Bulletin du Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles (Mar 2006)
La science comme pratique d’intégration dans la société des princes. Les Grimaldi de Monaco et la curiosité savante (xviie–xviiie siècle)
Abstract
Until then lord of Monaco, in 1612 Honoré II (1597–1662) took the title of prince. In 1641 he was placed under the protection of the king of France, who confirmed his sovereignty by the Treaty of Péronne. Alongside his political affirmation, he wished to integrate the European royal society by adopting the cultural practices of monarchical distinction.During the seventeenth century the Grimaldis, sovereigns in Monaco and great aristocrats in France, made cabinets of curiosities . Reflections of the sovereigns, substitute regalia and mirabilia, these rare and precious objects announced the dynasty’s eminence to palace visitors, in particular scholars travelling to Italy. The excellence of these scholars made them the cherished guests of the princes. While some, like the mathematician Bernouilli or the astronomer Cassini, had a brief, remote view of the principality, others, like the geologist Saussure, the naturalist Millin and the botanist and physician Fodéré utilized their specialist perspectives on their disciplines to describe the small state. Some of those who stopped, like the Jesuit Father Laval in 1719, performed experiments before Prince Antoine I (1661–1731), who kept geometry tools in his library. Meanwhile, art lover and enlightened mind, Jacques I (1689–1751) bought instruments from the firm of Bonnier de La Mosson. These objects’ prestigious provenance distinguishes and endorses his curiosity. At the end of the eighteenth century science had become “useful” and an object of government. Honoré III (1720–1795) ordered reports on the cultivation of mulberry trees. At an early stage he sent for English horses to improve the Norman race and drew on the expertise of an agronomist from across the Channel to enhance his lands. In Monaco, geologist Faujas de Saint-Fond evaluated a carbonaceous vein that, at the time, he believed could make possible the industrialization of the principality. A man of his time and of the uses of his order, the last prince of the Ancien Régime gave in to the mesmeric frenzy and the Parisian fashion for public experiments. Even if history continued to be a dominant taste, the “sciences and arts” were well represented in the Grimaldi libraries during the Enlightenment. Some scholarly and technical works are dedicated to them. The young princes received the basics of a scientific education, in particular in mathematics. Fortuitously, Georges Cuvier was the future prince Honoré V’s (1778–1841) tutor, even during the Revolution. The sovereign’s example led some subjects, people of the court or ecclesiastics of the principality, to invest in the sciences. The natural local milieu often leads to an interest in botany. Indeed, Lamarck made his first observations while stationed in Monaco. While in the field of scientific connoisseurship, the Grimaldi followed rather than led the practices of their time, they instrumentalized the sciences and scholars for the purpose of cultural recognition and political legitimacy. A laboratory for the major European courts, the Palace of Monaco in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be seen as a privileged observatory of relations between the princes and scholars and a marker of the spread of scientific culture even in small courts.
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