A History of France, 1460–1560: The Emergence of a Nation State

455 Pages·1995·43.458 MB·English

by  David Potter (auth.)

A History of France, 1460-1560
The Emergence of a Nation State
NEW STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY
General Editor: Maurice Keen
EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAIN
Unity in Diversity 400-1000
Roger Collins
BEFORE COLUMBUS
Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
THE MILITARY ORDERS
From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries
Alan Forey
MEDIEVAL THOUGHT
The Western Intellectual Tradition from Antiquity to the Thirteenth Century
(Second edition)
Michael Haren
THE ORIGINS OF FRANCE
From Clovis to the Capetians 500-1000
Edward James
SPAIN IN THE MIDDLE AGES
From Frontier to Empire, 1000-1500
Angus McKay
A HISTORY OF FRANCE 1460-1560
The Emergence of a Nation State
David Potter
MEDIEVAL IRELAND
The Enduring Tradition
Michael Richter
Forthcoming:
EARLY MEDIEVAL SICILY
Continuity and Change from the Vandals to Frederick II, 450-1250
Jeremy Johns
THE MAKING OF ORTHODOX BYZANTIUM
600-1025
Mark Whitlow
A History of France,
1460-1560
The Emergence of a Nation State
DAVID POTTER
New Studies in Medieval History
General Editor: MAURICE KEEN
M
MACMILLAN
© David Potter 1995
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1995 978-0-333-54123-4
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ISBN 978-0-333-54124-1 ISBN 978-1-349-23848-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23848-4
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Contents
Preface Vll
List of Maps xv
Note on Money and Measures xvi
INTRODUCTION: FRENCH SOCIETY AND ITS
IDENTITY 1
Ideas on Society 3
Regional Diversity 4
General Social and Economic Trends 7
The Idea of France in the Late Middle Ages and
Renaissance 17
1 THE MONARCHY: IDEOLOGY, PRESENTATION
AND RITUAL 29
2 THE COURT OF FRANCE FROM LOUIS XI TO
HENRI II 57
The Royal Affinity 57
La maison du roi 61
The Courtier's Career 76
The King's Routine 83
The Keeping of Order 86
Conclusion 88
3 THE KING, HIS COUNCIL AND THE SECRETARIAT 90
The Theory of Government by Good Counsel 92
The Composition of the Council 93
Relations between Councils, Order of Business 99
The Royal Secretariat 105
4 THE CROWN, ADMINISTRATION AND THE
PROVINCES llO
Expansion of the Royal Domain 110
The Provincial Governors 117
Administrative Personnel: Office-holders 123
Local Administration: Lawyers and Justice 128
v
vi CONTENTS
The Extent of Physical Control 129
Conclusion 134
5 THE TAXATION SYSTEM AND ITS BURDENS 136
The Financial Community 138
Management of State Finance and Tax Levels 142
Consultation 149
Resistance to Taxation 156
Conclusion 163
6 THE FRENCH NOBILITY IN THE RENAISSANCE 165
Status and Wealth 165
The Nobility and Clientage 187
The Crown and the Nobility 198
Conclusion 206
7 THE FRENCH CHURCH IN THE AGE OF REFORM 207
Traditions of Reform 207
The Church and the Crown 219
The Social Context of Reform 231
The Repression of Dissent 246
Conclusion 249
8 FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY, 1460-1560 251
War and Public Opinion 278
CONCLUSION 284
Abbreviations 291
Notes 292
Appendices 351
Genealogical Tables 369
Bibliography 382
Index 414
Preface
An explanation is perhaps necessary for the title of this book. It is
not to be asserted that a 'nation state' in the modern sense came
into being in France during the Renaissance. In fact, the political
system of France was a profoundly dynastic one, an etat royal as
French historians express it, in which kingship played a central
role in the ideology of the nascent state. It was not, essentially, a
'proprietorial' one although an eleme'nt of dynasticism remained.
It was rather a country in which the growing elements of the idea
of the nation-France (a term employed by Colette Beaune and
Pierre Nora) were already in place and centred on monarchy, reli
gion, aristocratic honour and clientage. It was thus a very distinc
tive, sui generis form of nationhood organised around loyalty to
some very traditional principles that were conscripted into the
formation of a much more effective state. That state was charac
terised by the idea of reform (in finance and provincial adminis
tration, for instance), as was the church in the same period. The
result was a period of relatively harmonious order and rule that
was eventually broken after 1560 by the hypertrophy of one of its
vital constituent elements: the waging of 'wars of magnificence'.
The century of French history before the outbreak of the Wars
of Religion has seldom been surveyed as a coherent whole.
Beginning with the accession, in Louis XI, of one of the most
formidable rulers in French history it closes with the death of
Henri II, whose reign was one of the most innovative. It was in
that century that the patterns of later French public, social and
political life were established. Yet the custom of viewing the later
years of the fifteenth century as either the 'twilight' of the
medieval era or as its culmination has become deeply rooted in
general assumptions. In some senses this goes back to the idea
that the impact of the Italian Renaissance in France after 1494
and particularly during the reign of Francis I, 'restorer ofletters',
worked a profound transformation in French culture. In some
ways, the idea of a revival of letters at that time goes back to the
