Social Relations, Politics, and Power in Early Modern France: Robert Descimon and the Historian’s Craft 9780271091150

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Social Relations, Politics, and Power in Early Modern France

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Habent sua fata libelli

Early Modern Studies Series General Editor

Michael Wolfe

Queens College, CUNY

Editorial Board of Early Modern Studies Elaine Beilin

Framingham State College

Christopher Celenza

Raymond A. Mentzer University of Iowa

Robert V. Schnucker

Johns Hopkins University

Truman State University, Emeritus

Barbara B. Diefendorf

Nicholas Terpstra

Boston University

Paula Findlen

Stanford University

Scott H. Hendrix

Princeton Theological Seminary

Jane Campbell Hutchison

University of Wisconsin–­Madison

University of Toronto

Margo Todd

University of Pennsylvania

James Tracy

University of Minnesota

Merry Wiesner-­Hanks

University of Wisconsin–­Milwaukee

Mary B. McKinley University of Virginia

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Early Modern Studies 19 Truman State University Press Kirksville, Missouri

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Copyright © 2016 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501 All rights reserved tsup.truman.edu Cover art: Philippe de Champaigne (1602–­1674), Le Prévôt des marchands et les échevins de la ville de Paris. Oil on canvas, 1648. Louvre Museum, Paris, Legs du Dr Louis La Caze, 1869. Cover design: Lisa Ahrens Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Diefendorf, Barbara B., 1946- editor of compilation. | Descimon, Robert, honouree. Title: Social relations, politics, and power in early modern France : Robert Descimon and the historian’s craft / edited by Barbara B. Diefendorf. Description: Kirksville, Missouri : Truman State University Press, [2016] | Series: Early modern studies ; 19 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016009565 (print) | LCCN 2016029104 (ebook) | ISBN 9781612481630 (library binding : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781612481647 Subjects: LCSH: France—History—16th century—Historiography. | France—History—17th century—Historiography. | Elite (Social sciences)—France—Historiography. | Power (Social sciences)—France—Historiography. | Political culture—France—Historiography. | Social change—France—Historiography. | France—Social conditions—Historiography. | France—Politics and government—Historiography. | Descimon, Robert—Influence. | Historians—France—Biography. Classification: LCC DC111.3 .S63 2016 (print) | LCC DC111.3 (ebook) | DDC 944/.0307202--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009565 No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher. The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–­1992.

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Contents Introduction: Robert Descimon and the Historian’s Craft...................................................... 1 Barbara B. Diefendorf

1. Robert Descimon, the Annales Tradition, and the Social History of the Ruling Classes.................. 25 Jonathan Dewald

2. Law and Social History in Early Modern France..... 42 Michael P. Breen

3. Local Officials and Torture in Seventeenth-­Century Bordeaux.............................. 61 Sara Beam

4. Urban Elites and Politics in Sixteenth-­Century Dijon........................................ 87 Mack P. Holt

5. The Notary as Rural Power Broker: Maître Coujard and Pierre Collenot, Syndic of Alligny..... 106 James B. Collins

6. Reading Municipal Lists, Interpreting Civic Practice from the Insights of Robert Descimon to Seventeenth-­Century Bourges.......................... 134 Hilary J. Bernstein

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7. Qui étaient les députés? An Unknown Group of Protestant Leaders on the Eve of the First War of Religion................................................... 158 Philip J. Benedict

8. Civic Engagement and Public Assistance in Sixteenth-­Century Paris........................................ 184 Barbara B. Diefendorf

9. Unfinished Business: An Edition of the “Manuscript History of the League”..................... 212 Mark Greengrass, with Marco Penzi and Mark Critchlow

10. Gallicans Not Magistrates: The Dupuy Cabinet in the Age of Richelieu.......................... 237 Robert A. Schneider

11. Intellectual Trajectories and Relationships of a French Historian......................................... 260 Robert Descimon

Bibliography of Robert Descimon’s Writings............. 283 Glossary................................................................... 295 Contributors............................................................. 301 Index........................................................................ 305

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Introduction

Robert Descimon and the Historian’s Craft Barbara B. Diefendorf Practitioners of early modern French history recognize Robert Descimon as one of the foremost scholars of his generation and the one who has offered perhaps the most profound insights into the nexus of social relations, politics, and power in France as it moved from the age of religious wars into the age of absolutism. Highly focused, heavily documented, and firmly grounded in archival research, Robert Descimon’s prolific scholarship can appear traditional at first glance. The appearance is deceptive. A look at his footnotes shows the thoughtful use he has made of sociological theory, anthropology, and a wide variety of historical approaches and methods. It is also readily apparent that if he patiently culls genealogical data and constructs collective biographies, or prosopographies, from extensive research in notarial records, it is not for their own sake but rather to use them as tools for the analysis of social relations in an era in which questions of lineage played a crucial part. The role of mid-­level elites, and in particular of the Parisian notables who evolved into the nobility of the robe at the end of the sixteenth century, has formed one of the major objects of Descimon’s research throughout his professional career. His first book, Qui étaient les Seize? (1983), a study of the Catholic League that seized control of Paris from 1588 until 1594, revised historians’ understanding of this radical movement in significant ways. At the same time, it set out an important new argument about the transition within the Parisian elite from an identity rooted in local and communal values to

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one aligned with the centralizing monarchy and its values and priorities. In the three decades since the publication of Qui étaient les Seize?, Robert Descimon has continued to delve deeply into the dynamics of these societal transformations, while also exploring their political ramifications and the power relationships they both fostered and maintained. Independently and in research undertaken in collaboration with students and friends, he has offered valuable new insights into the mentality of ancien régime elites and into the political foundations of the absolutist state of which they were a part. Little of Robert Descimon’s prolific scholarship has been translated, and much of it has been published in journals and collections that are not readily available even to those who read French. His scholarly contributions are as a consequence less known and widely understood than they deserve to be. This book aims to repair that oversight by offering an appreciation and extension of Robert Descimon’s work to those already familiar with it and to those who are not. Some readers may recognize an allusion to Marc Bloch’s classic meditation on the practice of history in the subtitle’s use of the phrase “the historian’s craft.” The echo of Bloch’s Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien, published in English as The Historian’s Craft, is indeed deliberate. The current work too is a meditation on the questions historians ask and the ways they go about answering them; and Robert Descimon is, as the chapter by Jonathan Dewald in particular shows, a true heir to Marc Bloch and to the Annales tradition that he helped to create. The essays, written by distinguished Anglophone historians of early modern France, explore Descimon’s many contributions to this field but also, in a more personal vein, reveal something of his influence on the authors’ own historical practice, as they examine intersections of politics, power, and social relations in a variety of early modern settings. The volume concludes with an essay by Robert Descimon reflecting on his scholarly trajectory and with a bibliography of his many and diverse works.

The view from the archives Robert Descimon’s contributions to our understanding of the history of sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century France have been both substantive and methodological. His historical contributions will be of special inter-

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est to scholars working in early modern French history, but his approach and methods have implications that extend well beyond the French case. His work weds social to political history without diminishing the role of events. For Descimon, social groups are not fixed categories determined by material circumstances that inexorably dictate their priorities and values, but rather more flexible, evolving milieus whose members, although sharing social markers, might respond differently to the impact of events and, as a consequence, prioritize different cultural values. Recognizing that openness or resistance to change cannot be reduced to—­or deduced from—­economic interests alone, Descimon pays close attention to the corporative ties that defined communities of interest according to their shared privileges, but without viewing them through either the Marxist lens of social class or the fixed hierarchies of a “society of orders.”1 Rather than understanding society in terms of horizontal and vertical structures, he emphasizes the actions that strengthen bonds either horizontally (i.e., between individuals essentially equal in their social and economic position) or vertically (i.e., between those in an asymmetrical patron-­client relationship).2 Exploring the actions through which these solidarities are formed has been a consistent aim of his scholarship, which frequently employs their demonstration at the micro level as evidence supporting interpretive claims at the macro level about the functioning of both urban institutions and the monarchical state. In contrast to many of his peers, who regard archival research as a rite of passage happily abandoned once the first major book is done, Robert Descimon continues patiently to dig for the precious nuggets of information that only the archives can yield up. Notarial contracts are a favored source. Taking an anthropological approach to such mundane documents as marriage contracts, wills, and inventories after death, he uses them to construct collective biographies and through this means has offered important insights into the strategies people used to protect and improve their family’s social position from one generation to the next. Tracing webs of connection laterally, as well as vertically over several 1. For the concept of a “society of orders” see, for example, Mousnier, Institutions of France, 4–­16, which views the description of French society set out by Charles Loyseau in his 1610 Traité des ordres as applicable with few changes until replaced by a class society at the end of the ancien régime. 2. See, for example, Descimon, “‘Bourgeoisie Seconde.’” Readers should be cautioned, however, that errors of translation obscure Descimon’s argument at certain points in the article. To cite just one example, “purveyor-­client relations” (p. 423) should read “patron-­client relations.”

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generations, he has shown how they made use of connections formed through collateral kinship to extend and reinforce the social advantages that descendants enjoyed through office and inheritance. He has made the extensive manuscript collections of the Bibliothèque nationale’s Cabinet des titres serve the same end. Created as a result of investigations into claims of noble status in the reign of Louis XIV, the documents collected there had previously been used largely for traditional genealogical research with little regard to the circumstances of their creation or the biases they might harbor. Descimon and his students have taken a more critical approach, examining the genealogies fabricated to persuade the king’s commissioners of a family’s claim to nobility against the realities of social status, income, and kinship revealed by notarial records documenting the family’s marriages, wills, and property transactions. They have teased from the omissions and additions to genealogies created for the commissioners, with their sometimes fanciful claims to descend from ancient aristocrats, telling insights into the social ambitions of middle-­ level elites as they raised themselves through office and alliance into the nobility of the robe.3

Social relations, politics, and power In an informal presentation at the annual meeting of French Historical Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in April 2013, Robert Descimon defined three intersecting fields of research as his areas of predilection: the French Wars of Religion, the social history of mid-­level elites as they negotiated the political crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and the history of the monarchical state as it consolidated its authority in the wake of these crises. In all three fields, his work has united social and political history to reveal the interdependence of social values and political change. The French monarchy, as Descimon understands it, was first constructed out of and in tandem with the corporative structures—­ the civic institutions and other privileged bodies—­that formed the underpinnings of the state.4 The long-­term evolution of the monarchy was 3. Descimon, “Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVIIe siècle”; and Descimon and Haddad, Épreuves de noblesse. 4. Descimon, “Le Corps de ville et les élections échevinales,” 507.

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nevertheless one in which the king gradually separated himself from the corporative structures through which the state had previously operated in order to claim “absolute” power for himself. Upwardly mobile magistrates, acquiring the privileges of nobility in exchange for their service, thereby becoming “nobles of the robe,” collaborated in this process. Basking in the personal advantages they gained from allying themselves with the Crown, they abandoned active roles in the civic institutions that had previously formed the agency of their advancement and nucleus of their power in the city. They also abandoned the sense of a unified local community, bound by complex horizontal ties, in favor of a more hierarchical understanding of social roles and status. The political evolution of the monarchy toward greater separation and insistence on hierarchy was thus echoed in the social evolution of certain mid-­level elites who likewise separated themselves from and placed themselves above the more socially diverse group from which they had emerged. The pivotal moment in this lengthy process occurred, in Descimon’s view, when Henri IV reestablished monarchical authority after his defeat of the Sainte Union, or Holy League, an accomplishment sealed for Paris when the city opened its gates to him in March 1594 but not finally completed for the kingdom until the last rebellious magnates and towns yielded four years later. The League’s revolt began in 1585 when zealous Catholics demanded stronger measures against the Protestants, whom they had been fighting intermittently for more than thirty years, but evolved by 1589 into open rebellion against the Crown and a civil war that pitted Catholic radicals against their more moderate co-­religionists as well as against proponents of the Reformed faith. When King Henri III’s younger brother, François, duc d’Anjou, died in June 1584, leaving the Protestant Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre, as heir presumptive to the throne, ardent Catholics rallied behind Henri, duc de Guise, to demand more assertive anti-­Protestant measures, including prohibitions on Reformed worship, a new war against the Huguenot rebels, and the removal of Navarre from the line of succession. Initially yielding to these demands, Henri III found himself increasingly trapped by them and by the growing power of Henri of Guise and his allies. The king’s reckless attempt to rid himself of the threat by having the duc de Guise and his brother the cardinal assassinated in December 1588 pushed the League’s proponents into active rebellion. City after city renounced allegiance to the Crown as radical factions seized control of civic institutions, co-­opted

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or replaced personnel as necessary, and redirected their energies toward defending against anticipated attempts to reestablish royal control. Although they allied themselves with the aristocrats who assumed military leadership of the League, rebellious cities steered an independent course, prioritizing local concerns and articulating aims that did not always agree—­and sometimes directly conflicted—­with those of the League’s aristocratic leaders. In Paris, as in other cities caught up in the radical League, zealots purged the courts and other urban institutions of moderates suspected of royalist sympathies with a violence that has been likened to a reign of terror.5 Radical preachers drummed up enthusiasm for the League through ardent sermons, candlelit processions, and commemorative funerals for the Guises. The high pitch of religious fervor that they induced—­the hallucinatory atmosphere of living in the End Days—­helped the citizenry to endure near starvation through a lengthy siege by Henri of Navarre, who claimed the throne as King Henri IV after Henri III was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic in August 1589.6 In time, however, the League’s radical leaders divided among themselves. Unity became particularly hard to maintain after Navarre announced his intention to take instruction in the Catholic faith.7 Abjuring Protestantism in July 1593, he was crowned at Chartres the following February and admitted without resistance to his capital a month later. As might be expected for any particularly contentious period of history, the tumultuous era of the League has been subject to a variety of interpretations. Some scholars of the Paris League have judged its political content “revolutionary”; others have labeled it “radically reactionary.”8 And if some have considered its religious content fundamentally conservative, because rooted in preservation of the Catholic faith, others have stressed its “eschatological” and “prophetic” character.9 Moreover, where the dominant tradition already in the seventeenth century was to dismiss

5. Barnavi, Le Parti de Dieu, 182–­87; Holt, French Wars of Religion, 138.

6. On the religious fervor of the League, see Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu; 2:362–­542. 7. Wolfe, Conversion of Henri IV, 115–­33.

8. Lebigre, La Révolution des curés; and Salmon, “Paris Sixteen,” for example, frame the League in revolutionary terms. Barnavi, Le Parti de Dieu, 259, calls it a failed revolution and (262) a “révolution à rebours.” Baumgartner, Radical Reactionaries, views it as a reactionary movement. 9. Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu, 2:362–­462.

