Palimpsestic political thought: the intellectual impact of the French succession crisis, 1584

ABSTRACT

The seminal works of Jean Bodin (c.1530–96) and François Hotman (c.1524–90), the Six livres de la République, and the Francogallia, were written and re-written over the turbulent course of the French wars of religion (1562–1629). Whilst conventionally these works are understood to represent fixed, and opposing, theories of monarchy (absolutist versus constitutionalist), this article explores them as they transformed in response to the changing circumstances of French politics, and especially the succession crisis of 1584. Theories of monarchy were in flux in this period, and so the political thought of the late sixteenth century in France was in a constant state of mutation. This raises questions about the ways in which intellectual historians read ideas ‘in context’, even as those ideas, and those contexts, shift. What did it mean, to have a theory of monarchy in the French sixteenth century?

KEYWORDS:

• Early modern political thought
• Estates General
• François Hotman (1524–90)
• French succession law
• French wars of religion
• Jean Bodin (1530–96)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 On the politique Leaguer, see Sophie Nicholls, Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 35–61.

2 Denis Pallier, Recherches sur l’imprimerie à Paris pendant la Ligue, 1585–1594 (Geneva: Droz, 1975), 58–109.

3 ‘Declaration de nostre Saint-Pere le Pape Sixtus V’, in Simon Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue. Contenant les évenements les plus remarquables depuis 1576, jusqu’à la paix accordée entre le Roi de France et le Roi d’Espagne en 1598, 6 vols. (Amsterdam, 1758), 1, 214–22.

4 On Bodin, see Jean Bodin and Kenneth Douglas McRae, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale: A Facsimile Reprint of the English Translation of 1606. Corrected and Supplemented in the Light of a New Comparison with the French and Latin Texts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), A3–A67; Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la république, ed. Mario Turchetti, 3 vols. (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013–2022); Sara Miglietti, ‘Meaning in a Changing Context: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Authorial Revision’, History of European Ideas 40, no. 4 (2014): 474–94; Ann Blair, ‘Authorial Strategies’, in The Reception of Bodin, ed. Howell A. Lloyd (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 137–57. On Hotman, see François Hotman, Ralph E. Giesey, and J.H.M. Salmon, Francogallia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); George Garnett, ‘Scholastic Thought in Humanist Guise: François Hotman’s Ancient Constitution’, in The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan, Janet L. Nelson, and Marios Costambeys (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 789–801.

5 Warren Boutcher, ‘Unoriginal Authors: How to Do Things with Texts’, in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, ed. Annabel S. Brett, James Tully, and Holly Hamilton-Bleakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 73–92; Warren Boutcher, The School of Montaigne in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); John O’Brien and Marc D. Schachter, La première circulation de la Servitude volontaire en France et au-delà (Paris: Honoré Champion éditeur, 2019); Le Reveille-matin des François, ed. Mireille Huchon, Stéphan Geonget, and Emmanuel Naya (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017).

6 On the question of authorship, see the editors’ introduction to the 2017 edition of the Reveille-matin, 87–197.

7 Further discussed in Nicholls, Political Thought, 18–34.

8 François Cromé and Peter Max Ascoli, Dialogue d’entre le Maheustre et le Manant (Geneva: Droz, 1977); J.H.M Salmon, ‘The Paris Sixteen’ in his Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 264–6; Emma Claussen, Politics and ‘Politiques’ in Sixteenth-Century France: A Conceptual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 203–38.

9 See, for example, the vast scholarship devoted to Skinner’s seminal article, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’ from its first publication to the present day: Quentin Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–53. See also, Annabel Brett, ‘What Is Intellectual History Now?’, in What Is History Now?, ed. David Cannadine (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 123–4.

10 See Noel Malcolm’s work on the Clarendon editions of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and Noel Malcolm, Leviathan. Vols. 1–3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). On interpretative debates surrounding Leviathan and the ways in which Hobbes changed his ideas, see Jon Parkin, Taming the Leviathan: The Reception of the Political and Religious Ideas of Thomas Hobbes in England 1640–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Deborah Baumgold, ‘The Difficulties of Hobbes Interpretation’, Political Theory 36, no. 6 (2008): 827–55; Quentin Skinner, ‘Hobbes on Political Representation’, in From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 190–221.

11 Skinner, ‘Retrospect’, in Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 175–87.

12 Demonstrated, rather than resolved, in Miglietti’s ‘Meaning in a Changing Context’.

13 For examples of the genre, see André Maillard, Advertissement au roy de Navarre de se réunir avec le Roy et à la foy catholique (n.p., 1585); Protestation des liguez faicte en l’assemblee de Mildebourg 16 déc 1584 (n.p., 1585).

