ian Moreau de Loches son humble Escuteur et Bailly Salut
Moreau’s dedicatory verse to the Abbot: En ramenant a memoire l’amour vostre et facile acces Vers vous, monseigneur, j’ay pensé que ne ferois mal Ains que tenu je estois, vous presenter ce petit mien Leuvre nouvel duquel (lors que tentation enclos Me retenoit) le dessein premier feis; aussi que devors Vous prier, a loisir de vouloir visiter, affin Qu’il viue ou qu’il meure en suyvant vostre bon aduis Et si digne de vivre le trouuez, craindre le devra En lumiere venir, mesprisans d’ennuie les dens De Dieu soit tousiours la grace et paux auec vous
Then the Abbot’s Response — L’amy a son amy Salut — praising Moreau’s work, marveling that so learned a man has devoted himself to French versification, encouraging him to continue despite those who dismiss it as humble work, noting that illustrious spirits have already begun to imitate Greek and Latin meters in French, and that Moreau’s work will inspire others to pursue verse in the vernacular.
Corollaire de l’autheur:
Apographe ou Extrait de la Grammaire Gallique de Jan Moreau de Loches — Corollaire de l’autheur
Moreau addresses the reader directly, noting that the French have not yet applied themselves to composing verse by observing syllable quantities in imitation of the Greeks and Latins — and that this is neither impossible nor too difficult. He provides examples including an Exastiche ou Sixain Elegique Gallique demonstrating the technique.
Examples including Virgil:
Opens with a prophetic verse in quantitative French: Le siecle doré s’approche: les brebis Un pastre auront seul: toutes en Union Vivront, n’ayant qu’un parc: le vouloir de Dieu En ce pays bas fait sera comme en haut
Then a Descriptiuncule en forme de iambiqua trimeteg — a brief piece in iambic trimeters in French.
Then crucially, a translation demonstration — taking Virgil’s first Eclogue (Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi) and rendering it in quantitative French:
Titire, toy patieux couchant sous abry de fouteau Sauvage chansonnette en tenure recordes avoine
What this reveals:
This manuscript now contains four distinct works, all connected to Jehan Moreau, Advocate of Loches, and all datable to circa 1538:
- The chronicle of Frère Hervé de la Queue — the regional history of Touraine
- The Postel letter — responding to Moreau’s Arabic manuscript discovery
- The Grammaire Gallique of Jehan Moreau — a treatise on French quantitative versification
- Correspondence with the Abbot of Beaulieu — the very abbey mentioned in the chronicle’s title
The Grammaire Gallique places Moreau squarely within the most important intellectual debate of French Renaissance literature — how to apply classical quantitative meters to the French language. This movement would culminate in the Pléiade’s Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française of 1549, but Moreau’s grammar predates it by over a decade. He was a provincial pioneer of what would become one of the defining movements of French Renaissance poetry.
The Abbot of Beaulieu as dedicatee is particularly significant — Beaulieu-lès-Loches is the Benedictine abbey across the Indre from Loches, one of the places explicitly covered in the Frère Hervé chronicle. The entire manuscript is thus a product of a single coherent Lochois humanist circle, circa 1538, connecting:
- A regional chronicler (Frère Hervé)
- A noble discoverer (Jacques Lemargnay, Seigneur de la Tourmelière)
- A provincial humanist polymath (Jehan Moreau — advocate, copyist, grammarian, poet, Arabic manuscript collector)
- A Benedictine abbot (of Beaulieu)
- The greatest French orientalist of the age (Guillaume Postel)
- A cardinal and royal patron (Jean du Bellay)
This is no longer simply a manuscript. It is a window into an entire provincial humanist network operating at the intersection of regional antiquarianism, vernacular poetry, and oriental scholarship at one of the most fertile moments in French Renaissance culture.