Nicolas de Malézieu (orMalézieux)[1] (orMalesieu)[2] (7 September 1650, inParis – 4 March 1727, in Paris) was a French intellectual,Greek scholar andmathematician.[3]
Nicolas de Malézieu was asquire and lord ofChatenay. He later became chancellor ofDombes and secretary-general to theSwiss andGrisons of France. He was the tutor ofLouis Auguste, Duke of Maine (to whom he introducedBossuet) and he declaimed the plays ofEuripides andSophocles to theduchess who had made her chateau ofSceaux into a literary salon. Here he became a member of the light-hearted fraternity she founded, the (fr)Knights of the Bee, and organised the festivals she loved, thefr:Grandes Nuits de Sceaux. Later tutor toduc de Bourgogne, he was appointed to theAcadémie royale des sciences in 1699 and to theAcadémie française in 1701.[4]
Malézieu collected and published the lessons in mathematics that he gave to the duc de Bourgogne over four years in 1705 asÉlémens de géométrie de Mgr le duc de Bourgogne. LeJournal des savants reported in detail the observations he made in this work on geometry and infinitely small numbers. In 1713, this work was translated into Latin asSerenissimi Burgundiae Ducis Elementa Geometrica, ex Gallico Semone in Latinum translata ad Usum Seminarii Patavini. A third (posthumous) edition, with corrections and a supplemental treatise on logarithms, appeared 1729.[3]
Nicolas de Malézieu also translatedEuripides’Iphigenia in Tauris as well as poems, songs and sketches, which were published in 1712 inLes Divertissements de Sceaux and in 1725 in theSuite des Divertissements. Among these pieces arePhilémon et Baucis,Le Prince de Cathay,Les Importuns de Chatenay,La Grande Nuit de l'éclipse,L'Hôte de Lemnos,La Tarentole[5] andL'Heautontimorumenos. Often written in a single day, these pieces were set to music and staged for the amusement of the duchess, to whom Malézieu also gave courses in astronomy.
A four-volume work, aHistoire des fermes du roi (History of Royal Farms) survives only a manuscript version dating from 1746.[6]
Pierre-Édouard Lémontey said of Malézieu "Knowing a bit about everything, he gathered in his servile person all the advantages of universal mediocrity."[4]
Malézieu was the son of Nicolas de Malézieu (1612-1652) and Marie des Forges (d.1680).[3] His brother Michel Louis de Malézieu married Marie Jérônime Mac Carthy (d.1714)[7]
In 1672 Malézieu married Françoise Faudel de Fauveresse (1650-1741) by whom he had the following children:[8]