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the League’s social agenda as an illegitimate leveling undertaken by men of dubious morals and breeding, more recent scholars have reinterpreted the social program of militant leaguers as more of a rearguard effort on the part of a blocked bourgeoisie to reassert its claims to a place in a system from which it felt excluded.10 This was the contested terrain where Robert Descimon made his first major historical contributions. Recognizing the royalist bias behind the long-­standing tendency to discredit the League’s ambitions by blackening the reputation of its most ardent proponents, but also seeking to refine the more recent portrayal of the League’s leaders as men whose desire to overturn the social system lay in their own blocked ambitions, he decided that the best way to understand the social ambitions and values of the League’s militant leaders was to undertake a detailed prosopographical study of all those whom he could identify. Combining data gleaned from notarial records with the products of research in the deliberations and administrative records of the Bureau de la Ville, along with more anecdotal material from a variety of other primary sources, he produced the biographical dictionary that forms the heart of his first book, Qui étaient les Seize? The wealth of information gathered about the careers, family connections, and civic service of the 225 men he identified as radical Leaguers, or “Seize” (after the sixteen quarters into which the city was traditionally divided), allowed him to challenge earlier interpretations of the League revolt as the product of a “bourgeoisie seconde,” or second-­tier elite, frustrated in their attempts at upward mobility. There was, he concluded, no reason to see the Seize as men left aside and unable to compete in their society. Rather, their distinctive characteristic was a powerful attachment to the city’s ancient prerogatives and traditions—­to “an urban sociability reinvigorated by the civil wars.”11 This reinterpretation of the League and of the motives of its most zealous participants, offered first as a hypothesis but reaffirmed in Descimon’s subsequent research, stands at the core of his understanding of the early modern period more broadly construed.12 It encapsulates

10. Drouot, Mayenne et la Bourgogne, first formulated this notion in the context of the League in Burgundy. It is applied to a Parisian setting by Salmon, “Paris Sixteen”; Barnavi, Le parti de Dieu; and Richet, “Aspects socio-­culturels des conflits religieux à Paris.” 11. Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?, 295–­96.

12. See, for example, Descimon, “‘Bourgeoisie Seconde,’” which reviews debates about the “bourgeoisie

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his conception of the larger process by which certain urban elites came to identify their interests with the rewards offered by the monarchical state and marks a turning point in the process. If the men who rallied to the League aimed to expand urban autonomy, enhancing local privileges and resisting intrusions of the state, those who opposed it adopted a very different set of values.13 The trauma that they and their families suffered at the hands of the League’s leaders encouraged office-­holding elites to assimilate to the increasingly aristocratic and hierarchical values of the restored monarchy, at the expense of the horizontal ties and civic values that had previously served as vehicles of their ascent in the Parisian bourgeoisie. In a 2009 article, Descimon uses the magistrate and historian Jacques-­Auguste de Thou to personify the ruptures this rejection of a family tradition rooted in the urban patriciate entailed. Arguing that de Thou practiced a cultural imitation (“mimétisme culturel”) of the nobles of the sword, Descimon depicts him as the very prototype of the new nobility of the robe. This social metamorphosis was, however, also political. De Thou did not just abandon his heritage in the bourgeois oligarchy that controlled city government but rather came actively to detest the participatory politics that he blamed for the League. Pointing out that the religious enthusiasm of the League had significant political and social dimensions, Descimon says that the Sainte Union might be interpreted in the mentality of the times “as an attempt to form a central confraternity on the scale of the entire citizenry.”14 As he explains in an earlier article, the militant League’s success in Paris rested in large measure on the “organizational superiority that gave the Seize their way of living out their Catholic faith: sermons, processions, confraternities functioned as political catalysts to create consensus and direct consciences.”15 These same qualities that gave the League its confraternal character were precisely what de Thou came to hate: “To de Thou’s mind, there was nothing worse,

seconde” and their application to the League in some provincial cities. Concluding that the concept “reflects a superseded state of the social sciences,” he believes that it nevertheless “has the merit of dissuading us from thinking in static terms and encouraging us to take account of the dynamics of agency” in analyses of social relations. 13. Descimon, “L’Échevinage parisien,” esp. 113–­14 and 120–­21. 14. Descimon, “Jacques Auguste de Thou,” 485–­86. 15. Descimon, “Prise de parti,” 123–­24.

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for he saw there the origin of the massacres of Protestants and the revolt against royal authority.”16 These opinions emerged forcefully in de Thou’s influential History of His Times, helping to give birth to the “black legend” of the League and to the royalist interpretation of the era that has dominated to this day.17 If de Thou helped form a negative view of the League, he also helped form the very positive image of Henri IV—­indeed of the whole Bourbon dynasty—­as divinely ordained to bring France out of the chaos of civil war into a new age of stability and prosperity. As such, de Thou takes his place among the intellectuals and jurists who constructed the absolutist theories that dominated the rhetoric of kingship in seventeenth-­century France. With Fanny Cosandey, Robert Descimon explored the history and historiography of this concept of absolutism in a book published in 2002.18 L’Absolutisme en France articulates the distance between the theoretical construction of absolute monarchy on which the state rested and the pragmatic necessity for cooperation with the subordinate authorities through which that state was administered. In it, Cosandey and Descimon illuminate the underlying contradiction between the political conception of absolutism, which placed the king outside of and above his subjects, whom he in principle ruled without intermediation, and the corporative structures of society through which the state effectively continued to be governed.19 For Descimon, then, the political question of absolutism ultimately returns us to the social question: How did the subordinate elites through whom the state was governed foster their own social success through this collaboration, but also through the formal affiliations, or corporative ties, and informal webs of clientage and alliance that bulwarked it? He finds one important answer to this question in the sale of royal office in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Building on, but revising, Sarah Hanley’s concept of the “family/state compact,” he shows

16. Descimon, “Jacques Auguste de Thou,” 485–­86.

17. Descimon, “Jacques Auguste de Thou,” 491. De Thou’s Historiarum sui temporis was first published in 1604. He extended the work in subsequent editions to cover the period from 1543 to 1607. The first complete edition was published in 1620, three years after de Thou’s death, by Pierre Dupuy and Nicolas Rigault. The standard French translation was published more than a century later. 18. Cosandey and Descimon, L’Absolutisme en France.

19. Cosandey and Descimon, L’Absolutisme en France, 231.

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how the practice of venality effectively made elites, especially members of wealthy urban families, stakeholders in the state.20 When Henri IV introduced an annual fee (droit annuel) in 1604 that gave officeholders and their families a hereditary property right in their offices, a golden age of venality began. Secure possession of royal offices, which had previously reverted to the Crown if the officeholder died unexpectedly, caused a dramatic increase in their value. The impact this had on family fortunes is evident in the parallel increase in the size of dowries demanded by aspiring officeholders, but it is also evident in the tightening alliance between officeholders and the state.21 If ownership of an office gave its holder a certain independence with respect to the Crown, which could not remove him without cause and without paying its current price, it also paradoxically made officeholders as a group more subservient to the king’s wishes—­more willing to serve as his political allies—­for fear of seeing the system on which their fortunes now depended abolished. But the state too became dependent on the system, which supplied the royal treasury with badly needed funds. This helped the monarchy to avoid creating new taxes, and so to avoid calling the Estates General, thereby furthering the king’s claims to absolute power. Paradoxically, then, one might speak of “an absolute monarchy tempered by venality of office.”22 But if Robert Descimon is first and foremost a social historian working to decode the social ties and political practices central to the functioning of France’s ancien régime, he is by no means indifferent to the impact of events. Rather he pays close attention to the way in which traditional ties both persisted and evolved in response to outside pressures. This is particularly well illustrated by the article entitled “Autopsy of the massacre at the Hôtel de Ville (4 July 1652),” published in the Annales in 1999, which joins a social analysis of the various constituencies involved in the last popular uprising of the civil war known as the Fronde to a cultural analysis of the way these events have been used historically so as to offer a new understanding of their meaning.23 Descimon shows

20. Hanley, “Engendering the State”; and Hanley, “Monarchic State.”

21. Bennini and Descimon, “Économie politique de l’office vénal anoblissant.”

22. Descimon and Jouhaud, France du premier XVIIe siècle, 33; more broadly on the impact of the droit annuel, 24–­33 and 188–­95. See also the many works on venality of royal and municipal office in the bibliography of Robert Descimon’s works at the end of this volume. 23. Descimon, “Autopsie du massacre.”

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the complexity of the motives driving the rebellious populace, usually dismissed simply as rabble in contemporary accounts, but at the same time identifies the social grievances expressed in the uprising—­and especially the enmity voiced against the bourgeois elite formerly respected as their civic leaders—­as evidence of the irremediable disintegration of the communitarian ethic already in decline since the time of the League.24 Ignoring these social tensions, civic authorities responded to the crisis in a very traditional manner, calling for a general assembly of bourgeois notables at the Hôtel de Ville and activating the civic guard in an attempt to prevent further trouble. When this failed, they turned to repression. Things did not, however, return to the status quo ante in the aftermath of the crisis. Rather, the notables abandoned remnants of support for the princes leading the rebellion, allying themselves instead with the forces of monarchy, which alone, they thought, could keep the dangers now associated with the popular classes at bay. In Descimon’s analysis, this “traumatic event” thus forced a change in the historic landscape: “after the massacre, the bourgeois community could never return to its previous state, and the fracturing of Parisian society opposed the frightened dominant classes to the ‘dangerous classes’ that only a good state police (that of the police lieutenant of the Châtelet) could now, in the eyes of the ‘bourgeoisie,’ keep in line.” The rupture begun at the time of the League found its completion here. And yet the conclusion is not entirely a negative one, for alongside this affirmation that the city’s communitarian ethic had irrevocably dissolved is the seemingly paradoxical assertion that, despite attempts by the frondeur princes to subvert traditional power relationships in the state, the “underlying cultural, social, and political constructions” on which these relationships were based had nevertheless proved resilient and “transcended the event.”25 The paradox is only an apparent one. Social history is inevitably for Descimon a story of both continuity and change. If French urban elites came to view the popular classes as dangerous, this was not a simple and necessary result of class differences but rather an outcome born of social tensions that flared up and found expression in particular moments of political crisis. If the same elites came to ally themselves

24. Descimon, “Autopsie du massacre,” 329. 25. Descimon, “Autopsie du massacre,” 350.

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with an absolute monarchy instead of fighting to maintain the horizontal community ties that had once formed the object of their loyalty and basis of their social status, this was also an outcome shaped by their particular experience and response to moments of crisis. The power of events to provoke change was nevertheless tempered both by institutional continuities and by mentalités—­by the seldom articulated and largely unconscious cultural baggage through which people interpreted and reacted to their surroundings. Filtering their understanding of events through the screens of religious beliefs and traditional social values, through unspoken but deeply felt premises of justice and concepts of law, people reacted with a rationality that, guided by and honoring past practice, was innately conservative though never entirely closed to change. For Robert Descimon, then, the practice of social history means not just seeking to understand how groups of people behaved but also why they acted in this way. It means seeking to decipher motives and values as they animated practices of kinship, religion, and the law. It also means moving back and forth between micro and macro levels of analysis, building evidence from individual case studies so as to interpret the behavior of identifiable, though never static, social groups.

Themes and variations: The essays collected here The historians whose essays are featured are, like Robert Descimon, known among their peers for their contributions to our understanding of the history of the society, politics, and culture of early modern France. These essays exemplify their distinct voices, while illuminating the meeting points between their particular historical preoccupations and the methods and insights that characterize Robert Descimon’s scholarship. The first essay, by Jonathan Dewald, engages directly with Robert Descimon’s practice of social history, placing it into the broader contexts of the historical writing that has emerged over the last half century from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, institutional home of the influential journal Annales, and the Sorbonne. The subject is a natural one for Dewald, a long-­time practitioner of social history with an emphasis on French elites, but also the author of an important

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historiographical study of the practice of social history in France.26 The essay begins with the observation that the traditional identification of the Annales movement with innovative social history and the study of ordinary people—­peasants, workers, and the like—­and of the Sorbonne as a bastion of conservative methods with a focus on French elites no longer holds, and hasn’t for nearly half a century. Historians at the Sorbonne are doing innovative work on popular mentalities, while some of the best scholarship on French elites now comes from the École, and in particular from Robert Descimon and his associates. The essay then considers the significance of this shift and argues persuasively that the history of elites pursued by Robert Descimon and his colleagues fulfills many of the fundamental objectives of the Annales. It credits Descimon with reviving and renewing the practice of social history, which many considered to be in crisis at the very moment that he made it his chosen historical field, while broadening its methods and questions. The second essay, by Michael Breen, is also historiographical in character and looks at Robert Descimon’s contributions to the social history of early modern law, the principal focus of Breen’s research.27 The chapter takes as its point of departure the shift that has occurred in the last quarter century in the way historians have studied the relationship between law, the state, and society in early modern France, as scholars have abandoned their earlier emphasis on formal procedures, institutional structures, and the imposition of royal authority to focus instead on the broader social and political functions of the legal system and the ways in which its power to define norms and procedures was harnessed by magistrates, litigants, and communities to serve a variety of ends. As Breen points out, the status of the office-­holding elites who have been the object of so much of Robert Descimon’s pioneering scholarship rested in large measure on their mastery of the law and their place in the rapidly expanding judicial and administrative apparatus of the early modern French state. This gave them an important role as intermediaries between society and the state, but it also gave them resources through which to

26. Dewald, Formation of a Provincial Nobility; Dewald, Pont-­St.-­Pierre; and Dewald, Lost Worlds. Dewald, Aristocratic Experience, adopts more of a cultural history approach, addressing many of the questions of mentalité that preoccupy Robert Descimon and his collaborators but favoring a different kind of sources. 27. Breen, Law, City, and King; and Breen, “Law, Society, and the State.”

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improve and maintain their place in the fluid society of the ancien régime. Descimon’s nuanced studies of the family strategies, economic behavior, and cultural values of ancien-­régime elites have, Breen concludes, done much to illuminate our understanding of the centrality of the law and its power to shape and constrain behavior, even as it was being consciously manipulated by these elites to reinforce and protect their social status, investments, and careers. Sara Beam’s essay offers a good example of the new social history of the law that Michael Breen describes and to which Robert Descimon’s work on the social practices and values of mid-­level elites has contributed in important ways. Drawing on research for a broader study of torture in the ancien régime, Beam’s chapter on “Local Officials and Torture in Seventeenth-­Century Bordeaux” challenges the common assumption that changes to early modern criminal justice were largely the result of top-­ down, centrally initiated reforms and, more specifically, the assumption that declining rates of torture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries exemplify this sort of centrally directed change.28 Beam stresses instead the motives that officials of Bordeaux’s municipal council, the Jurade, had for regulating their use of torture in keeping with the best practices of the law. An important factor was that Bordeaux’s Jurade retained the right to exercise high justice—­to try people for capital crimes—­a privilege shared by very few ancien-­régime municipalities. Maintaining a high standard of justice would, Beam argues, have been seen as a way of safeguarding this privilege, which might otherwise have been lost to the high court of parlement located in the same city. Recognizing the rational interest that Bordeaux’s city officials had in maintaining municipal autonomy, Beam shows how justice was shaped by its practitioners and not just handed down from on high. With Mack Holt’s essay on “Urban Elites and Politics in Sixteenth-­ Century Dijon,” we turn from Robert Descimon’s approach to social history to his use of sources, which for Holt represents a new way of doing political history. Taking case studies from his ongoing research on Burgundy during the Wars of Religion, Holt shows how incorporating notarial contracts, baptism and marriage records, and tax rolls on Descimon’s model helped him to make sense of politics and political net28. Beam, “Rites of Torture”; and Beam, “Les Canards criminels.” Also more broadly on the role of mid-­level elites in French absolutism, see Beam, Laughing Matters.

