Joly, Claude

, a French writer, was born at Paris in 1607, and obtained a canonry in the cathedral there in 1631. Discovering also a capacity for state affairs, he was appointed to attend a plenipotentiary to Munster; and, during the commotions at Paris, he took a journey to Rome. In 1671, he was made precentor of his church, and several times official. He lived to the great age of ninety-three, without experiencing the usual infirmities of it; when, going one morning to matins, he fell into a trench, which had been dug for the foundation of the high altar. He died of this fall in 1700, after bequeathing a very fine library to his church. He was the author of many works in both Latin and French, and as well upon civil as religious subjects. One of them in French, 1652, in 12mo, is entitled t( A Collection of true and important Maxims for the Education of a Prince, against the false and pernicious politics of cardinal Mazarine;“which, being reprinted in 1663, with two” Apologetical Letters,“was burnt in 1665 by the hands of the common hangman. The same year, how-. ever, 1665, he published a tract called” Codicil d’Or, or the Golden Codicil," which relates to the former; being a further collection of maxims for the education of a prince, taken chiefly from Erasmus, whose works he is said to have read seven times over. ²