Spying With Humanism? Ambassador Jean Nicot and his Nautical Goals in Portugal

Known as a father of the modern French language (owing to his Trésor de la langue française) and also as the promoter of the widespread use of the tobacco at the Valois court (named after him as Nicotiana), Jean Nicot was also the French ambassador in Portugal between 1559 and 1561. It was during his tenure in Lisbon that Nicot did more than simply sending to France several scientific specimens: he created a network, between humanism and espionage, to achieve France’s nautical goals.

Arriving in Lisbon to a much desired welcome (owing to a French-Portuguese royal marriage negotiation), Nicot engaged in contacts with important Portuguese intellectuals who held the maritime knowledge that he so desired to acquire. Such are the cases of his likely contacts with Portuguese humanists João de Barros, Damião de Góis and Fernando de Oliveira, from whom he received Portuguese knowledge related to Portuguese and European history, as well as nautical matters. All of Nicot’s acquisitions are documented by the contents of his later personal library in France, shared with La Pléiade members.

Before leaving from France, Nicot had received a particular request from Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and the Cardinal of Lorraine: to recruit two good Portuguese oceanic pilots that could guide a French expedition to Asia or the Moluccas. The request was made to Nicot in the middle of the French-Portuguese confrontation in Brazil known as France Antarctique (a project supported by King Henry II to create a permanent French colony in Brazil). Nicot replied that this was a hard objective to accomplish owing to Portuguese vigilance, but managed to send those two anonymous Portuguese pilots to France, where they later helped fulfill Coligny’s overseas ambitions.

Jean Nicot

In the meantime, Nicot took every opportunity he had, while in Lisbon, to speak with Portuguese pilots. It was likely as a consequence of those conversations that he acquired the nautical compilation of André Pires, one of the most up-to-date at the time. He also came across Pedro Nunes’s main opus: the Tratado em defensam da carta de marear (1537), which he sent to France and recommended for a full translation into French, so that French seamen could profit from it. The translation was made but the death of the printer halted the publication.

Therefore, during his tenure as ambassador in Lisbon, Nicot utilized his humanist persona to achieve maritime and nautical goals for France. His tenure as ambassador was successful in this regard, even though France Antarctique collapsed in 1560. Understanding that a French defeat in Brazil was about to come, the ambassador redoubled his efforts to acquire Portuguese maritime knowledge (pilots, nautical works and rutters) to send to France to help plan new expeditions overseas. Thus, the ambassador mixed humanism with nautical goals in those challenging days for French-Portuguese maritime relations. However, his action is not much different from other ambassadors across Europe, who were always eager to lay hands on nautical and geographical novelties and knowledge. To find out more about Nicot’s embassy and the importance of the French-Portuguese maritime rivalry and scientific interchange of nautical information, see my recently published article Diplomacy and Humanism: ambassador Jean Nicot and the French-Portuguese maritime rivalry (1559-1561). [Nuno Vila-Santa]