14 Anon., Declaration des causes, qui ont meu Monseigneur le Cardinal de Bourbon, & les pairs, princes, seigneurs, villes & communautez catholiques, de ce royaume de France, de s'opposer à ceux qui par tous moyens s'efforcent de subuertir la religion catholique, & l'estat (n.p., 1585).

15 Pierre de L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, ed. G. Brunet, A. Champollion, E. Halphen, Paul Lacroix, Charles Read, Tamizey de Larroque, and ed. Tricotel, 12 vols. (Paris 1875–96), III, 166–7.

16 L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, 6, 291.

17 BN Lat 4628 A. Ralph E. Giesey, ‘The Juristic Basis of Dynastic Right to the French Throne’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 51 (1961): 3–47.

18 Claude de Seyssel, La grant Monarchie de France (Paris, 1519), I.7, fol. 6v–7v. Pour ce que plusieurs, a work first written in 1464 made Salic law central to the French succession and was enormously influential in the sixteenth century. It was published twice alongside Seyssel’s work as La Loy Salique, premiere loy des François in 1541 and 1557.

19 Quoted in Ralph E. Giesey, Le rôle méconnu de la loi salique: la succession royale, XIVe–XVIe siècles (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007), 157.

20 As Giesey has shown, under the influence of Baldus de Ubaldis (1327–1400), it had become canonical in French succession since the beginning of the fifteenth century that a prince du sang, regardless of his distance from the direct line, would have the same claim to the throne as a son of the existing king, unless that king already had a son. This prediction came true when it became clear that the Bourbon family would succeed to the Valois family as the next princes du sang: Giesey, la loi Salique, 192–96.

21 [Attrib.] Duplessis Mornay, Lettre d’un gentilhomme Catholique françois (n.p, 1586), 19.

22 Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, I, 19; 386–7.

23 The references to Bodin’s work in this article, unless otherwise stated, derive from: Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République (Paris, 1576) and Bodin, De Republica libri sex (Paris, 1586).

24 Hotman, Giesey, and Salmon, Francogallia, 398.

25 The problems with this argument are explored in Garnett, ‘Scholastic Thought’.

26 Donald R. Kelley, François Hotman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 11–41.

27 Garnett, ‘Scholastic Thought’.

28 Ralph E. Giesey, ‘When and Why Hotman Wrote the Francogallia’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance 29 (1967): 608–9.

29 Kelley, Hotman, 223–4.

30 For one recent restatement of Bodin’s absolutism, see Benjamin Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism : Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); The seminal work on Hotman's ancient constitutionalism remains J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957). See Giesey’s critique of Pocock’s views in ‘When and Why’.

31 Ralph E. Giesey, ‘Medieval Jurisprudence in Bodin’s Concept of Sovereignty’, in Jean Bodin, ed. Horst Denzer (München: Beck, 1973), 167–86. McRae also emphasised this point in his 1962 edition of the English translation of the République: Bodin and McRae, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale. See also ‘The Bodin Project: Aids to the Study of Jean Bodin: Originally Developed at the University of Hull, U.K.’, Harvard University, https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/bodinproject/sources-index (accessed June 10, 2023).

32 See in particular the responses of Antoine Matharel and Papire Masson to Francogallia: Antoine Matharel, Jean-Papire Masson, Ad Franc. Hotomani Franco-galliam Antonii Matharelli, Reginae Matris à rebus procurandis primarij, responsio (Paris, 1575).

33 Palma Cayet, Chronologie novennaire, histoire des guerres de Henri IV de 1589 à 1598 (Paris, 1606), 1. fol. 5v. The pamphlet was entitled Summa legationis Guysianicae ad Pontificem Max. deprehensa nuper inter chartas Davidis Parisiensis Advocati, Darmstadt, Hessisches Staatsarchiv, A.IV, konv.50, Fast.3, and translated as ‘Extraict d’un conseil secret’, in Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 1, 1–7.

34 A version is published in Louis-Pierre Anquetil, L’Esprit de la ligue (Paris, 1770), II, 165–6.

35 Francogallia 1586, XIII, 156–65.

36 Cited in Kelley, François Hotman, 266, n.4. Kelley suggests that Hotman may have been involved in the publishing and circulation of the Latin translation of the pamphlet.

37 Hotman, Giesey, and Salmon, Francogallia, 52.

38 Garnett, ‘Scholastic Thought’.

39 Ibid.

40 Explored in most depth in the 1593 edition, where Bodin tackles the problems of elective monarchy, and other forces he considers destabilising in royal constitutions: Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République (Paris, 1593), VI.5, 973–1013. Cross reference this to Bodin’s analysis in the 1583 edition: Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République (Paris, 1583), VI.5, 994. See as well, the detailed exploration in Paul Lawrence Rose, ‘Bodin and the Bourbon Succession to the French Throne, 1583–1594’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 9, no. 2 (1978): 75–98.

