Jean de Coras Character Analysis

Jean de Coras was a lawyer and university professor who served as a judge when the case of Martin Guerre was tried at the Parlement of Toulouse, the most powerful court near the village of Artigat. He later wrote one of the best-known accounts of the case, the Arrest Memorable (1561), which Davis describes as an “innovative” book that encompasses multiple genres. Coras was well-positioned to write a book like this. He was not only a law professor whose lectures drew large crowds, but he also had personal experience with the law himself: after his mother died, she left him her property, and Coras sued his father for access to the inheritance. He was very fond of his wife, to whom he wrote long love letters, and became increasingly interested in the Protestant cause. Davis suggests that all this might have meant that Coras had reason to be sympathetic to Arnaud du Tilh, who was probably Protestant, had appeal as a romantic hero, and tried to use the law to assert his rights. And indeed, Coras does write the story of the case in a way that sometimes casts Arnaud in a positive light: he describes the story as “a tragedy for this fine peasant” that “makes it hard to tell the difference between tragedy and comedy.” Davis points out that it is very unusual for someone at that time to conceive of a case involving peasants as a “tragedy,” suggesting that Coras could see a tragic narrative even among people of low social status. Coras died in the St Bartholomew Day’s Massacre of 1572, in which many French Protestants were killed.