The First French Reformation
Church Reform and the Origins of the Old Regime

This interpretation of the origins of French absolutism identifies Catholic Church reform as its foundation, and failure of French Protestantism.

Tyler Lange (Author)

9781107049369, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 April 2014

310 pages, 1 b/w illus. 1 table
23.5 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.57 kg

'Lange's impressive research in the manuscript registers of the Parlement has produced an important book that widens our understanding of early modern France.' James K. Fargec, H-France

The political culture of absolute monarchy that structured French society into the eighteenth century is generally believed to have emerged late in the sixteenth century. This new interpretation of the origins of French absolutism, however, connects the fifteenth-century conciliar reform movement in the Catholic Church to the practice of absolutism by demonstrating that the monarchy appropriated political models derived from canon law. Tyler Lange reveals how the reform of the Church offered a crucial motive and pretext for a definitive shift in the practice and conception of monarchy, and explains how this first French Reformation enabled Francis I and subsequent monarchs to use the Gallican Church as a useful deposit of funds and judicial power. In so doing, the book identifies the theoretical origins of later absolutism and the structural reasons for the failure of French Protestantism.

Introduction: the harvest of medieval ecclesiology
1. Law and political culture in late medieval France
2. 'The true Church is in the Kingdom of France'
3. Absolute monarchy and ministerial monarchy, 1515–1526
4. Heresy and the absolute power
5. The practice of sovereignty
Conclusion: the emergence of the Old Regime
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]