Politics and Religion in Early Bourbon France PDF Download

Author: A. Forrestal
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230236685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This book explores the political and religious world of early Bourbon France, focusing on the search for stable accord that characterised its political and religious life. Chapters examine developments that shaped the Bourbon realm through the century: assertions of royal authority, rules of political negotiation, and the evolution of Dévot piety.

Author: Michael Wolfe
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
"Paris is worth a Mass". So said Henri IV on his conversion to Catholicism, according to cynics, and the motives behind the act have been the stuff of history ever since. The Conversion of Henri IV reclaims the religious significance of this momentous event in the development of the French monarchy and early modern political culture. Michael Wolfe offers an in-depth account of the political, diplomatic, and theological dimensions of the 1593 conversion of the Protestant Henri de Navarre. Where others have emphasized the ideological aspects of the conflict sparked by the conversion, Wolfe situates the controversy within contemporary ideas about confessional change and practice, as well as the historical traditions that defined what it meant to be French. Using pamphlets, sermons, letters, and memoranda, he traces the conversion crisis as it unfolded in the minds of the king's subjects and as it affected their loyalties and actions during the last religious wars. In this analysis, the public response to Henri IV's conversion reveals a great deal about contemporary notions of personal piety and the Church, political ideals and the state, as well as social identity and obligations. Joining the history of mentalite with that of political and religious behavior, Wolfe also pays close attention to the impact of military and political developments. This approach helps explain the fundamental role of Henri IV's conversion in the establishment and acceptance of Bourbon absolutism in the last two centuries of the ancien regime. While not denying the political importance of Henri IV's conversion, this book underscores the profound religious implications of the event. It puts religion back into theWars of Religion and thereby enhances our understanding of the rise of the early modern French state.

Author: Sean Heath
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350173207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Historians of the ancien régime have long been interested in the relationship between religion and politics, and yet many issues remain contentious, including the question of sacral monarchy. Scholars are divided over how - and, indeed, if - it actually operated. With its nuanced analysis of the cult of Saint Louis, covering a vast swathe of French history from the Wars of Religion through the zenith of absolute monarchy under Louis XIV to the French Revolution and Restoration, Sacral Kingship in Bourbon France makes a major contribution to this debate and to our overall understanding of France in this fascinating period. Saint Louis IX was the ancestor of the Bourbons and widely regarded as the epitome of good Christian kingship. As such, his cult and memory held a significant place in the political, religious, and artistic culture of Bourbon France. However, as this book reveals, likenesses to Saint Louis were not only employed by royal flatterers but also used by opponents of the monarchy to criticize reigning kings. What, then, does Saint Louis' cult reveal about how monarchies fostered a culture of loyalty, and how did sacral monarchy interact with the dramatic religious, political and intellectual developments of this era? From manuscripts to paintings to music, Sean Heath skilfully engages with a vast array of primary source material and modern debates on sacral kingship to provide an enlightening and comprehensive analysis of the role of Saint Louis in early modern France.

Author: Joseph Bergin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300207697
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Rich in detail and broad in scope, this majestic book is the first to reveal the interaction of politics and religion in France during the crucial years of the long seventeenth century. Joseph Bergin begins with the Wars of Religion, which proved to be longer and more violent in France than elsewhere in Europe and left a legacy of unresolved tensions between church and state with serious repercussions for each. He then draws together a series of unresolved problems--both practical and ideological--that challenged French leaders thereafter, arriving at an original and comprehensive view of the close interrelations between the political and spiritual spheres of the time. The author considers the powerful religious dimension of French royal power even in the seventeenth century, the shift from reluctant toleration of a Protestant minority to increasing aversion, conflicts over the independence of the Catholic church and the power of the pope over secular rulers, and a wealth of other interconnected topics.

Author: Dale K. Van Kley
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300080858
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Although the French Revolution is associated with efforts to dechristianize the French state and citizens, it actually had long-term religious--even Christian--origins, claims Dale Van Kley in this controversial new book. Looking back at the two and a half centuries that preceded the revolution, Van Kley explores the diverse, often warring religious strands that influenced political events up to the revolution. Van Kley draws on a wealth of primary sources to show that French royal absolutism was first a product and then a casualty of religious conflict. On the one hand, the religious civil wars of the sixteenth century between the Calvinist and Catholic internationals gave rise to Bourbon divine-right absolutism in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, Jansenist-related religious conflicts in the eighteenth century helped to "desacralize" the monarchy and along with it the French Catholic clergy, which was closely identified with Bourbon absolutism. The religious conflicts of the eighteenth century also made a more direct contribution to the revolution, for they left a legacy of protopolitical and ideological parties (such as the Patriot party, a successor to the Jansenist party), whose rhetoric affected the content of revolutionary as well as counterrevolutionary political culture. Even in its dechristianizing phase, says Van Kley, revolutionary political culture was considerably more indebted to varieties of French Catholicism than it realized.

