Jacques Cassagne or Jacques de Cassaigne (Nîmes

Nîmes

Nîmes is the capital of the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire, and is a popular tourist destination.-History:...

, 1 January 1636 - Paris, 19 May 1679) was a French clergyman, poet and moralist.

Life

A doctor of theology, he was 'garde' of the king's library and entered the Académie française

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 aged 29. In 1663, he was one of the four founder members of the "Petite Académie" which later gave birth to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...

. In 1665 he edited the preface to the complete works of Guez de Balzac

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac was a French author, best known for his epistolary essays, which were widely circulated and read in his day. He was one of the founding members of Académie française.-Biography:...

 edited by Conrart

Valentin Conrart

Valentin Conrart was a French author, and as a founder of the Académie française, the first occupant of seat 2.-Biography:He was born in Paris of Calvinist parents, and was educated for business. However, after his father's death in 1620, he began to move in literary circles, and soon acquired a...

 and in 1674 he published a Traité de morale sur la valeur (Moral treatise on valour). He translated the Rhetorica

Rhetorica ad Herennium

The Rhetorica ad Herennium, formerly attributed to Cicero but of unknown authorship, is the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, dating from the 90s BC, and is still used today as a textbook on the structure and uses of rhetoric and persuasion....

 (then thought to be by Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

) and Sallust

Sallust

Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known simply as Sallust , a Roman historian, belonged to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines...

's Histories from Latin into French - Chapelain

Jean Chapelain

Jean Chapelain was a French poet and writer.-Biography:Chapelain was born in Paris. His father wanted him to become a notary; but his mother, who had known Pierre de Ronsard, had decided otherwise...

 stated that Cassagne wrote "[in a] more natural than acquired [style], especially in the field of human letters".

Also a renowned preacher, he was cruelly mocked by Boileau in the latter's third Satire, referring to people squashed in to listen to the "sermons of Cassaigne" and those of Charles Cotin

Charles Cotin

Charles Cotin or Abbé Cotin was a French abbé, philosopher and poet. He was made a member of the Académie française on 7 January 1655....

. As a poet, Cassagne took the side of the moderns in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

The quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was a literary and artistic debate that heated up in the early 1690s and shook the Académie française.-Description:...

. In 1668 he published a poem Sur la conqueste de la Franche-Comté (On the conquest of the Franche-Comté

Franche-Comté

Franche-Comté the former "Free County" of Burgundy, as distinct from the neighbouring Duchy, is an administrative region and a traditional province of eastern France...

, during the War of Devolution

War of Devolution

The War of Devolution saw Louis XIV's French armies overrun the Habsburg-controlled Spanish Netherlands and the Franche-Comté, but forced to give most of it back by a Triple Alliance of England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.-Background:Louis's claims to the...

) and in 1672 a Poëme sur la guerre de Hollande (Poem on the war with Holland, referring to the Franco-Dutch War

Franco-Dutch War

The Franco-Dutch War, often called simply the Dutch War was a war fought by France, Sweden, the Bishopric of Münster, the Archbishopric of Cologne and England against the United Netherlands, which were later joined by the Austrian Habsburg lands, Brandenburg and Spain to form a quadruple alliance...

). Boileau commented on these poems:

Chacun a débité ses maximes frivoles, (Everyone has charged its maxims as being frivolous)

Réglé les intérests de chaque Potentat, (It rules on the interests of each potentate,)

Corrigé la Police, & réformé l'Estat ; (It corrects the Police, and reforms the State ;)

Puis de là s'embarquant dans la nouvelle guerre, (Then he embarks on a new war,)

À vaincre la Hollande, ou battre l'Angleterre. (To vanquish Holland, or beat England.)

With failing health, Cassagne died aged only 46, possibly due (some said) to the grief this satire had caused.