41 Bodin, De Republica, VI.5, 731–4.

42 Explored in Nicholls, Political Thought.

43 Hotman, François, Quaestionum Illustrium Liber (n.p., 1573).

44 Hotman, François, Disputatio de controversia successionis regiae inter patruum & fratris praemortui filium (Switzerland, 1585); François Hotman, Tractatus de jure futuri successoris legitimi in regiis hereditatibus (Geneva, 1586).

45 Bodin, République, 2.1, 227–8; De Republica, 182–3.

46 Hotman, Giesey, and Salmon, Francogallia, 103–4.

47 Ibid., 99–107.

48 Garnett, ‘Scholastic Thought’, 802.

49 Hotman, Francogallia 1586, 188–200.

50 Nicholls, Political Thought.

51 Bodin, République, VI.2, 619–20, 623.

52 On Choppin, see Sophie Nicholls, ‘Ideas on Royal Power in the French Wars of Religion: The Influence of René Choppin’s De Domanio Franciae (1574)’, French History 34, no. 2 (2020): 141–60. On the role of lex regia in political thought, see Magnus Ryan, ‘Political Thought’, in The Cambridge Companion to Roman Law, ed. D. Johnston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 423–51.

53 Guillaume Budé, Annotationes … in Quatuor et Viginti Pandectarum Libros (Venice, 1534), Dig. I.9., fol. 96r–97r; Choppin, ‘Eloge’, in Les Oeuvres de Me René Choppin: divisées en cinq tomes (Paris, 1663), 409.

54 Nicholls, Political Thought, 116–17; Sophie Nicholls, ‘Parlementarisme et communautés politiques: le moment Ligueur’, in Au cœur de l’état: parlement(s) et cours souveraines sous l’ancien regime, ed. I. Brancourt (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2020), 167–84.

55 Pierre de Belloy, Déclaration du droit de légitime succession sur le royaume de Portugal (Paris, 1582).

56 Pierre de Belloy, Apologia catholica ad famosos et seditiosos libellos conjuratorum qui ab Alenconii regii fratris unici obitu, ad turbandam publicam regni francici tranquillitatem … insurrexerunt, conscripta (n.p, 1584); Pierre de Belloy, De l'authorite du Roy, et crimes de leze majeste, qui se commettent par ligues, designation de successeur, & libelles escrits contre la personne, & dignité du prince (n.p, 1587).

57 Pierre de Belloy, Apologie catholique contre les libelles declarations, advis, et consultations faictes, escrites, & publiees par les Liguez perturbateurs du repos du royaume de France ([La Rochelle], 1585); Pierre de Belloy, A Catholicke Apologie against the Libels, Declarations, Aduices, and Consultations Made, Written, and Published by Those of the League, Perturbers of the Quiet Estate of the Realme of France (London, 1585).

58 ‘Franciscus Romulus’ [Bellarmine], Responsio ad Praecipua Capita Apologiae. Quae Falso Catholica inscribitur, pro successione Henrici Navarreni, in Francorum Regnum (Rome, 1588).

59 Robert Persons, A Conference About the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland …  (Antwerp, 1595); John Hayward, An Answer [by Sir J. Hayward] to the First Part of a Certaine Conference, Concerning Succession, Published Not Long since Vnder the Name of R. Dolman (London, 1603).

60 Jean Boucher, De Justa Abdicatione (Paris, 1589), fol. 184r–v; [Attrib. François Le Breton], Remonstrance aux trois estats sur la publication & reception du Sainct Concile de Trente en France ([n.p., n.d.]); ‘l’Arpocratie’, in Goulart, Mémoires, IV, 97–115; Anon., Description du Politique de nostre temps (Paris, 1588).

61 Jean Porthaise, Cinq Sermons du R.P.F.I. Porthaise de l’ordre St Francois, Theologal de l’Eglise de Poictiers, par luy prononcez en icelle. Esquels traicté tant de la simulee conversion du Roy de Navarre, que de droict de l’absolution Ecclesiastique, & d’autres matieres propres a ce temps, declarez en la quatriesme page (Paris, 1594), 91–2; ‘Guilielmus Rossaeus’, De Justa Reipublicae Christianae in Reges Impios et Haereticos Authoritate: justissimaque catholicorum ad Henricum Navarraeum & quemcunque haereticum a regno Galliae repellendum confoederatione liber (Paris, 1590), especially fol. 54v–55v.

62 Belloy, Apologie Catholique, 2.21 n.p [mispag]. The reference is to book one of Aristotle’s Politics. Cf. Bodin, République, 1.1,1; Bodin, De Republica, 1.1,1.