Author: Stuart Carroll
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521624046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Noble affinities were the essence of power in sixteenth-century France. This is the first book to analyse the development of a noble following during the whole course of the Wars of Religion and the first substantial study of the Guise - the most powerful family of the period - to appear for over a century. The Guise, champions of the catholic cause, were the largest landowners in the province and used Normandy as a base for their support of catholicism in the British Isles. The family exploited religious dissension to build a formidable ultra-catholic party in Normandy which ultimately challenged the monarchy. This study breaks new ground by illuminating the relationship between high politics and popular confessional solidarities, especially the rise of radical catholicism. It exploits new archival sources to consider all groups in political society, reinterpreting court politics and discussing groups usually excluded from the traditional political narrative, such as the peasantry.

Author: Sean Heath
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350173215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Historians of the ancien régime have long been interested in the relationship between religion and politics, and yet many issues remain contentious, including the question of sacral monarchy. Scholars are divided over how - and, indeed, if - it actually operated. With its nuanced analysis of the cult of Saint Louis, covering a vast swathe of French history from the Wars of Religion through the zenith of absolute monarchy under Louis XIV to the French Revolution and Restoration, Sacral Kingship in Bourbon France makes a major contribution to this debate and to our overall understanding of France in this fascinating period. Saint Louis IX was the ancestor of the Bourbons and widely regarded as the epitome of good Christian kingship. As such, his cult and memory held a significant place in the political, religious, and artistic culture of Bourbon France. However, as this book reveals, likenesses to Saint Louis were not only employed by royal flatterers but also used by opponents of the monarchy to criticize reigning kings. What, then, does Saint Louis' cult reveal about how monarchies fostered a culture of loyalty, and how did sacral monarchy interact with the dramatic religious, political and intellectual developments of this era? From manuscripts to paintings to music, Sean Heath skilfully engages with a vast array of primary source material and modern debates on sacral kingship to provide an enlightening and comprehensive analysis of the role of Saint Louis in early modern France.

Author: Sophie Nicholls
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110889903X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Based on fresh analysis of the political and polemical literature produced by members of the Holy League during the French wars of religion, this study scrutinises their political thought and rethinks their positioning in the wider intellectual context of the religious wars.

Author: Seán Alexander Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317136209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The career of the French saint Vincent de Paul has attracted the attention of hundreds of authors since his death in 1660, but the fate of his legacy - entrusted to the body of priests called the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists) - remains vastly neglected. De Paul spent a lifetime working for the reform of the clergy and the evangelization of the rural poor. After his death, his ethos was universally lauded as one of the most important elements in the regeneration of the French church, but what happened to this ethos after he died? This book provides a thorough examination of the major activities of de Paul’s immediate followers. It begins by analysing the unique model of religious life designed by de Paul - a model created in contradistinction to more worldly clerical institutes, above all the Society of Jesus. Before he died, de Paul made very clear that fidelity to this model demanded that his disciples avoid the corridors of power. However, this book follows the subsequent departures from this command to demonstrate that the Congregation became one of the most powerful orders in France. The book includes a study of the termination of the little-known Madagascar mission, which was closed in 1671. This mission, replete with colonial scandal and mismanagement, revealed the terrible pressures on de Paul’s followers in the decade after his demise. The end of the mission occasioned the first major reassessment of the Congregation’s goals as a missionary institute, and involved abandoning some of the goals the founder had nourished. The rest of the book reveals how the Lazarists recovered from the setbacks of Madagascar, famously becoming parish priests of Louis XIV at Versailles in 1672. From then on, fealty to Louis XIV gradually trumped fidelity to de Paul. The book also investigates the darker side of the Congregation’s novel alliance with the monarch, by examining its treatment of Huguenot prisoners at Marseille later in the century, and its involvement with the slave trade in the Indian Ocean. This study is a wide-ranging investigation of the Lazarists’ activities in the French Empire, ultimately concluding that they eclipsed the Society of Jesus. Finally, it contributes new information to the literature on Louis XIV’s prickly relationship with religious agents that will surprise historians working in this area.

Author: David Andress
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100382398X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 832

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Book Description
Aimed firmly at the student reader, this handbook offers an overview of the full range of the history of France, from the origins of the concept of post-Roman "Francia," through the emergence of a consolidated French monarchy and the development of both nation-state and global empire into the modern era, forward to the current complexities of a modern republic integrated into the European Union and struggling with the global legacies of its past. Short, incisive contributions by a wide range of expert scholars offer both a spine of chronological overviews and a diverse spectrum of up-to-date insights into areas of key interest to historians today. From the ravages of the Vikings to the role of gastronomy in the definition of French culture, from Caribbean slavery to the place of Algerians in present-day France, from the role of French queens in medieval diplomacy to the youth-culture explosion of the 1960s and the explosions of France’s nuclear weapons program, this handbook provides accessible summaries and selected further reading to explore any and all of these issues further, in the classroom and beyond.