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works in Dijon.29 These sources, Holt explains, enabled him to understand the importance of the social ties that urban elites formed with non-­elite families, as well as within their own social group, and also to see how geographical and spatial networks influenced political agendas within the city. Robert Descimon, Holt concludes, helped him to broaden his definition of politics, to realize that it can never be just a study of elites, as negotiations for power necessarily involved a much wider share of the urban community. It also helped him to understand politics as a process of negotiation and not just the outcomes of that negotiation, conclusions that have enriched Holt’s work on Burgundy and the Wars of Religion but offer broader lessons as well. James Collins’s essay transports us from an urban setting to a rural one to show how notarial contracts and tax rolls can be used to illuminate social practices in a very different milieu. Piecing together data from tax reports with the rich material found in the papers of a rural notary, Collins offers a detailed case study of kinship and clientage ties in the Burgundian parish of Alligny-­en-­Morvan. Opening with the discovery of long-­ standing tax fraud in the parish, Collins traces the complex ties linking participants in this fraud to show how they used both their close ties to the local lord and their ability to manipulate the royal fiscal system to gain social, political, and economic leverage and so to promote themselves into a village elite. The village power brokers that Collins describes are very different from the urban notables studied by Descimon or Holt, but, as Collins shows, the same intricate webs of social relations, power, and local politics existed in the French countryside as in the cities. And if the essay deliberately focuses on the micro level, it also has broader implications for our understanding of the ancien-­régime state and its fiscal systems—­ objects of Collins’s long study and expertise—­in offering a vivid illustration of just how the burden of direct taxes that would ultimately bring down the ancien régime was shifted onto the shoulders of those least able to pay.30 The sixth essay, by Hilary Bernstein, also examines questions of method in pursuing social and political history but looks at very different

29. Holt, “Popular Political Culture and Mayoral Elections”; Holt, “Wine, Community and Reformation”; Holt, “League in Burgundy”; and Holt, “Les Réseaux d’autorité.” See also Holt, French Wars of Religion. 30. Collins, Fiscal Limits of Absolutism; Collins, Classes, Estates, and Order; and Collins, State in Early Modern France.

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sorts of sources from the tax rolls and notarial records utilized by Collins and Holt. Bernstein builds on insights gleaned from Robert Descimon’s subtle investigations of shifting patterns of participation in elections for Paris’s city government to inquire more broadly into the sources that offer important clues to the social attitudes and pretensions of urban officeholders.31 An urban historian and scholar of civic institutions, Bernstein echoes Descimon’s attention to understanding how corporate bodies are shaped by the changing preoccupations and priorities of their participants but also how participation in these institutions fits into the family strategies of these elites. The sources on which Bernstein focuses—­the lists of names included in seventeenth-­century urban histories, compilations of civic privileges, electoral registers, and council deliberations—­are extraordinarily laconic ones and yet, inspired by Robert Descimon’s success in extracting meaning from equally laconic lists, she ably demonstrates that early modern historians were interested in many of the questions about the intersection of social, political, and institutional history that scholars are asking today. The marginalia Bernstein discovered in copies of popular histories and collections of privileges show how interested contemporary readers were in the social composition of municipal institutions but also in the social and political logic of the institutional practices that the lists of officeholders reveal. Along with Mack Holt, Philip Benedict and I have made the French Wars of Religion a special focus of our research. Benedict and I attended Denis Richet’s seminar alongside Robert Descimon, and while our interests and approaches subsequently evolved along slightly different lines, this common experience has always meant that we have shared not only interests but also approaches with him. Our essays pay tribute to his contributions to this field while incorporating elements of the historical approach that he imbibed from Richet and building on fundamental questions that he has asked. Benedict draws on his recent research into the opening stages of the Wars of Religion to offer a collective portrait of the deputies who represented the Reformed Church at the French court in 1561 to 1562, a critical interval when royal edicts offering limited toleration of religious dissent opened a unique (and unfortunately brief ) opportunity for French Protestants to advance their cause peacefully 31. Bernstein, Between Crown and Community; Bernstein, “‘Bourgeoisie Seconde’”; Bernstein, “Réseaux savants”; and Bernstein, “République urbaine.”

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through petitions and pleas.32 The limits of his sources do not allow Benedict to illuminate the background of the Protestant militants he studies as fully as Robert Descimon was able to do with the more numerous and better documented members of the Holy League. The collective portrait Benedict gives of the noblemen and lawyers who put their training and skills to use to advance the Protestant cause at this critical juncture nevertheless offers a revealing corrective to a historiography that still focuses largely on the leadership that powerful aristocrats and Geneva-­trained ministers gave French Protestants, while neglecting the contributions of other social groups. My essay on public assistance in Paris moves us from the initial stages of the religious wars into the bleakest period of civil strife, the Wars of the League. Focusing on the demographic impact of the wars and the economic stress that war, famine, and plague placed on Paris and its hinterland, the essay traces the breakdown of sixteenth-­century attempts to deal with the problem of poverty to this era of crisis, when a sudden influx of desperate indigents overwhelmed available resources. It challenges the common characterization of the seventeenth century’s charitable initiatives as “revolutionary” by showing that many of the practices usually attributed to later innovations, including efforts to moralize the poor but also to enclose them in workhouses, had important sixteenth-­ century precedents.33 But the chapter makes another argument as well: Close attention to the city’s struggles to deal with the crisis also reveals a social rupture—­indeed the same rupture and abandonment of inherited traditions of civic engagement on the part of urban elites that Robert Descimon identifies as a result of the political stress of the League. The next two essays follow this same rupture into the seventeenth century as they look at the impact of the League and its memory among winners and losers of the conflict. As the title “Unfinished Business”

32. Benedict, “Dynamics of Protestant Militancy”; Benedict, Graphic History; Benedict, “Prophets in Arms?”; Benedict and Fornerod, “Les 2150 ‘Églises’ réformées de France”; Benedict and Fornerod, L’Organisation et l’action des Églises réformées de France; and Benedict and Fornerod, “Les Députés des Eglises réformées à la cour” (from which the essential argument presented in Benedict’s contribution to this book is derived).

­

33. The essay brings together my long-standing interests in civic institutions and their personnel in Paris, the Wars of Religion, and the origins and character of the Catholic Reformation. Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century; Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross; Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity; and, among other articles, Diefendorf, “Rites of Repair”; and Diefendorf, “La Charité dévote en Provence.”

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implies, the essay by Mark Greengrass, with the collaboration of Marco Penzi and Mark Critchlow, takes as its subject a manuscript history of the League whose author aims to revise the disparaging narrative of the revolt constructed by royalist historians by offering a sympathetic account of the reasons behind the rebellion and the motives of its leaders.34 The essay first explains why the published version of this text—­like many nineteenth-­century scholarly editions—­is woefully inadequate and then analyzes internal evidence to establish the provenance and identify the author of this previously anonymous work. Building on the genealogical reconstructions that Robert Descimon so fruitfully employed in his own studies of the League, Greengrass and his collaborators locate the history’s author within a dense network of ex-­Leaguer families, many of whose members continued to pursue the movement’s religious aims, despite its political failure, through the Catholic activism of the dévot party. As such, the essay offers important insights into the afterlife of the League and a valuable lesson in the close reading of texts. It pairs nicely with Robert Schneider’s essay, which looks at a literary circle whose members embodied—­and perpetuated—­the dominant royalist view of the League. Schneider’s essay, which has its origins in a broader study of writers and intellectuals in the age of Richelieu, examines the social milieu inhabited by the nephews and literary heirs of Jacques-­Auguste de Thou, Pierre and Jacques Dupuy.35 The “Dupuy cabinet,” as the circle that gathered around the brothers was called, was a lively center of intellectual life, the Parisian heart of the emerging Republic of Letters. It was also the center of a new ethos characterized by withdrawal and retreat from the corporative affiliations and active engagement of magistrates into the more private associations and sociability of men of letters. Jacques-­ Auguste de Thou was, for Schneider as for Robert Descimon, a precursor of this movement in his break with the urban bourgeoisie, withdrawal from the public scene, and self-­conscious distancing from the mass of

34. Mark Greengrass is the author of Governing Passions, among many other writings on the Wars of Religion and political culture of early modern France. Marco Penzi’s relevant writings include “Les Liste des proscriptions au temps de la Ligue” and “Tours contre Rome.” Mark Critchlow recently completed a dissertation under the direction of Mark Greengrass on the manuscript history of the League that is the subject of this essay.

35. I want to thank Robert Schneider for sharing his unpublished manuscript, “Dignified Retreat: Writers and Intellectuals in the Age of Richelieu.” Relevant earlier writings include Schneider, Public Life in Toulouse; Schneider, Ceremonial City; and Schneider, “Literature and Power.”

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society. The relationship between practitioners of this new ethos and the state was, as Schneider portrays it, an ambivalent one. The assertion of absolutism narrowed the space for meaningful public engagement, thereby encouraging the Dupuys in their retreat from a public role, and yet the Dupuys served the state’s causes as men of letters who supplied evidence supportive of both Richelieu’s territorial claims and the prerogatives of the Gallican church. This service was nevertheless on their own terms and, in its private capacity, allowed for a greater critical distance than was available to public servants more closely tied to the absolutist state.

History, community, and complicity Robert Schneider’s essay on the seventeenth-­century scholarly community that revolved around Pierre and Jacques Dupuy is followed by Robert Descimon’s reflections on the scholarly community in which his own professional development took place. Descimon pays tribute in this very personal piece to the scholars who have most influenced his practice of history over the years. It serves as a fitting conclusion to this volume, which has illuminated the lessons the contributors have drawn from Robert Descimon’s methods and scholarship, by acknowledging Descimon’s own debts to teachers and peers, thereby broadening out the web of influences traced here. Like the history we study, our scholarly practice evolves in a social milieu that consciously or unconsciously (and most often a mixture of the two) shapes the questions we ask and the places we go for answers. Readers will be struck by the very frequent references in Descimon’s reflections to friendship and “complicities”—­a word used more commonly in French (complicités) than in English to refer to the spontaneous sense of mutual understanding that grows out of shared ideas and participation in a common enterprise. For Robert Descimon, the exchange of ideas takes place not just in writing or over the seminar table but also informally, over coffee or at lunch and especially over his own dinner table, where he serves as a gracious host for his wife, Christiane’s, delicious meals. History is for Robert Descimon a fundamentally sociable practice, however many hours the historian inevitably spends alone grappling with sources and struggling to write, and I want to close this introductory essay by expressing, on the part of all of the contributors to this volume, our pleasure at being included in this web of sociability and the sharing of ideas that

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is at its heart. The project of writing these essays has from the beginning been about friendship as well as scholarship. I speak for all of us in saying that we honor Robert for his personal and professional generosity as well as his historical contributions. My experience can stand in for the others in this regard. More than thirty years ago now, Robert came over to where I was working through notarial records in the old Minutier Central of the Archives nationales and quietly introduced himself. He was, he said, working on the quarteniers (Paris’s district officers) in the sixteenth century, and the archivist had told him that I was doing research on the city councilors. We had some families in common, he told me and suggested that we meet for lunch—­or maybe it was just coffee; after thirty-­plus years, it hardly matters. What does matter is that when I left Paris that summer I had notes on a number of documents that I never would have had time to discover without the citations Robert generously shared. Marriage contracts, wills, inventories after death—­these materials were already Robert’s standard fare and played a crucial role in my own attempt to understand the social trajectory of the Parisian elite. I left with new material, but also a new friend. And not just one. When I came to Paris from Berkeley to begin my dissertation research, my thesis director, Natalie Davis, had urged me to attend Denis Richet’s seminar at the École des hautes études. He was, she said, “the man” for sixteenth-­century Paris. I knew from my reading that she was right but had been too timid, too unsure of what I was doing, to do that—­until I met Robert. It was he who persuaded me that I really must make Denis Richet’s acquaintance and start frequenting his Friday morning seminar. That seminar—­which became in time the Richet/ Descimon seminar and then simply the Descimon seminar—­became an intellectual home for me in Paris, as it did for other contributors to this collection of essays.36 I have not been much in attendance in recent years, but the seminar, the intellectual stimulation it has provided, and the friendships made through it remain precious to me. This experience, along with my gratitude for the enormous generosity—­ both personal and intellectual—­ that Robert has shown through the years are why, when Orest Ranum wrote to suggest that we 36. The seminar has been continued by Robert Descimon’s close collaborators and students since his retirement in May 2014.

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do something to honor Robert’s contributions to North American scholarship on early modern France, I immediately agreed. Knowing others who had found the same welcome and encouragement from Robert, I organized two panels for the April 2013 annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These papers, with the addition of contributions from several friends unable to participate at that time, became the nucleus of this project. I am grateful to the society’s co-­presidents, Mary Lewis and Jeff Ravel, and to the French Consulate in Boston for the generous support that made Robert’s presence at the 2013 meeting possible. I want to thank Ann Blair for facilitating and Orest Ranum for leading the memorable discussion of Robert’s historical trajectory and methods that took place in Harvard’s history department library on the occasion of the 2013 meeting. I want also to thank Michael Wolfe, editor of Truman State University Press’s Early Modern Studies series, for encouraging me and my collaborators in this volume to turn our essays into this book. I am grateful to those collaborators for their thoughtful essays and good spirits through the revision and publishing process and, as always, to my husband, Jeffry Diefendorf, for his support and patience through this process.

Works cited Barnavi, Élie. Le Parti de Dieu: Étude sociale et politique des chefs de la Ligue parisienne, 1585–­1594. Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1980.

Baumgartner, Frederic J. Radical Reactionaries: The Political Thought of the French Catholic League. Geneva: Droz, 1976. Beam, Sara. “Les Canards criminels et limites de la violence dans la France de la première modernité.” Histoire, économie, société 30, no. 2 (2011): 15–­28.

———. Laughing Matters: Farce and the Making of Absolutism in France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.

———. “Rites of Torture in Early Modern Geneva.” Past & Present, suppl. 7 (2012): 212–­36.

Benedict, Philip. “The Dynamics of Protestant Militancy: France, 1555–­1563.” In Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555–­1585, edited by Philip Benedict, Guido Marnef, Henk van Nierop, and Marc Venard, 35–­50. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999.

———. Graphic History: The Wars, Massacres and Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin. Geneva: Droz, 2007.

———. “Prophets in Arms? Ministers in War, Ministers on War: France 1562–­74.” Past and Present, suppl. 7 (2012): 163–­96.

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———, and Nicolas Fornerod. “Les Députés des Églises réformées à la cour en 1561–­ 1562.” Revue historique 315 (2013): 289–­332.