63 For a sense of his position in these debates, see Nicholls, Political Thought, 107–8; 124–6; R.M. Kingdon, ‘Some French Reactions to the Council of Trent’, Church History 33 (1964): 149–56; D.R. Kelley, ‘Fides Historiae: Charles Dumoulin and the Gallican View of History’, Traditio 22 (1966): 347–402.

64 Discussed in Nicholls, Political Thought, 102–8.

65 See the decrees Sacrosancta (1415); Haec Sancta (1415); Frequens (1417). Discussed in Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the Great Schism: Enlarged New Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1997).

66 Patrick Arabeyre, ‘Le spectre du conciliarisme chez les canonistes français du XV^e siècle et du début du XVI^e siècle’ and Alain Tallon, ‘Le conciliarisme au risque du concile: les ecclésiologies conciliares au temps du concile de Trente’, in Les clercs et les princes : Doctrines et pratiques de l’autorité ecclésiastique, ed. Patrick Arabeyre and Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet (S.l.: Publications de l’École Nationale des Chartes, 2013), 253–70; 285–96; Alain Tallon, La France et le Concile de Trente (1518–1563) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1997), 421–527.

67 On conciliarism and constitutionalism, see J.H. Burns, Lordship, Kingship and Empire : The Idea of Monarchy, 1400–1525 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Frances Oakley, ‘“Anxieties of Influence”: Skinner, Figgis, Conciliarism and Early Modern Constitutionalism’, Past & Present 151 (1996): 60–110; Francis Oakley, ‘On the Road from Constance to 1688: The Political Thought of John Major and George Buchanan’, Journal of British Studies 1, no. 2 (1962): 1–31; Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). On the Nederman-Oakley debate, see Cary J. Nederman, ‘Constitutionalism – Medieval and Modern: Against Neo-Figgisite Orthodoxy (Again)’, History of Political Thought 17 (1995): 179–94; Nederman, ‘Conciliarism and Constitutionalism: Jean Gerson and Medieval Political Thought’, History of European Ideas 12 (1990): 189–209. Francis Oakley, ‘Nederman, Gerson, Conciliar Theory and Constitutionalism: “Sed Contra”’, History of Political Thought 16 (1995): 1–19.

68 Louis Dorléans, Premier et second advertissement des catholiques anglois aux françois catholiques (Paris, 1590), fol. 68v. Jean Boucher, another Leaguer, also compared Belloy to Ockham, and to Marsilius of Padua, arguing that he had used these authors to argue for the submission of the church and the Estates General to the power of the king: Sermons de la simulée conversion et nullite de la pretendue absolution de Henry de Bourbon, Prince de Bearn, a S. Denys en France, le Dimanche 25. juillet, 1593 (Paris, 1594), 252–3 [mis-pag].

69 Belloy, Apologie Catholique, 2.24–2.25, np [mis-pag].

70 Ibid., 2.19, np [mis-pag].

71 Ibid., 2.21, np [mis-pag]. Cf. Decretales 4.17.13. Per Venerabilem declared that the French king acknowledged no temporal superior in his kingdom, but also that in cases of ambiguity in civil and ecclesiastical crimes, the final authority lay with the apostolic see. In such circumstances, the apostolic see exercised the office of the secular power.

72 Hotman, François, Brutum fulmen Papae Sixti V. aduersus Henricum Sereniss. Regem Nauarrae & illustrissimum Henricum Borbonium, Principem Condaeum …  [Rome, 1585]; Hotman, François The Brutish Thunderbolt: Or Rather Feeble Fier-Flash of Pope Sixtus the Fift (London, 1586).

73 The key works are Charles Dumoulin, Conseil sur le Faict du Concile de Trente, par messier Charlies du Moulin, Docteur es droicts, professeur des sainctes letters, Iurisconsulte de France & Germanie, Conseiller, & Maistre des Requestes de l’Hotel de la Royne de Navarre (Lyon, 1564); Caroli Molinaei Franciae et Germaniae Celeberrimi Jurisconsulti, et in supremo parisiorum senatu antiqui advocati, omnia quae extant opera (Paris, 1681); Commentaire sur l'edit du roi Henri second contre les petites dates et abus de la cour de Romme (Lyon, 1554).

74 Belloy, Apologie Catholique, 2.12, np [mis-pag].

75 Ibid., 2.12.

76 D.R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). For recent thoughts on this, see John W. Cairns and Paul J. du Plessis, Reassessing Legal Humanism and Its Claims: Petere Fontes? (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Xavier Prévost and Luigi-Alberto Sanchi, eds., L'humanisme juridique: aspects d'un phénomène intellectuel européen (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022).