ABSTRACT
Aristotelian argument and terminology are placed in the service of a non-Aristotelian aim, most importantly, because of Sidney's fundamentally non-Aristotelian conception about what it means for human beings to have self-knowledge. Mornay's Verite has long served as a touchstone for Sidney scholars eager to characterize the relationship between his piety, on the one hand, and his poetry and poetics, on the other. Less widely recognized, but equally crucial for understanding his public principles, was Mornay's commitment to 'moderation', a term whose potential vagueness calls for historical contextualization. In January of 1577, yet another French civil war appeared imminent because of Henri III's determination to procure peace by returning to what he called 'the unity of faith', royalist code for the capitulation of the Estates General to the destruction of the Reformed church. The pious response to confessional conflict is uncompromising moderation, always the celebration of virtue transcending the divisiveness of theological wrangling.
