Jean de Dinteville

In contrast to the bourgeois roots of Georges de Selve, Jean de Dinteville was a member of the noblesse de race, or noblesse d'épée. His ancestral claims to nobility extend back to the Middle Ages. The family name can be traced back to the fourteenth century when an ancestor, Pierre de Jaucourt, adopted the name Dinteville, which was the name of his seigneurie in Champagne. Pierre's second son, Jean, settled at Polisy shortly before 1321. The dagger as Dinteville's symbol is clearly opposed to the book as de Selve's, which in turn records de Selve's age. This signifies the traditional Renaissance dichotomy of the active versus the contemplative. This contrast in roles of Dinteville and de Selve as the "epée": warrior and the "robe" : clergy, judiciary, and scholar echoes contemporary representations of the court: In this frontispiece to Antoine Macault's translation of Diodorus Siculus, to the right of Francis I appear members of the noblesse d'epée wearing clothing very similar to Dinteville, while to the left of Francis I appear members of the robe . Just to the King's left appears Cardinal Antoine Duprat, the chancellor of France since 1515. As chancellor, Duprat was the head of the judicial administration. Duprat's rise to power mirrors that of Jean de Selve. Both were the sons of merchants and had entered the legal profession. Both had worked their way up the judicial hierarchy from the parlement of Toulouse to become the first president of the parlement of Paris. In 1515, Duprat had been appointed chancellor of Milan, while Jean de Selve was appointed as the vice-chancellor. The ideal court needs a balance between these two functions.