“God Reigning through You, Reigns with You”: The Charenton Controversy and the Development of Royal Authority in Early Bourbon France
During the years of 1617–20, a little-known polemical debate raged between the Protestant ministers, led by Pierre du Moulin, in the town of Charenton, just outside of Paris, and the Jesuit Jean Arnoux, confessor to Louis XIII. Marked by the crisis of Henry IV’s assassination in 1610 and the revolt of the princes against the regency government of Marie de’ Medici, the first decades of the seventeenth century witnessed an intense debate over the nature of royal authority. The author argues that the Charenton Controversy, influenced by the ideological clashes that occurred during the Estates-General, demonstrates that the ambiguous notions of royal authority were beginning to take concrete form.
Clovis and Constantine. The Uses of History in Sixteenth-Century Gallicanism
A strong case has been made for the appearance of a new kind of history in late sixteenth-century France. Whether or not it deserves the label ‘historicist’, it has been credited with a desire to discover the objective face of the past, with a critical approach to sources, and even, though more rarely, with attempts to explain historical process. Prominent among the new brand of historians are Jean du Tillet, Charles du Moulin, Pierre and François Pithou, Claude Fauchet and Etienne Pasquier. All these men of the robe are also celebrated as defenders of the liberties of the Gallican Church. The Gallican tradition shared an attitude towards the past that was quite contrary to the new history. It did not accept change for its own sake, nor did it see change as improvement pointing towards the present.
Some Recent Works on the Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists
During the past decade there has been a significant shift of emphasis in work on the medieval canonists. The traditional studies on the literary history of canonistic sources and on problems of specifically ecclesiastical jurisprudence continue to flourish, and, indeed, have been stimulated by the plans for a new edition of Gratian's Decretum; but alongside this work, and complementary to it, there has appeared a new trend, a lively interest in the content and influence of canonistic doctrine concerning public law and political theory. This trend, moreover, shows all the international diffusion — and even, perhaps, something of the interplay of national susceptibilities — that its exponents have discerned in the work of the medieval canonists themselves. It is especially interesting that notable contributions have come from England and the United States as well as from the more established centers of canonistic studies.