———, and Nicolas Fornerod. “Les 2150 ‘Églises’ réformées de France en 1561–­1562.” Revue historique 311 (2009): 529–­60. ———, and Nicolas Fornerod, eds. L’Organisation et l’action des Églises réformées de France (1557–­1563): Synodes provinciaux et autres documents. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2012.

Bennini, Martine, and Robert Descimon. “Économie politique de l’office vénal anoblissant.” In Épreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la haute robe parisienne (XVIe-­XVIIe siècles), edited by Robert Descimon and Élie Haddad, 31–­45. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010.

Bernstein, Hilary. Between Crown and Community: Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-­ Century Poitiers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. ———. “The ‘Bourgeoisie Seconde,’ the Catholic League, and Urban Society.” French History 17 (2003): 342–­51.

———. “République urbaine et République des lettres.” Histoire, économie, sociéte 30, no. 2 (2011): 29–­45. ———. “Réseaux savants et choix documentaires de l’histoire locale française.” Histoire urbaine 28 (2010): 65–­84.

Bloch, Marc. Apologie pour l’histoire ou métier d’historien. Cahiers des Annales, 3. Paris: Armand Colin, 1949. Translated by Peter Putnam as The Historian’s Craft. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Knopf, 1954.

Breen, Michael P. Law, City, and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State Formation in Early Modern Dijon. Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2007. ———. “Law, Society, and the State in Early Modern France.” Journal of Modern History 83 (2011): 346–­86.

Collins, James B. Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Burgundy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

———. The Fiscal Limits of Absolutism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. ———. The State in Early Modern France. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Cosandey, Fanny, and Robert Descimon. L’Absolutisme en France: Histoire et historiographie. L’Histoire en débats 313. Paris: Seuil, 2002. Crouzet, Denis. Les Guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525–­vers 1610. 2 vols. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990.

Descimon, Robert. “Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville (4 Juillet 1652): Paris et la ‘Fronde des Princes.’”Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 54 (1999): 319–­51. ———. “The ‘Bourgeoisie Seconde’: Social Differentiation in the Parisian Municipal Oligarchy in the Sixteenth Century, 1500–­1610.” French History 17 (2003): 388–­424.

———. “Le Corps de ville et les élections échevinales à Paris aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: Codification coutumière et pratiques sociales.” Histoire, économie, et société (1994): 507–­30.

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———. “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV (1594–­1609): Autonomie urbaine, conflits politiques et exclusives sociales.” In La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’état moderne (XIIe–­XVIIIe siècles), edited by Neithard Bulst and Jean-­Philippe Genet, 113–­50. Paris: C.N.R.S., 1988. ———. “Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVIIe siècles: Du bon usage du Cabinet des Titres.” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 155 (1997): 607–­44.

———. “Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553–­1617): Une rupture intellectuelle, politique et sociale.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 226 (2009): 485–­95.

———. “Prise de parti, appartenance sociale et relations familiales dans la Ligue parisienne.” In Les réformes: Enracinement socio-­culturel, 25e colloque international d’études humanistes, Tours 1er–­13 juillet 1982, edited by Bernard Chevalier and Robert Sauzet, 123–­41. Paris: Guy Trédaniel, Éditions de la Maisnie, 1985. ———. Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et réalités de la Ligue parisienne (1585–­1594). Paris: Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l’Île-­de-­ France; Librairie Klincksieck, 1983.

———, and Élie Haddad, eds. Épreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la haute robe parisienne (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècles). Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010. ———, and Christian Jouhaud. La France du premier au XVIIe siècle, 1594–­1661. Paris: Belin, 1996.

Dewald, Jonathan. Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture: France, 1570–­1715. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

———. The Formation of a Provincial Nobility: The Magistrates of the Parlement of Rouen, 1499–­1610. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

———. Lost Worlds: The Emergence of French Social History, 1815–­1970. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

———. Pont-­St.-­Pierre, 1398–­1789: Lordship, Community, and Capitalism in Early Modern France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Diefendorf, Barbara B. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-­Century Paris. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

———. “La Charité dévote en Provence au XVIIe siècle.” In La religion vécue: Les laïcs dans l’Europe moderne, edited by Laurence Croq and David Garrioch, 123–­42. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013. ———. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

———. Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

———. “Rites of Repair: Restoring Community in the French Religious Wars.” Past & Present, suppl. 7 (2012): 30–­51.

Drouot, Henri. Mayenne et la Bourgogne 1587–­1596: Contribution à l’histoire des provinces françaises pendant la Ligue. 2 vols. Paris: Auguste Picard, 1937.

Greengrass, Mark. Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576–­ 1585. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Hanley, Sarah. “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France.” French Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (1989): 1–­27.

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———. “The Monarchic State: Marital Regime Governance and Male Rights.” In Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe, edited by Adrianna E. Bakos, 107–­26. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1994. Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–­1629. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

———. “The League in Burgundy: A bourgeoisie seconde?” French History 17 (2003): 1–­15.

———. “Popular Political Culture and Mayoral Elections in Sixteenth-­Century Dijon.” In Society and Institutions in Early Modern France, edited by Mack P. Holt, 98–­ 116. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.

———. “Les Réseaux d’autorité et de pouvoir à l’Hôtel de Ville et au Parlement de Dijon entre 1580 et 1630.” Annales de Bourgogne 85 (2013): 19–­35.

———. “Wine, Community and Reformation in Sixteenth-­Century Burgundy.” Past & Present 138 (Feb. 1993): 58–­93. Lebigre, Arlette. La Révolution des curés: Paris 1588–­1594. Paris: Albin Michel, 1980.

Mousnier, Roland. The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy, 1598–­1789: Society and the State. Translated by Brian Pearce. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1979.

Penzi, Marco. “Les Listes de proscriptions au temps de la Ligue: Un enjeu politique contemporain et un enjeu historiographique.” Mélanges de la Casa de Vélazquez 44, no. 2 (2014): 105–­18. ———. “Tours contre Rome au début du règne d’Henri IV.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 226, no. 3 (2009): 329–­47.

Richet, Denis. “Aspects socio-­culturels des conflits religieux à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIè siècle.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 32 (1977): 764–­789. Reprinted in Denis Richet, De la Réforme à la Révolution: Études sur la France moderne, 15–­51. Paris: Aubier, 1991. Salmon, J. H. M. “The Paris Sixteen, 1584–­94: The Social Analysis of a Revolutionary Movement.” Journal of Modern History (1972): 540–­76. Schneider, Robert A. The Ceremonial City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

———. “Literature and Power and the Emergence of Literature: Christian Jouhaud’s Age of Richelieu.” French Historical Studies 25 (2002): 357–­80.

———. Public Life in Toulouse, 1463–­1789. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Wolfe, Michael. The Conversion of Henri IV: Politics, Power, and Religious Belief in Early Modern France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

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Chapter 1

Robert Descimon, the Annales Tradition, and the Social History of the Ruling Classes Jonathan Dewald A peculiarity runs through recent French historical writing: for the past generation, interest in the Old Regime’s ruling classes and creative research about them have centered in the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, institutional home of the journal Annales.1 Since the journal’s foundation in 1929, the Annales movement has been one of the world’s focal points for innovative thinking about social history, and standard accounts of it (especially in the Anglo-­Saxon intellectual world) stress its concern with the history of ordinary people and its indifference to the privileged and powerful. In their overview of historical epistemology, Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob describe the Annales movement as concerned with “broad demographic changes, .  .  .  long-­ term processes such as population growth or contraction, price curves, harvest yields, tax receipts, and the like.” Annales history, they add, focuses on “ordinary people—­peasants, workers, immigrants, for example,” who “had been left out of traditional historical accounts because they did

1. At its creation, the journal’s full title was Annales d’histoire économique et sociale. Its subtitle has changed several times since, reflecting its editors’ changing sense of the field’s development, but the journal has maintained a strong sense of continuity in its core commitments. For an overview emphasizing those commitments, see Burguière, L’École des Annales.

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not make the political and military decisions for a whole society.”2 In a more specialized study, Traian Stoianovich writes that “Annales historians have been nourished in the tradition of Jules Michelet. . . . Overtly, at least, they aspire to a history of the people like Michelet’s. . . .”3 Of course, the Annales movement was never so hostile to studying elites as such comments suggest. Both of the movement’s founders devoted some of their most important scholarship to the French nobility, Lucien Febvre in his thesis on the Franche-­Comté, Marc Bloch in both French Rural History and Feudal Society.4 Only seven years after founding the journal, they called in it for extending this line of research to collective study of the European nobilities and introduced that project by explaining how important it was to them. “The Annales had scarcely come into existence when we began already to consider it”; only the pressure of other business had delayed its implementation.5 Yet the standard accounts are not entirely misleading, for in the postwar years few Annales scholars followed Febvre and Bloch’s 1936 suggestions. Instead, the study of French elites became mainly the preserve of Sorbonne historians like Roland Mousnier, François Bluche, and Jean Meyer. When in the 1970s Robert Forster and Orest Ranum compiled their series of Selections from the Annales, they included volumes on peasants, outlaws, food and drink, and the like, but nothing on the ruling classes, the subjects of their own research.6 Their choice was appropriate, and not only because these topics represented what American readers at that time would find newest and most noteworthy in Annales scholarship. There simply were few examples of Annales scholarship on elites. Forster’s 1960 study of the nobility of Toulouse was the first significant study of the rural nobility published after 1945, in either France or the United States; when Jean Meyer followed six years later with his study of the Breton nobility, he began by noting that Bloch’s 2. Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, Telling the Truth About History, 79, 83, 84. 3. Stoianovich, French Historical Method, 165–­66.

4. Febvre, Philippe II et la Franche-­Comté; Bloch, French Rural History; Bloch, Feudal Society.

5. Les Directeurs [Bloch and Febvre], “Enquêtes: Les noblesses.” Their call was followed by an extended questionnaire on the topic in the same issue, and by two substantive essays in the following issue, one on the Austrian and one on French nobility, the latter by Marc Bloch.

6. The specific titles include Biology of Man in History; Family and Society; Rural Society in France; Deviants and the Abandoned in French Society: Food and Drink in History; and Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred.

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appeal had gone largely unheard, and that this “immense domain” remained “so little cultivated.”7 Things are different today. Now, some of the best-­known students of early modern popular mentalities and experiences are to be found at the Sorbonne8—­and some of the most important studies of elites come from the École, and more particularly, from Robert Descimon and his research colleagues, assembling bright and early Friday mornings in his seminar, in what is surely among the longest-­running, liveliest academic conversations in the world.9 Even its specific topics connect Descimon’s scholarship to the great Sorbonne historians of the 1970s. Like Mousnier, he studies the venality of offices and the terminology of social stratification; like Bluche, the parlementaires of Paris and the processes of ennoblement; like Meyer, the “reformations” of the nobility undertaken by Louis XIV and Jean-­Baptiste Colbert.10 And yet (I want to show here) Descimon’s aims, methods, and interpretive assumptions are fundamentally different from theirs. Despite its many complexities and nuances, their work ultimately expresses a vision of the Old Regime’s ruling classes as the crucial builders of French culture, flawed but genuine exemplars of the creative potential of societal inequality. In 1973, thus, Bluche described the high nobility of the eighteenth century as “the drivers of a civilisation,” who had “invented an art of living.”11 For Mousnier, the high officials of the seventeenth century created the French state and thus, in significant ways,

7. Forster, Nobility of Toulouse; Meyer, La Noblesse bretonne au XVIIIe siècle, 1:xi. Meyer himself described Forster’s study as “la première étude d’une noblesse provinciale” (ibid., 1:xxxii). I explore some of the reasons for this peculiar situation in Lost Worlds, 155–­82.

8. I have in mind for instance the scholarship of Denis Crouzet, who has been especially concerned with understanding the varieties of religious experience of ordinary Parisians in the sixteenth century.

9. Robert Descimon of course is not the only Annales scholar drawn in these directions. Among recent appointments to the École, Katia Béguin and Antoine Lilti have written theses specifically on the nobility (Béguin, Les Princes de Condé; Lilti, Le Monde des salons); and Descimon’s own generation there includes the cultural historian Christian Jouhaud, whose work focuses on interactions between the seventeenth-­century aristocracy and the culture around it. The example of Guy Chaussinand-­ Nogaret seems to me to reflect a different line of development, since his important study of the eighteenth-­century nobility seems to have derived from an initial interest in the origins of the French Revolution (French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century). It is also relevant to the shift in Annales preoccupations that Robert Descimon himself recently served as co-­director of the École’s Laboratoire de démographie et d’histoire sociale. 10. Mousnier, La Vénalité des offices and (among many other works dealing with social stratification) Recherches sur la stratification sociale; Bluche, Les Magistrats de Paris; Bluche and Durye, L’Anoblissement par charges avant 1789; Meyer, La Noblesse bretonne. 11. Bluche, La Vie quotidienne de la noblesse française, 257.

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French identity itself.12 In contrast, Robert Descimon has explored these groups from an essentially anthropological perspective, as a way to understand the functioning of a society distant from our own. He has thus pursued the enduring objectives of Annales scholarship through the medium of research topics that seem to come from another intellectual universe. **x * * * *b * a Of course, Robert Descimon does not ease the path of his would-­be interpreter. There is the sheer immensity of his scholarly output, continually evolving over forty years of intensive research.13 There is the risk of misreading his subtle, often delicate, occasionally ironic formulations; there is his remarkable readiness to collaborate with other scholars, both in print and informally, so that his own voice cannot always be distinguished from theirs;14 and there is the incomparable richness of his empirical research, which can block from view his interpretive ambitions. But the ambitions are there, and they are explicitly framed in terms of the history and mission of Annales historical writing. Characteristically, a 2002 article about an obscure, century-­old academic quarrel (so obscure that only one of its participants may have known that it was taking place) broadens out to compare what Descimon terms “l’histoire universitaire classique,” today still happily functioning much as it did in 1900, and “Annales history, which finds itself ‘on the edge of a cliff ’”—­but whose possible redirection (so the reader comes to understand) is one the article’s underlying objectives.15 Descimon’s first book, his 1983 Qui étaient les Seize?,16 offers one point of access to these interpretive ambitions, for it examines a moment 12. The theme can be detected throughout Mousnier’s work, but perhaps most visibly in his Histoire générale des civilisations.

13. The list of Descimon’s publications from 2009 through 2012 includes thirty-­two articles; see http://crh.ehess.fr/index.php?/membres/476, consulted 13 August 2013.

14. His co-­authored books include La Sainte Ligue, written with Elie Barnavi; L’Absolutisme en France, written with Fanny Cosandey; and Les Ligueurs de l’exil, written with José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez. The recent collection Épreuves de noblesse, which Descimon co-­edited with Elie Haddad, includes three substantive articles and two short introductory texts that Descimon co-­authored with others.

15. “Declareuil (1913) contre Hauser (1912).” The phrase refers to Roger Chartier’s essay collection, Au Bord de la falaise. For discussion of the issues surrounding that text, see Smith, Dewald, Sewell, and Chartier, “Forum.” 16. For a longer account of Qui étaient les Seize?, see my review of it.