conscious views of humanists themselves; Joachim du Bellay
announced that Francis I had 'first restored all the good arts and
sciences to their ancient dignity: and our language, which before
was harsh and ill-polished, he has thus rendered elegant'. So,
vii
viii PREFACE
tenebrae are dispelled by lux and Rabelais, in the much quoted
letter of Gargantua to Pantagruel, declared: 'The time was then in
shadows because of the calamity of the Goths, who had destroyed
all good literature. But by the grace of God, light and dignity have
been restored to letters in my time.' The idea was to lead directly
to the concept of the Renaissance as prelude to the Enlightenment
and in turn this did much to shape the historiographical frame
work built by Burckhardt and Voigt.! The subsequent revival of
interest in French mediev:al learning and the debate over its
autonomous tradition have tended to obscure the issue. It is clear
enough from the work of Franco Simone that humanism had a
powerful impact in France at the time of Petrarch, that the chaos
of the earlier fifteenth century did much to interrupt this but that
French humanism, of a distinctive kind shaped by the configura
tions of the French learned world, was in existence well before
the Italian wars. Humanists and rhetoricians in the University of
Paris like Robert Gaguin and Guillaume Fichet were already
thinking ofthe previous age as one of 'barbarism' in the 1470s.2
The same framework customary in cultural history, that of a
reawakening, has slipped imperceptibly into the commonly
accepted views of French society in general and of its political struc
tures. In a survey of the historiography of the state in France,
Bernard Guenee has argued against the artificial barriers which
have concealed the unity of the three centuries from the mid
thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The institutions of the
era of Francis I, he pointed out, were rooted in the Middle Ages.3
One of the main reasons for the continuation of these barriers
remains the tendency of historians to specialise as 'medievalists' or
'modernists', despite the primacy given by historians of the Annates
tradition to the longue duree in historical experience. In part, this
stems from the fact that the sources for social history - estate
records, tax lists, population evidence - become more varied and
voluminous after the beginning of the sixteenth century and gener
ate new sets of problems. The emergence of the great religious
fissure that was to explode in the form of a lengthy civil war also
itself raises some new problems and generates new forms of criti
cism and speculation.
It is not the intention of this book to engage in the stale argu
ment between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance but rather to
stress the fundamental proposition that the society, politics and
PREFACE ix
culture of France in the first phase of 'absolute' power and of the
French Renaissance were shaped by a continuous process of
change and adaptation within existing institutions begun in the
fifteenth century; that the institutions, social configurations and
assumptions were conditioned by deeply laid substructures and
also by remarkable innovations from the late fifteenth century
onwards. The century between 1460 and 1560 can be called 'the
fair sixteenth century' in that it constituted a relatively unusual
century of growth and, despite periodic natural calamities and
rebellions, favourable conditions for the mass of the people. This
was the underlying foundation of the relative quiescence of
French society between the Hundred Years War and the Wars of
Religion that was to prove crucial in the development of a stable
polity, a focus of loyalty and a set of attitudes that allowed the sur
vival of the idea of France as a nation through first the disorders
and then the dire economic conditions that followed until the
eighteenth century.
The idea that the later fifteenth century witnessed major
changes is, of course, not a new one and is clearly present also in
the political history of the period, especially in the notion of the
'new monarchies' of Louis XI and his contemporaries. However,
the significance of all this is now no longer so clear as it once was.
It would be a foolhardy student who repeated the old ideas about
a Louis XI or Ferdinand of Aragon forging alliances with the
urban bourgeoisie against the 'relics' of feudalism in order to
establish Absolutism.4 That such rulers found essential supporters
among town oligarchies and merchant capital is evidently the case
and a confrontation with networks of aristocratic opposition cer
tainly took place. It should be remembered, though, that such
alliances and confrontations were characteristic of Ancien Regime
polities down to the end of the seventeenth century at least and,
taken in the longer term, look more like endemic conflicts built
into the system. There is, in addition, a danger of slipping into
the view, characteristic of Roland Mousnier, that the French
monarchy represented the only guarantee in a vulnerable and
diverse society against 'civil war, dislocation and dismemberment
by neighbouring powers'. It is too readily assumed that such a
society needs a strong state in order to exist.5 Monarchical
Absolutism was a polity which concentrated legitimate authority
in the sacralised figure of the king, who then delegated his powers