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of societal transformation. Into the late sixteenth century, Descimon there argues, Paris society retained fundamental aspects of the medieval commune; much divided its inhabitants, but even the wealthiest shared a sense of membership in a single community, and they defined that community as essentially local, the social world of Paris itself. By the early seventeenth century, a fundamental reconfiguration had taken place. Many members of the Paris elite had aligned themselves with the developing absolutist state and with the military nobility, defining themselves as nobles of the robe rather than bourgeois of Paris, weakening or altogether giving up their communal attachments in the process. The League represented the crisis moment in this transition; its violence showed how much contemporaries understood to be at stake. Qui étaient les Seize? thus shows the existence of a societal before and after, a transition from one social system to another, fundamentally different one. Three decades later, that theme of transformation remains central to Descimon’s scholarship, and the most recent collective work from his seminar, Épreuves de noblesse (published in 2010), explores its full ramifications.17 It shows that the years around 1600 witnessed the creation of Old Regime societal organization. Through the Middle Ages and most of the sixteenth century, a loose collection of powerful clans had dominated society, through their possession of castles, lordships, and other mechanisms of power. Only around 1600 did a different form of society emerge, organized around lineages; in this new society, the key fact was no longer the assemblage of powers, but dynastic continuity and purity of blood, defined strictly in terms of father-­to-­son transmission. The process of transformation began in the later sixteenth century; the new model’s triumph found expression in Henri IV’s Edict on the Tailles and in his institution of the Paulette, each in its way proclaiming the centrality of lineage as a societal principle. Colbert’s investigations of false nobles represented the full elaboration of the new system, by ferociously penalizing those who clung to older ideals. When Qui étaient les Seize? appeared, structuralist terminology had already come to seem rather dated, and Descimon himself rarely uses it. Épreuves de noblesse emphasizes that the shift from one system to the other was “un phénomène de longue durée,” a chronology that already separates

17. See note 15 above.

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the process from the structural shifts imagined by 1970s-­style “French theory.” The book stresses as well “the degree of conflict [la conflictualité] which dominated the structuring of the social order [la structuration du champ social],” thus its contingencies and uncertainties.18 Yet the language of structure appears in even this formulation, and it turns up elsewhere in Descimon’s writing as well, for instance, in a footnote gently criticizing the Mousnier school’s understanding of nobility as a social category. Arlette Jouanna (writes Descimon, as translated by Orest Ranum) “did not reach across the heterogeneity of ways of speaking about the nobility that were embedded in the general thought structures and not subsumed by one or another. As a result, it was inevitable that Jouanna would interpret early modern sources in light of the common sense ideology of today.”19 One of the historian’s critical tasks, then, is to reach across such structural divides, to recreate systems of thought and action that verbal continuities obscure. The task is especially urgent in studying the nobility, for the system of stratification put in place around 1600 sought precisely to mask its own novelty, with striking success; it has effectively misled historians into thinking of nobility as a single social concept, which endured without essential change from the eleventh to the twenty-­first century. Such language evokes a core Annaliste commitment, arguably the core commitment: that of understanding the alterity of past societies and civilizations, in other words, the project of historical anthropology.20 Both his specific phrasing and his larger anthropological project thus establish Descimon among Lucien Febvre’s intellectual descendants. They echo Febvre’s complaints about historians’ anachronisms (for Febvre, “the sin of sins—­the most unpardonable”) and his numerous references to contemporary anthropology (Febvre described the pioneering anthropologist Lucien Lévy-­Bruhl as “our master” and borrowed from him the concept of mentalité itself ).21 Above all, Descimon’s comments show his commit-

18. Descimon and Haddad, Epreuves de noblesse, 301.

19. Descimon, “Birth of the Nobility of the Robe,” 118n8.

20. André Burguière makes a similar point in slightly different terms, arguing that the history of mentalities has been the unifying thread in Annales scholarship throughout its multiple reincarnations, and that this approach has allowed “la possibilité d’analyser une société de l’intérieur que permet l’étude des mentalités. . . . C’est un travail méthodique de déchiffrement” (L’École des Annales, 13). However, my emphasis here differs from Burguière’s in noting the importance of power in Descimon’s efforts to “decypher” Old Regime society. 21. Febvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance, 15.

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ment to Febvre’s project “of reconstructing the mind-set of our ancestors” and “to show . . . how much the systems of different eras in the past may have, necessarily have differed from our own in the present.”22 This anthropological orientation is less obvious among the post–­World War II Annalistes, interested as they were in economic and demographic patterns, but it can be detected in that generation as well. In exploring the complex circuits through which people, goods, and values moved in the early modern world, Fernand Braudel shows the influence on his thinking of Marcel Mauss and Claude Lévi-­Strauss;23 even the statistics-­laden economic history of Pierre Goubert shows a fascination with the distinct structures that govern different societies and that sharply separate one historical era from another.24 But if Descimon’s historical anthropology is similar in its objectives to that of earlier Annalistes, its methods and conclusions are essentially new. Necessarily so, for his predecessors’ assumptions fit neither today’s understanding of the world nor the historical scholarship that has accumulated since World War II. Febvre’s anthropology relied on a rigid distinction between “the primitives” and “the civilized,”25 and it presented each form of society as a monolithic structure, shaped by fundamental intellectual and technological realities. The dichotomy left little room for cultural relativism. On the contrary, Febvre emphasized at length the inadequacies of premodern societies, marked as they were by fear, emotional instability, and ignorance. His great 1942 work Le Problème de l’incroyance used strong language in explaining these ideas: “Fear, the daughter of ignorance, always besieged the hearts of these strong men”; “the men of those times, if they compiled information—­ . . . if they did almost nothing but compile—­that is because, in order to conquer the secrets of the world, to force nature to reveal her secrets, they had nothing: no arms, no tools, no overall plan”; “a longwinded language, verbose, all too often lacking in rhythm and charm: the language of peasants. . . .

22. Febvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance, 17; Febvre, “L’Histoire économique et la vie,” 2. 23. These influences are acutely noted by Stoianovich, French Historical Method, 97.

24. “Economic structuralism” seems an appropriate label for Goubert, given his division of his thesis Beauvais et le Beauvaisis into a section on “structures” and one on “conjunctures.” In abbreviating the book for a paperback edition (Cent mille provinciaux au XVIIe siècle), he simply eliminated the “conjunctures,” leaving the book a study of structures only. 25. Febvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance, 17.

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Harsh constraints, a serious hindrance to thinking: no one escaped them.”26 In Europe, these limits receded only with seventeenth-­century developments in philosophy and science, placing twentieth-­century men and women in “a world that is clearly marked out, where each thing and each being has its perfectly delimited boundaries.” Outside Europe, “the primitives” still reasoned “differently from the civilized.”27 At a distance now of seventy years, we can see how firmly Febvre’s thinking was anchored in a still-­colonial world. Himself alert to that colonial background, he devoted the lead article in an Annales issue of 1932 to the gigantic and hugely popular Colonial Exposition held at Vincennes the previous year, one of the last in the series of such collective celebrations that began in the 1860s, and the last to include villages and villagers transplanted from Africa and Asia. Febvre described the event enthusiastically, and even his criticisms of it are suggestive. He noted the absence of serious treatment of colonial economics, and the near absence of “the anonymous mass of unknown workers”—­by which (he explained) he meant “the planters, the settlers [colons] . . . the particular demography of the White Man established in Africa or Asia.” These were not matters of detail, “but rather reach to the heart of the matter—­to the heart of the colonial question.” For Febvre, that question centered on cultural and demographic encounter, and he ended the essay with a reflection on the “distances between races, between peoples: on the one hand, the material distances, diminishing every day; on the other, les distances morales, which remain unchanging, enormous, perhaps uncrossable.”28 The issue concerned him sufficiently that he returned to it in 1946, in his editorial reopening the journal after the war, in much the same language as in 1932.29 Nor did such language disappear immediately thereafter. As a political activist, for instance, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie vigorously opposed French colonialism, yet passages in his 1966 Les paysans de Languedoc more or less repeat Febvre’s understanding of the contrast between premodern and modern mentalities. Le Roy Ladurie speaks for instance

26. Febvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance, 378, 360, 334.

27. Febvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance, 100, 17. For a more sympathetic analysis of Febvre’s ideas of primitive mentality, emphasizing their potential for undercutting the universalizing implications of Euro-­centric definitions of reason, see Burguière, L’École des Annales, 72. 28. Febvre, “L’Histoire économique et la vie,” quotes at 6, 10. 29. Febvre, “A nos lecteurs.”

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of “that traditional, ethnological neurosis of traditional societies, which today is disappearing from the more advanced societies.” “Materially impoverished, sexually very repressed, traditional society . . . thus seems characterized, among its popular classes, by a double series of frustrations and scarcities, which reciprocally reinforce and shape one another.” Les paysans de Languedoc emphasizes the wide-­ranging consquences of this mind-set: the oppressed classes of traditional societies, it argues, have little capacity even to understand their circumstances, let alone to challenge them effectively.30 Such comments suggest the long half-­life of Lucien Febvre’s anthropology and the importance of the task facing the post-­1968 generation, as it sought to rethink historical anthropology in a decolonized world—­a world that had come to understand that multiple forms of rationality and irrationality mark all societies, and that knowledge is never altogether disconnected from power.31 In attempting to define Robert Descimon’s approaches to that task of reinvention, it is helpful to start by noting the centrality of the theme of power in his work. Here too, conventional depictions of the Annales program mislead, for Annales scholarship was never so indifferent to the history of power as is sometimes claimed. But it is accurate, I believe, to say that through the 1970s Annales scholars found it difficult to integrate power into their analyses of sociocultural structures. Either they tended to follow Febvre and stress the shared values and assumptions uniting the powerful and the weak; or (like Pierre Goubert) to attribute overwhelming force to the powerful and see the weak as mere victims, whose material and cultural poverty rendered them incapable of political action. In contrast, from the outset Descimon’s work has explored the complexities of social power—­its mechanisms, the obstacles it confronted, the possibility of its failure; and it has been alert to power’s multiple locations, in even the most oppressive societies. Those assumptions are central to his exploration of the League as a struggle for the future of the city, involving on both sides real objectives and serious calculations about 30. Le Roy Ladurie, Les Paysans de Languedoc, quotes at 359, 360. On the seriousness of Le Roy Ladurie’s political engagements during the time he was at work on Les Paysans de Languedoc, see his memoir Paris-­Montpellier.

31. Hence the importance of the great 1960s texts that questioned the dichotomies on which Febvre’s historical anthropology rested, notably Claude Lévi-­Strauss’s La Pensée sauvage and Michel Foucault’s Les Mots et les choses.

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how best to attain them. Thirty years later, the question remains central to Épreuves de noblesse. There, Descimon writes that “the social construction of the category of nobility” was directed toward creating “a coherent ensemble (a social order) which assured the overall functioning of social domination in a monarchical context.” Elsewhere, he speaks of “the properties [les biens] on which societal domination rests.”32 These “properties” are of many kinds; they include material possessions, but also forms of knowledge, social values, and familial relationships. Yet however complex their forms, all retain their connections to power and domination. They serve highly concrete, ultimately political purposes. This attentiveness to social domination extends to its most basic form, physical violence. Descimon’s essay “Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville” suggests the distinctiveness of his approach: it describes an episode of horrific violence, with touches of cruelty, but attaches it to the political logics working in the Paris of the Fronde, the specific logics of ordinary people, urban patricians, and princes. None of these actors was in full control of his behavior, and all helped generate consequences that they had not wanted, or even imagined. And yet, Descimon concludes, their logics all fitted “into an overall societal rationality.”33 Violence here (as in Descimon’s studies of the League) is no mere psychological phenomenon, the measure (as it was for Febvre and has remained for much recent scholarship) of the instabilities of early modern life. In Descimon’s work, it is a political mechanism, which helps determine the outcomes of important contests. But violence is only the simplest form of social power, and among the less effective—­unsustainable over long periods of time, uncontrollable in its effects, difficult to transmit from one generation to the next. The killing of Barnabé Brisson displays these limitations with particular clarity: in appearance the triumph of the radical ligueurs, the event in fact undermined their cause, because of the pity and fear that it occasioned even among sympathetic observers.34 Hence Descimon’s attentiveness to the longer-­lasting forms of domination, those more deeply encoded in a society’s organization, through its systems of social

32. Descimon and Haddad, Épreuves de noblesse, 278, 281.

33. Descimon, “Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville,” quote at 351. 34. Descimon and Barnavi, La Sainte Ligue, 215–­18.

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terminology, law, kinship, and knowledge. In his efforts to understand these systems, Descimon has drawn on multiple intellectual sources, including the philosophy of speech acts, the sociology of social capital, and the sociology of argumentation and communication. But perhaps most prominent among these intellectual resources has been the anthropology of Claude Lévi-­Strauss, whose interest in kinship, genealogy, and the role of knowledge in founding social relationships Descimon has adapted to his own purposes. Indeed, Lévi-­Strauss himself recognized the mutual benefits that history and anthropology might derive from studying the elites of societies like early modern France; if historians could find in anthropology a collection of useful concepts and methods, anthropologists could find in history new ways for understanding differences between societies, and notably, between “cold,” slowly changing societies, and the “hot” societies of our own world. In a paper whose appearance coincided exactly with that of Descimon’s first book, and that was first presented to the assembled École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Lévi-­Strauss argued that the then-­new ethnology of complex societies would need to turn “anew toward history: no longer just to the so-­called ‘new’ history . . . but to the most traditional history, the kind that is sometimes called outmoded: buried in dynastic chronicles, genealogical treatises, memoirs and other writings devoted to the doings of the great families. . . .”35 Already in 1983, Qui étaient les Seize? showed the similar direction of Descimon’s thinking, for it too proposed reshuffling the relations between “progressive” and “conservative” visions of historical change. The defeated ligueurs fought for medieval values, Descimon argues, but these were values that were in many ways more humane and more democratic than those of the triumphant royalists. His more recent studies of genealogy show the continuing fruitfulness of that reshuffling of methods. Of course, historians have long known that genealogy mattered deeply to early modern elites, and they have understood that genealogical narratives mixed historical realities with fictions, some of them extravagant. But Descimon’s genealogical explorations have shown something more fundamental in these practices: in the seventeenth century, genealogies were part of the processes by which the new, lineage-­based social order was

35. Lévi-­Strauss, “Histoire et ethnologie,” quote at 1231.

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constructed and the old effaced. Even nonfictionalized family narratives, compiled by conscientious experts and resting on original documents, played their part, by excluding from the record familial branches that did not conform to the new understanding of social realities. But such strategic silences and excisions become visible only through traditional, microscopic scholarship—­through first completely reconstructing the realities of families’ histories from notarial sources, then setting those against the monarchy’s official genealogical archive, now the Cabinet des titres at the Bibliothèque nationale. The operation brings to light “a vast mystification”: as they redefined nobility itself, families collaborated with the monarchy to reshape the documentation of their history. The legacy of that joint effort has been a fundamental misunderstanding of nobility itself. If historians have failed to understand what constituted nobility before 1600—­failed, in other words, to reach across the seventeenth-­century social categories that still govern our thinking—­that is partly because an entire archive, constructed of authentic documents, stands between us and an earlier historical reality. The Cabinet des titres, Descimon concludes, is at once a “precious repository“ and the crystallization of an ideology; the historian must use its materials, but must do so with the intent of piercing its mystification.36 In a similar spirit, Descimon has explored the power of legal systems as an autonomous force shaping society, rather than as (in the words of Henri Hauser) an “enormous heap” of “juridico-­archeological bric-­à-­brac,” unworthy of historical attention, a mere cover for underlying interests.37 Here the undermining of standard classifications cuts especially deep. Hauser was among the founders of French social history, a “fellow-­traveler of the Annales,” and progressive in his politics; Declareuil, a prominent anti-­Dreyfusard, raving anti-­Protestant, and extreme nationalist. And yet, Descimon concludes, in Declareuil “reactionary obscurantism and fruitful intellectual suggestions were inextricably mixed”;38 ultimately he offers the better guidance for thinking through our own troubles in constructing a workable social history, because he takes the law seriously. More than the progressive Hauser, he understands

36. Descimon, “Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVIIe siècle,” quote at 644. 37. Quoted in Descimon, “Declareuil (1913) contre Hauser (1912),” 1620. 38. Descimon, “Declareuil (1913) contre Hauser (1912),” 1627.

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the powerful effect of cultural forms in shaping social relations and resists reducing them to mere epiphenomena. **x * * * *b * a Through most of Robert Descimon’s scholarly career, commentators have regularly detected crises in the practice of social history, deriving partly from practitioners’ own epistemological doubts, partly from the challenges posed by other disciplines, partly from events in the world at large. Indeed, scholars associated with the Annales tradition have been especially vulnerable to this sense of crisis, perhaps because of the movement’s long-­standing commitments to intellectual change and to engagement with the world beyond the university. In 2006 Jacques Revel (former president of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales) wrote of “the doubt” that since the 1970s has “affected our societies as they have confronted kinds of crises that they did not know how to understand or even, often, to describe.” Amidst uncertainties that touched both daily life and academic disciplines, the “objective of an overall understanding of the social world” has had to be postponed, at least temporarily. Elsewhere Revel spoke of “a crisis of French historical identity,” again linking doubt within the historical profession to other doubts in society at large.39 Less convinced of its reality, Revel’s colleague at the Ecole Gérard Noiriel nonetheless has described “the ‘crisis of history’” as “a dominant theme in discussions among historians who reflect on the current state and the future of their discipline.”40 For the questions I have addressed here, two closely related strands of doubt seem especially important to this sense of professional crisis: on the one hand, doubt about the idea of progress in European society; on the other, doubt that any society can be seen as a coherent, interlocking system, a structure.41 Both beliefs, it has been seen, underlay the historical anthropology developed by Lucien Febvre and adopted by his successors. Difference between primitive and modern societies offered them a

39. Revel, Un parcours critique, 60, 380.

40. Noiriel, Sur la “crise” de l’histoire, 9, 45–­46. While exploring the genuine reasons for this sense of trouble, Noiriel himself also notes the long tradition of such complaints, stretching back to the early nineteenth century (10–­11). 41. I discuss aspects of this decline in “Crisis, Chronology, and the Shape of European Social History.”

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fundamental guide to research, for the contrast was both deep and all-­ encompassing, touching all domains of life. Not surprisingly, then, Febvre believed the modern practice of history to be itself tightly entwined with belief in progress. A significant mark of the sixteenth century’s inability to understand the world was the fact that its “philosophers had no idea of a general map of human history, an overall vision of the movement of progress [d’un plan général de l’histoire humain, d’un traité d’ensemble du mouvement du progrès].”42 Of course such beliefs were no monopoly of Annales scholarship. They constituted part of the cultural repertoire that most mid-­twentieth-­century historians brought to their researches, and that included the Sorbonne historians who concerned themselves with the nobility. In important ways, Robert Descimon’s scholarship constitutes a response to these crises besetting social history, an effort to reinvent the Annales tradition, preserving its core values while at the same time taking seriously the challenges that it faces. Descimon’s effort at reinvention starts with choices of scale. His work resolutely avoids the rhetoric of “total history” that characterized the previous generation of Annales historical writing, and it deals often with specific events, situations, and social groups, without assuming that events, situations, and groups fit into overarching social structures. His work also presumes the essential rationality of all the actors he studies, including those who (like the ligueurs) held beliefs remote from our own. In this sense, Descimon’s attentiveness to politics expresses a larger methodological assumption about the purposiveness of action in the past. His ligueurs and frondeurs failed, but they fought intelligently for real interests and values; they were not moved by primitive “fury” or “old deliriums.”43 This renewed social history includes a deeper level of politics as well, in its exploration of the political codings that structured social relations. Apparently simple relationships of family and class, he has shown, emerged from choices and struggles, not from the structures of underdevelopment. In keeping with this alertness to the universality of rational action, finally, Descimon’s work repeatedly questions the idea of progress, and it accepts the implications of that questioning. His ligueurs were not more backward than the architects of the Bourbon 42. Febvre, Le Problème de l’incroyance, 392.

43. The phrases are taken from Mousnier, Fureurs paysannes, and Le Roy Ladurie, Les Paysans de Languedoc, 247.

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state, or even farther from our own values; builders of twentieth-­century social history like Hauser were not necessarily closer to our sense of the historian’s craft than reactionaries like Declareuil. Hence the apparent anomaly of an Annaliste history focused on elements of “the most traditional history,” the history of institutions, dynasties, genealogies, family strategies, a history concerned mainly with the rich, with relatively little to say about ordinary people or economic systems. In fact, I argue here, Robert Descimon has pursued the familiar Annales objective, that of understanding the mechanisms of a distant social order, while incorporating into his history criteria we today bring to any project of societal understanding: our intuitive convictions about the pervasiveness of power, the fundamental equality of cultures, the importance of events and the contingency of their outcomes, the complexities lurking in such concepts as class, property, and economic exchange. Reinventing social history in ways that respect these intuitions has demanded new forms of research: often microscopic in subject matter, attentive to details that earlier generations of scholarship could dismiss as superstructural, focused more on those who produced and reproduced social power than on its victims. Traditionalist methods, in some ways, yet turned to the service of Annales ideals, and exemplifying as well Annales belief in engaging with contemporary intellectual life.

Works cited Appleby, Joyce, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob. Telling the Truth about History. New York: Norton, 1994.

Béguin, Katia. Les Princes de Condé: Rebelles, courtisans et mécènes dans la France du Grand Siècle. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1999. Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. Translated by L. A. Manyon. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. ———. French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics. Translated by Janet Sondheimer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

———, and Lucien Febvre], Les Directeurs. “Enquêtes: Les noblesses.” Annales d’histoire économique et sociale 8 (May 1936), 238–­42.

Bluche, François. Les Magistrats de Paris au XVIIIe siècle. 2nd ed. Paris: Economica, 1986. ———. La Vie quotidienne de la noblesse française au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Hachette, 1973. ———, and Pierre Durye. L’Anoblissement par charges avant 1789. Paris: Les Cahiers Nobles, 1962.

Burguière, André. L’École des Annales: Une histoire intellectuelle. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006.

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Chartier, Roger. Au Bord de la falaise: L’histoire entre certitude et inquiétude. Paris: Albin Michel, 1998.

Chaussinand-­Nogaret, Guy. The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment. Translated by William Doyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Descimon, Robert. “Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville (4 juillet 1652). Paris et la ‘Fronde des Princes.’” Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 54 (1999): 319–­51.

———. “The Birth of the Nobility of the Robe.” In Changing Identities in Early Modern France, edited by Michael Wolfe, 95–­123. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1996.

———. “Declareuil (1913) contre Hauser (1912): Les rendez-­vous manqués de l’histoire et de l’histoire du droit.” Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales 57 (2002): 1615–­36. ———. “Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVIIe siècle: Du bon usage du Cabinet des titres.” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 155 (1997): 607–­44.

———. Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et réalités de la Ligue parisienne (1585–­1594). Paris: Fédération des societies historiques et archéologiques des Paris et de l’Île-­de-­ France; Librairie Klincksieck, 1983.

———, and Élie Barnavi. La Sainte Ligue, le juge, et la potence. Paris: Hachette, 1985.

———, and Fanny Cosandey. L’Absolutisme en France: Histoire et historiographie. Paris: Seuil, 2002.

———, and Élie Haddad, ed. Épreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la haute robe parisienne (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle). Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010. ———, and José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez. Les Ligueurs de l’exil: Le refuge catholique français après 1594. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005. Dewald, Jonathan. “Crisis, Chronology, and the Shape of European Social History.” American Historical Review 113 (October 2008): 1031–­52.

———. Lost Worlds: The Emergence of French Social History, 1815–­1970. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

———. Review of Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et réalité de la Ligue parisienne (1585–­ 1594), by Robert Descimon. Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (Spring 2009): 61–­65. Febvre, Lucien. Philippe II et la Franche-­Comté: Étude d’histoire politique, religieuse et sociale, 2nd ed. Paris: Flammarion, 1970.

———. Le Problème de l’incroyance au seizième siècle: La religion de Rabelais. 2nd ed. Paris: Albin Michel, 1968. ———. “L’Histoire économique et la vie: Leçon d’une exposition.” Annales 4 ( January 1932): 1–­10.

———. “A nos lecteurs, à nos amis.” Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations 1 ( January 1946): 1–­8.

Forster, Robert. The Nobility of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Economic Study. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, ser. 78, no 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960. Forster, Robert, and Orest Ranum, eds. Biology of Man in History: Selections from the Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

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———, eds. Deviants and the Abandoned in French Society: Selections from the Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

———, eds. Family and Society: Selections from the Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. ———, eds. Food and Drink in History: Selections from the Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. ———, eds. Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred: Selections from the Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

———, eds. Rural Society in France: Selections from the Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Foucault, Michel. Les Mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Goubert, Pierre, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis: Contribution à l’histoire de la France du XVIIe siècle. Paris: SEVPEN, 1960. ———. Cent mille provinciaux au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Flammarion,1968.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Les Paysans de Languedoc. Abridged edition. Paris: Flammarion, 1969. ———. Paris-­Montpellier: P.C.-­P.S.U, 1945–­1963. Paris: Gallimard, 1982.

Lévi-­Strauss, Claude. “Histoire et ethnologie.” Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations 38 (1983): 1217–­31. ———. La Pensée sauvage. Paris: Plon, 1962.

Lilti, Antoine. Le Monde des salons: Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris du XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 2005. Meyer, Jean. La Noblesse bretonne au XVIIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: SEVPEN, 1966.

Mousnier, Roland. Fureurs Paysannes: Es paysans dans les révoltes du XVII siècle. Paris: Calmann-­Lévy, 1967.

———. Histoire générale des civilisations: Les XVIe et XVIIe siècles. . . . Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954. ———. La Vénalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII. 2nd ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971. ———. Recherches sur la stratification sociale à Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Pedone, 1976. Noiriel, Gérard. Sur la “crise” de l’histoire. Paris: Belin, 1996.

Revel, Jacques. Un parcours critique: Douze exercices d’histoire sociale. Paris: Galaade, 2006. Smith, Bonnie, Jonathan Dewald, William Sewell, and Roger Chartier. “Forum.” French Historical Studies 21 (Spring 1998): 213–­64.

Stoianovich, Traian. French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.

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Chapter 2

Law and Social History in Early Modern France Michael P. Breen A quarter century ago, two articles appeared marking a significant and lasting shift in the ways historians study the relationship between law, state, and society in early modern France: David Parker’s “Sovereignty, Absolutism, and the Function of the Law in Seventeenth-­Century France” and Sarah Hanley’s “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State-­Building in Early Modern France.” When these two articles appeared in 1989, the former in Past and Present and the latter in French Historical Studies, historical interest in the law and its social and cultural effects had been concentrated largely on topics such as criminal justice and social repression, the development of legal institutions and professions, and the law’s role in the formation of the early modern French state.1 There had also had been fine studies of judicial politics, such as 1. Key studies of criminal justice and repression include Cameron, Crime and Repression; N. Castan, Justice et repression; Y. Castan, Honnêteté et relations sociales; Deyon, Temps des prisons; Farge, Délinquance et criminalité; Lebigre, Grands jours d’Auvergne; Plessix-­Buisset, Criminel devant ses juges; Reinhardt, Justice in the Sarladais; Ruff, Crime, Justice and Public Order; Soman, Sorcellerie et justice criminelle. For studies of institutions and professions, see, among others, Berlanstein, Barristers of Toulouse; Bluche, Magistrats au Parlement; Dewald, Formation of a Provincial Nobility; Dewald, Pont-­ St.-­Pierre; Gresset, Gens de justice; Guenée, Tribunaux et gens de justice; Hamscher, Parlement of Paris; Kagan, “Law Students and Legal Careers”; Mandrou, Magistrats et sorciers; Shennan, Parlement of Paris. On the law’s role in the growth of the early modern French state, see, for example Chaunu, “L’État de justice”; Church, Constitutional Thought; Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory; Hamscher, Conseil Privé; Hamscher, Royal Financial Administration; Hanley, Lit-­de-­Justice; Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship; Kelley, Beginning of Ideology; Richet, France moderne.

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Sharon Kettering’s book on the parlement of Aix,2 and pioneering works, such as Natalie Zemon Davis’s Fiction in the Archives, pointed to new ways historians might analyze legal sources. Nonetheless, works like Arlette Lebigre’s La Justice du roi, which emphasized institutional structures, formal procedures, and criminal justice, and which treated law as an emanation of royal authority, were more the norm. Parker’s and Hanley’s articles pointed in another direction. Parker asked historians to set aside narratives of centralization, rationalization, and the imposition of royal authority in order to focus instead on the legal system’s “general social and political functions”—­to study the dynamics of its day-­to-­day operations.3 The legal system’s “immediate function,” he wrote, “was to provide a mechanism for conducting and regulating the incessant struggles for power, status, and wealth among the great families, clienteles, and corporations that dominated French society.”4 Considering the extent to which the French state was made up of “competing clans, rooted in rival patrimonial networks and antagonistic corporate institutions,” Parker argued, historians needed to stop taking Old Regime laws and legal processes at face value and instead examine “what vested interests might be at work within France’s highly complex legal structures.”5 Appearing nearly simultaneously, Hanley’s article did just that by focusing particular attention on issues such as marriage, reproduction, family structure, and gender relations, tracing an alliance between law, patriarchy, and state formation that she termed the “family-­state compact.” For Hanley, the “vested interests” in France’s rapidly growing and increasingly complex legal apparatus were above all the new legal elite of venal magistrates and professional jurists who, starting in the mid-­ sixteenth century, employed litigation, jurisprudence, and statutory law to expand royal authority over marriage, reproduction, inheritance, and other family matters in order to consolidate their social networks and protect their sizeable investments in royal offices.6 Merging biological theories of male superiority with legal principles of masculine marital and political

2. Kettering, Judicial Politics; Moote, Revolt of the Judges; Hardy, Judicial Politics. 3. Parker, “Sovereignty, Absolutism, and the Function,” 37. 4. Ibid., 73.

5. Ibid., 68, 36.

6. Hanley, “Engendering the State,” 6–­15.

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authority, Hanley argued, French legal elites created a mutually reinforcing relationship between patriarchal authority within the family and royal authority within the state. That authority was eventually challenged by a “counterfeit culture” created by women (and some men) to maneuver within the confines of the family-­state compact and to contest its legitimacy in the courts and before the public.7 The many works exploring the complex and multifaceted relationship between law, legal practice, and society in early modern France that followed in the wake of Parker’s and Hanley’s pathbreaking articles have provided historians with a vastly richer, more nuanced, and more compelling portrait of state formation, gender relations, economic relationships, and social life than earlier legal histories that focused primarily on the histories of legislation, institutions, and jurists. They have shown that law, as Etienne Le Roy has put it, is less about what texts say than about what actors do with them.8 Seen from this perspective, one can better appreciate how the state was built not only from above by monarchs and their agents, but also from below by ordinary men and women who turned to royal authorities to help resolve their disputes. We can better see how legal language and legal institutions provided both the terms and mechanisms through which understandings of family relationships, communal obligations, the proper social order, and the nature of political power were debated, contested, and negotiated at nearly all levels of society. In spite of these benefits, however, the current tendency to focus on litigants’ agendas and strategies, and the ways in which they “consumed” justice and manipulated the law in pursuit of their own ends, can sometimes come perilously close to removing the law and those who administered it from the equation altogether. Or at the very least, it reduces them to little more than mere accessories. While one need not go as far as Niklas Luhmann, for whom law is a closed and self-­determining system of words, signs, and concepts, historians still need to account for the fact that one of early modern law’s principal claims to authority, and one of the reasons courts of law prospered during this period, was law’s

7. In addition to “Engendering the State,” Hanley has developed and refined this argument in a series of subsequent articles. See her “‘Jurisprudence of the Arrêts’”; “Family, the State, and the Law”; “Social Sites of Political Practice in France”; and “Monarchic State.” 8. Le Roy, “Éduquer.”

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ability to provide some degree of autonomous and impartial justice.9 As both a set of norms and a series of practices, early modern law was, to use Sally Falk Moore’s term, “semi-­autonomous,” at once “vulnerable to rules and decisions and other forces emanating from the larger world by which it is surrounded,” yet at the same time capable of generating rules, practices, and symbols of its own.10 This is because, as Pierre Bourdieu has described, the “judicial field” is ultimately comprised of socially recognized actors possessing a “technical competence” that empowers them “to interpret a corpus of texts sanctifying a correct or legitimated vision of the social world.”11 While litigants undoubtedly sought to harness the law’s resources in pursuit of their own ends, their ability to do so successfully rested on their utilization of, or at the very least their ability to interact effectively with, judges, lawyers, other legal professionals in terms that were largely established by the latter. Indeed, as Thomas Kuehn reminded us more than two decades ago, “law’s brooding presence, as an institutional mechanism and a body of rules” was so pervasive in early modern society that it served to shape the language and form of actions and disputes, even in instances where individuals sought to avoid litigation or formal use of the courts altogether.12 Understanding the relationship between “the law” as a set of norms, procedures, and institutional practices and its uses by various actors, including magistrates, litigants, and communities thus continues to be a key issue confronting historians of early modern French law and society. One of the main challenges we face, Matthew Gerber has recently observed, is getting the balance between law and practice right.13 This challenge is complicated by the hybrid nature of the Old Regime’s legal system, which James Farr has aptly described as the “awkward sibling to the ideal child of impartial disinterest.”14 On the one hand, royal and seigneurial courts were generally staffed by professionals who held university law degrees or had undergone lengthy apprenticeships, and the authority of

9. Luhmann, Law as a Social System.

10. Moore, “Law and Social Change,” 55. 11. Bourdieu, “Force of Law,” 817.

12. Kuehn, Law, Family and Women, 87.

13. Gerber, “Family, the State, and Law,” 481. 14. Farr, Tale of Two Murders.

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these courts and the men who staffed them was rooted in their promise to uphold the disinterested “rule of law.” On the other hand, the venality of judicial offices and the fact that positions in France’s rapidly expanding legal apparatus were often central to families’ financial and social fortunes meant that the entire system had a distinctly patrimonial character and that its workings were, as Parker observed, in many ways captured by the interests of the new legal elites who staffed it. These two observations, however, are perhaps less at odds with one another than they might seem at first glance. The ideal of the “rule of law” may be rhetoric, E. P. Thompson reminds us, but that does not make it empty rhetoric. “The essential precondition for the effectiveness of law, in its function as ideology,” he writes, “is that it shall display an independence from gross manipulation and shall seem to be just.”15 How, then, should we study the social history of early modern France in a way that accounts for the centrality of the law, its institutions, and its practitioners as a “semi-­autonomous social field”—­one that shaped and constrained social actions and behaviors, even as they were used and manipulated by individuals and corporations in pursuit of their own ends? The work of Robert Descimon (along with that of his many collaborators), with its fleshed-­out, yet nuanced, portraits of the interplay between social elites and legal authority and the intricacies of the family strategies, economic behaviors, and cultural values of those who comprised and those who utilized diverse facets of the Old Regime legal system, provides us with an excellent model for pulling off this delicate balancing act. Descimon’s careful, detailed, and sophisticated analysis of Parisian notarial records along with a wide range of legal, administrative, literary, and other sources have provided great insights into the social practices of venality under the Old Regime, as well as the profound social and political transformations they effected. Blending social, legal, and political history, Descimon’s studies into topics ranging from the creation of the noblesse de robe, to the experiences of the middling officials who staffed Paris’s Châtelet (the main royal court for civil and criminal affairs), to changes in the Parisian oligarchy provide important insights into the economic, legal, and familial strategies the new legal elites of early modern France employed to establish and protect their careers, status, and

15. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, 263.

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investments. The remainder of this essay will trace some of Descimon’s most important contributions to what might be termed the social history of early modern French law. It will then situate these contributions within the larger currents of recent scholarship on law and society under the Old Regime, with a particular emphasis on developments in the study of institutions, the legal professions, and the uses of the law and courts. Finally, it will offer some preliminary observations for further study of these topics suggested both by Descimon’s work and the broader trends in which it is situated. One way that Descimon’s work has been extremely useful has been its efforts to break down barriers between histoire (history) and histoire du droit (history of law)—­much more distinct (and often antagonistic) disciplines in France than they are in the anglophone world. This concern can be seen in Descimon’s article on “Les rendez-­vous manqués de l’histoire et de l’histoire du droit” (“The Missed Encounters between History and the History of Law”), in which he traced the fundamental political and methodological divisions between the two fields back to the Third Republic and above all the Dreyfus Affair, while expressing the hope that the time had come for a reconciliation that would enable historians and jurists to learn from each others’ methods.16 This effort to integrate legal history with social, political, and cultural history can also be seen in the recent Épreuves de noblesse, which examines how the nobility of the robe helped transform the nobility from a traditional social category into a legally defined group with “a strict juridical framework.”17 Essays on topics ranging from the political economy of venal office holding and the creation of a juridical framework for patrimonial offices, to cultural studies of genealogies and separation lawsuits, to the costs of obtaining offices and the cultural significance of officers’ residential patterns together weave a portrait of the complex interplay between the expanding institutional apparatus of the early modern French state and the social, economic, political, and cultural strategies officers and their families employed to navigate them and to negotiate their social relationships more generally. The dialogic relationship between the law’s formal structures and its social and cultural uses runs throughout Descimon’s work, which

16. Descimon, “Declareuil (1913) contre Hauser (1912).” 17. Descimon and Haddad, Épreuves de noblesse, 278.

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engages thoroughly with, and draws amply from, the scholarship of other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology. His articles highlight not only the ways individuals, families, and corporations made use of the resources France’s pluralistic legal system put at their disposal, but also how the law’s formal strictures shaped and constrained these actions. Whether looking at the Parlement of Paris, the notaires (notaries) and procureurs (solicitors) of the Châtelet, or other members of the Parisian notability, Descimon has always stressed the different types of venality associated with different offices—­customary or legal, for instance—­and the implications of the property and inheritance laws associated with them.18 Law thus provides Descimon with the framework that enables him to use the records of everyday life (marriage contracts, wills, gifts, loans, etc.) to see how individuals and families acted within the mutually intersecting contexts of law, social structures, and cultural values, and in turn to uncover the ways in which they, as well as society and the state more generally, were transformed in the process. A few examples will have to suffice. Descimon has shown how venal offices—­ “considered as objects with fundamentally masculine essences”—­required reworking Parisian legal customs to exclude them from communal marital property and to ensure their patrilineal transmission. This, in turn, transformed the marital relationship, overturning the “collaborative” relationship between spouses envisaged by the communal property regime and turning the wife into her husband’s privileged creditor, a relationship that could in turn create unintended consequences, making women at times the guarantors of familial credit.19 Similarly, Descimon has shown how the pursuit and transmission of lesser offices, such as those of the notary and solicitor at the Châtelet, helped construct and transform the Parisian social order. The separation between notarial offices (venal positions that conferred the right to practice in one’s own name) and practices (the clients, records, and other business materials), for instance, was key to the notaries’ social and financial successes. As movable goods, notarial papers could be sold free of any royal oversight and increasingly for much higher prices, given the business that came with them. Thus, notaries continued to benefit from venality even as 18. On the distinction between customary and legal venality, see Descimon, “Modernité et archaïsme,” 147; and Descimon, “Birth of the Nobility of the Robe.” 19. Descimon and Haddad, Épreuves de noblesse, 57–­59.

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many sovereign court magistrates suffered terrible financial losses and declining social status in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.20 Notaries also leveraged their growing wealth as a group, their mastery of clients’ economic information, and their growing role in credit markets into greater social prominence. Solicitors eventually followed suit and by the latter part of the eighteenth century, notaries and solicitors had been transformed from primarily legal professions into financial ones, becoming experts in the navigation of long-­and short-­term credit markets, respectively. The privatization of public venality thus turned officers of the so-­called sixteenth-­and early seventeenth-­century état de justice (in which royal power was conceived primarily in terms of the administration of justice) into agents of the late seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­century état de finance (where the focus was on more effective fiscal administration in order to support rapidly escalating military costs).21 One of the most impressive features of Descimon’s scholarship is its breadth. To an extent that seems rather unusual, Descimon has not focused on one group, but has examined the experiences of a wide range of legal professionals and has contributed considerably to the recent wave of scholarship on “officiers moyens” (middling officers whose positions often did not confer nobility) and on middling and lower “auxiliaries of justice.”22 He has also not hesitated to venture beyond the confines of notarial études and social history, as demonstrated by his piece on Gédéon Tallemant de Réaux’s Historiettes: Ou mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du XVIIe siècle. For Descimon, Tallement’s collection of biographical sketches, colorful anecdotes, and gossip about Parisian high society in the mid-­ seventeenth century expressed the multiple, increasingly insupportable tensions imposed on individuals and families by Hanley’s family-­state compact.23 Indeed, as Hanley’s model has come under increasing scrutiny from gender, family, and legal historians in recent years, the studies of Descimon and his many collaborators have shown that, at least when it 20. Hurt, Louis XIV and the Parlements; Dee, Expansion and Crisis.

21. Descimon, “La Vénalité des offices politiques”; Descimon, “Les Auxiliaires de justice”; Descimon, “Les Notaires de Paris.” 22. Cassan, Les Officiers moyens; Cassan, Offices et officiers; Dolan, Entre Justice et justiciables. 23. Descimon, “L’Exemplarité sociale,” 191.

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comes to the Parisian robe and the interrelationship between venality, family, and law, the family-­state compact retains its validity.24 The work of Descimon and his collaborators provides some of the most compelling sociological support for Hanley’s largely theoretical and discursive model. Whereas Hanley relied primarily on high-­profile court cases and legal commentaries, which were by their very nature unusual cases and parts of larger, ongoing juridical debates, Descimon’s work shows how the strictures of the family-­state compact operated on a more mundane, quotidian level in the shaping of marriage contracts, testaments, office transfers, and other matters. Ultimately, Descimon’s work makes a persuasive case that it was the influence exercised by the law outside the courtroom, in the day-­to-­day decisions of Parisian robe families who sought to navigate their ascensions and preserve their newfound elite status, and not the overheated rhetoric and novel legal arguments put forth by barristers in marriage disputes or family conflicts, that provided the foundation for the family-­state compact. Descimon’s work has thus been characterized by the way it blends social, institutional, cultural, and political history, a trait that characterizes much of the best new work being done on the social history of Old Regime French law. Claire Dolan describes her recent Procureurs du Midi as “crossing” social, cultural, and political history with the history of justice,25 a characterization that resembles Marie Houllemare’s description of her recent study of the Parlement of Paris. Rejecting traditional distinctions between histoire, histoire du droit, and histoire littéraire, Houllemare sets out to blend political, cultural, and juridical history in order to write a “global history” of the court.26 Many of the works mentioned below could be described in a similar fashion. Another feature that unites many of these works is the way in which they respond, directly or indirectly, to Parker’s challenge to uncover the vested interests at work in France’s legal structures. Indeed, many take this line of inquiry much further than he might have originally imagined.

24. Gerber, “Family, the State, and Law,” 483; Gerber, Bastards; Hardwick, Family Business; Crowston, Credit, Fashion, Sex; Merrick, “Marital Conflict in Political Context”; Corley, “Gender, Kin, and Guardianship”; Schneider, “Women Before the Bench”; Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties; and Lanza, From Wives to Widows. 25. Dolan, Les Procureurs du Midi, 12.

26. Houllemare, Politiques de la parole, 21–­22.

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The very idea of what an institution is and how it should be studied has changed, and much of this work, like Descimon’s, owes a significant debt to Denis Richet’s La France moderne: L’esprit des institutions.27 As Descimon has done with the noblesse de robe, Houllemare emphasizes the fluidity and instability of the Parlement as an institution, insisting that it be understood as “an attempt to organize society, a collection of usages that developed by accretion but were not fixed,” and also describing it as an “institution of speech, a space of dialogue.”28 Sylvie Daubresse’s study of the Paris Parlement during the Wars of Religion takes a similar approach, linking the court’s institutional history to social and political life, as does Caroline Le Mao’s book on the Parlement of Bordeaux which, she writes, “should not be considered as a sort of ivory tower . . . but as a living organism integrated into the urban landscape.”29 The same can be seen further down the ladder, as historians take a closer look at lower royal courts and seigneurial justices. Zoë Schneider’s study of Normandy has stressed the extent to which local governance was “carried out not so much by a set of discrete institutions as by a traveling nucleus of men who fluidly handled taxes, crime, poor relief, property law, communal disputes and dozens of public matters,”30 while Hervé Piant, Fabrice Mauclair, and Jeremy Hayhoe have similarly concluded that judicial and political authority ultimately rested less in judicial institutions themselves than in a circle of men of the law who controlled judgeships and other local offices, a blurring of institutional and familial boundaries that comes as no surprise to students of Descimon’s work.31 A recurrent theme of these studies, and one that very much echoes Descimon’s scholarship, is the social and cultural transformation of the legal professions in response to broader legal, economic, and political changes. Houllemare describes how parlementaires (magistrates) and avocats (barristers) transformed themselves from mere legal experts into wise citizens with broader horizons in response to social and cultural pressures. Caroline Le Mao shows how Bordeaux’s parlementaires used their social

27. Richet, La France moderne. 28. Ibid., 25 and 155.

29. Daubresse, Le Parlement de Paris, 9; Le Mao, Parlement et Parlementaires, 13. 30. Schneider, King’s Bench.

31. Hayhoe, Enlightened Feudalism; Mauclair, La Justice au village; Piant, Une Justice ordinaire.

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and economic dominance in the region to compensate for their declining political status, a trend also seen among the “officiers moyens” whose central position as arbiters of local family matters, property issues, and other concerns enabled them to compensate for the declining status and values of their offices by accumulating land, money, property, and other honors.32 Even seigneurial court judges became masters of accumulating multiple posts. Despite the monarchy’s indifference, or even hostility then, French judicial officers found a way to defend their social position, to the point where one might say that the strategies brought into being by the family-­ state compact outlived the compact itself. Attention to the interplay of the legal, social, and cultural can also be seen in the growing numbers of studies on other legal professionals as well. Building on earlier work such as Lenard Berlanstein’s The Barristers of Toulouse, these studies have given us a better picture of how various practitioners—­the avocats who pleaded cases and consulted on legal matters, the procureurs who handled procedural matters and managed their clients’ cases through the courts, and the notaries whose records shaped all sorts of transactions and agreements and were often at the heart of legal disputes—­started to define themselves as distinct professions and of the distinctive social, cultural, economic, and political experiences that shaped them.33 Hervé Leuwers has constructed a convincing portrait of the evolution of the French bar and the ways avocats across France de-­ emphasized the economic side of their profession to set themselves up alongside judges as “disinterested” defenders of justice and spokesmen for the “public.”34 Notaries, meanwhile, as both Julie Hardwick and Claire Dolan have shown, became crucial intermediaries between the private world of family and business and the public world of the law. They also learned to profit considerably from their ability to confer a degree of legal certainty and order on the key acts of everyday life.35 Procureurs, who remain woefully understudied, appear to have followed a similar route, according to Dolan’s recent study, becoming more agents of credit and

32. See, for instance, Meyzie, Les Illusions perdues. 33. Berlanstein, Barristers of Toulouse.

34. Leuwers, L’Invention du barreau français. See also Bell, Lawyers and Citizens; Karpik, Les Avocats; Coste, Mille avocats de grand siècle; and Breen, Law, City, and King. 35. Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy; Dolan, Le Notaire, la famille, et la ville.

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administration than of justice as time went on.36 There is a lot more to be done on the legal professions, and especially on the growing differentiation between practitioners who, it seems, may have originally been more distinct in theory than in practice. Studies of law in practice have also become increasingly fruitful and important in recent years. They have helped transform our understanding of the relationship between law courts and society more generally. As historians dig further into the records of the vast majority of these tribunals’ activities, which consisted primarily of civil litigation and the routine registration and verification of noncontentious acts, such as the naming of guardians or the outcome of arbitrations (justice gracieuse), it becomes increasingly clear that law courts functioned as an essential social and communal resource, not simply as instruments of repression and elite domination to be avoided or resisted whenever possible. Hardwick’s study of working-­class families’ use of the courts in Lyon and Nantes, Zoë Schneider’s study of Normandy, and Hervé Piant’s, Jeremy Hayhoe’s, and Fabrice Mauclair’s studies of seigneurial courts all show that tribunals were sites where judges, lawyers, litigants, and communities came together to negotiate, contest, and use the law’s symbolic and, at times, coercive authority in pursuit of both collective and individual interests. Much like the families Descimon has studied, litigants demonstrated a remarkable ability to appropriate legal procedures to serve their own interests. The courts “were not a simple system of elite rule and commoner acquiescence,” but rather a dynamic one where judges had to render predictable and objective enough justice to retain their legitimacy, maintain and restore peace by finding resolutions acceptable to litigants, and accommodate themselves to the expectations of local legal cultures.37 Parties who brought cases to court, witnesses whose testimony helped determine the outcome of cases, and infrajudicial mechanisms of dispute resolution all worked in dialogue with the formal legal system and actually encouraged the latter’s utilization by a wide cross section of French society.38 All of this brings us back to Parker’s question: What were the vested interests at work in the French legal system? The answer—­one that 36. Dolan, Procureurs du Midi.

37. Schneider, King’s Bench, 219; Piant, Justice ordinaire, 233; Hardwick, Family Business.

38. On infrajustice and witnesses, see Garnot, “Justice, infrajustice, parajustice,” and Garnot, Les Témoins devant la justice.

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Descimon’s work has helped point toward—­is that there were many interests, probably many more than Parker imagined a quarter century ago. Certainly the monarchy, whose authority still rested on the image of the king as the fount of justice, had an interest in being seen to provide it; the nobility of the robe had an interest in using it to maintain their status and offices; and elites and corporate bodies sought to use this quasi-­public/ quasi-­private system to their own advantage whenever possible. But other groups’ vested interests mattered as well, from the auxiliaries of justice who served as intermediaries between the world of the law and society in general, to the ordinary men and women who used the courts to manage the business of ordinary life—­marriage, business, property transfer, inheritance—­and to restore a sense of equilibrium and stability when death, economic hardship, extramarital pregnancy, or crime disrupted their fragile social orders. Litigation was mundane, Hardwick reminds us, precisely because it was central to social, political, and economic life under the Old Regime.39 And it was precisely because it was mundane that the law and those who practiced it had the ability to shape, though not to determine, social reality in early modern France. This brings me to my final set of observations. There is something of a paradox facing those who study the early modern French legal system. If official justice was as slow, costly, and arbitrary as its legions of early modern critics claimed, then why did so many French men and women use it to the point that contemporaries frequently lamented the litigiousness of their age? There are two possible answers. The first is that we should be wary of judging the early modern French legal system by modern standards. In Western European history, at least, the provision of justice has had to navigate between the often-­incommensurate goals of social pacification and the adjudication of right and wrong, between maintaining the common peace and protecting individual rights, and historians need to be sensitive to the fact that these competing imperatives are often balanced differently in different times and places.40 To put it another way, the fact that early modern French justice responded to a different set of social and cultural needs than our own does not somehow invalidate it as less adequate or more incomplete. 39. Hardwick, Family Business, 60.

40. A point made in a somewhat different fashion by Hyams. See “Due Process versus the Maintenance of Order,” 71.

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This can be seen in Rafe Blaufarb’s recent article on litigation between seigneurs and communities of inhabitants in Provence, which shows that the interminable length of litigation—­lawsuits lasting several decades or more in some cases—­could actually be a desirable trait, since it created a climate for negotiated settlements that would ultimately be more effective than final judgments.41 The same seems to be true at the opposite end of the spectrum, as well. Mauclair has described how seigneurial court judges often played for time as a means of promoting reconciliation. Even in criminal cases, most of which were converted into civil cases (civilisé), judges functioned more as mediators who favored restitution and moderation over punishment, except in certain types of cases.42 Lower courts were famously derided by critics such as Charles Loyseau as “infinitely pernicious” and full of “great inconveniences for the poor,” including high costs, interminable delays, and arbitrary verdicts rendered by “men of little worth, without honor, without conscience, men who, having not learned to work in their youth now live at the expense and the poverty of others,” or by inexperienced and untrained judges wholly dependent on the local lord. These criticisms appear, however, to have been often unjustified.43 Instead, a growing body of scholarship suggests that lower courts usually provided relatively quick, fair, and inexpensive justice that responded to local needs in spite of the formal shortcomings that troubled figures such as Loyseau. This answer to the seeming paradox of why so many ordinary French men and women would use the courts if the justice they provided was slow and expensive, necessitates two questions that call for further exploration. The first is, when we study justice in early modern France, are we talking about a single system? Or should we be thinking about it as two largely separate ones: a quick, efficient, and inexpensive local justice system that helped in the management of daily life, and a slow, cumbersome, and costly system of higher courts that handled more intractable cases, primarily for propertied elites and corporate bodies? In other words, is a global history of justice in early modern France even possible? The second question, tied to the first, concerns the well-­known but poorly understood decline in litigation rates during the late seventeenth and

41. Blaufarb, “Conflict and Compromise.”

42. Mauclair, Justice au village, 269; Hayhoe, Enlightened Feudalism, 63. 43. Loyseau, “Discours de l’abus.”

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eighteenth centuries. If the legal system (or systems) were meeting the needs and expectations of litigants high and low, why did French men and women turn away from the courts as a site for the negotiation of local authority and order? This is not a question that Descimon has addressed in his vast and varied œuvre, at least not to the best of my knowledge. Any attempt to address this conundrum, however, will require the skillful blend of detailed social history, attentive analysis of laws and institutions, and careful cultural history that has characterized Robert Descimon’s work and made it so extraordinarily important and influential.

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Chapter 3

Local Officials and Torture in Seventeenth-­Century Bordeaux Sara Beam Beginning in the 1980s, Robert Descimon’s work on the Paris League spurred historians to rethink local politics during the final decade of the French Wars of Religion. Clearly articulating the corporate and social interests that drove Leaguers to rebel, he demonstrated that Parisians active in urban politics had a rational interest in maintaining their municipal autonomy.1 His ongoing research on Parisian elites highlights the professional, social, and religious ties that shaped their lives and provides agency to these relatively unknown men who have traditionally been marginalized in triumphant narratives of the centralizing French state.2 Robert Descimon’s focus on local political dynamics has profoundly influenced French historians and renewed interest in the dialogic interaction between French cities and royal power. In particular, his insights into the complex interactions between municipal and royal institutions signal a This article/book benefitted from a fellowship at the Institut d’études avancées de Paris (France), with the financial support of the French state managed by the Agence nationale de la recherche, programme “Investissements d’avenir” (ANR-­11-­LABX-­0027–­01 Labex RFIEA+). I offer my thanks to Caroline Le Mao, Laurent Coste, and Mathieu Servanton in Bordeaux for their advice about local sources. I am honored to participate in this volume and to offer my gratitude to Robert Descimon for his intellectual generosity and mentorship. 1. Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?; Barnavi and Descimon, Sainte-­Ligue.

2. Descimon, “L’Échevinage parisien,” 113–­50; Descimon, “Le Corps de ville et les élections échevinales,” 507–­30; Descimon, “Le Catholicisme corporatif,” 169–­88; Descimon, “La Vénalité des offices politiques,” 59–­82.

a

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direction that might profitably be explored by historians of the law, who often downplay the political and social dynamics that shape legal practice. French legal historians argue that changes to early modern criminal justice resulted from “top-­down,” centrally led reform. Specifically, they claim that royal legislation enforced by the parlements mitigated the cruelty of the justice system, a transition exemplified by a decline in the use of torture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; legal historians assume and sometimes explicitly assert that local judges needed to be disciplined into practicing a less violent form of justice. As we will see, this top-­down analysis of judicial practice reflects the rhetoric of rulings issued by the parlement appeals courts. But by relying on parlement records to characterize local legal practice, much is lost, particularly when considering that municipal courts of first instance functioned both as courts of law and as key political institutions fighting, as Robert Descimon’s work has shown for Paris, to maintain municipal autonomy in the face of an evolving French state. Specifically, this essay seeks to apply Robert Descimon’s approach, characterized by an awareness of the dialogic interaction between social and political history as well as a careful analysis of local institutional dynamics, to an analysis of the evolving practice of judicial torture in the provincial city of Bordeaux. The city council of Bordeaux, known as the jurade, was a municipal court of law that practiced torture with remarkable restraint, moderation that flies in the face of assumptions regarding the need to discipline local judges. The jurade’s reasoned judicial practice, I will argue, reflected a broader political strategy to maintain its authority over local policing and criminal justice during a period of civil war and of royal centralization. Legal historians of early modern France generally agree that the practice of judicial torture was profoundly shaped by royal regulatory pressure between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries.3 Torture had emerged as an essential component of European criminal procedure by the thirteenth century, justified by the need, according to the medieval “law of proofs,” for a full confession of guilt before a capital sentence could be imposed.4 The practice of torture, based on Roman and canon 3. Gauvard, “De Grace especial”; Carbasse, Introduction historique; Durand, “Les Juristes sont-­ils sans cœur?,” 303–­23; Wenzel, Torture judiciaire; Jallamion, “Entre ruse du droit,” 9–­35.

4. Carbasse, “Origines de la torture judiciaire.,” 381–­419. In principle, a confession of guilt was not

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law, accelerated during the late medieval period, as criminal courts across Western Europe shifted to the inquisitorial method and issued more sentences involving corporal punishment. Yet almost from its introduction, efforts were made to regulate its practice in the interests of producing truth and of avoiding abuse.5 In France, these efforts took the form of royal edicts, most notably in 1498 and 1670, which sought to limit and regularize its practice. These laws prohibited an individual from being tortured more than once and required that a defendant confirm any confession of guilt after the conclusion of the torture session in the hopes of avoiding false confessions made under the pressure of extreme pain.6 French legislation also established that individuals sentenced by local courts of first instance had the right to appeal to royal courts for redress. Defendants could appeal interlocutory sentences mandating torture, known in French legislation as “la question,” as well as final sentences involving corporal punishment.7 As early as the fourteenth century, the Parlement of Paris modified some criminal sentences issued by lower courts to make them more lenient and reproached lower courts for misuse of torture.8 By the sixteenth century, the period that is generally accepted to be the high-­water mark for the use of interrogatory torture in Western Europe, the Parlement of Paris regularly overturned interlocutory sentences issued by lower courts authorizing torture and instead released those defendants from prison.9 During the same period, the Parlement of Bordeaux also rejected some lower-­court sentences authorizing torture and mitigated punishments for a variety of crimes.10

required if there were two honorable and objective eye witnesses to the crime. Schnapper, “Testes inhabiles,” 575–­616. 5. Carbasse, “Origines de la torture judiciaire,” 396–­99.

6. Isambert et al., Recueil général, 11:366 (1498): “Nous défendons à tous nos baillifs, senechaux et juges ou leurs lieutenans, qu’ils ne procèdent à réïtere de nouveau ladite question ou torture audit prisonnier sans nouveaux indices”; 18:413 (1670): “mais s’il a été délié et entièrement ôté de la question, il ne pourra plus y être remis. . . . Quelque nouvelle preuve qui survienne, l’accusé ne pourra être appliqué deux fois à la question pour un même fait.” 7. Isambert et al., Recueil général, 12:633–­34 (1539).

8. Gauvard, “De Grace especial,” 153–­63; de Carbonnières, Procédure devant la chambre criminelle, 500–­ 504; Carbasse and Auzary-­Schmaltz, “Douleur et sa réparation,” 426–­29. 9. Schnapper, “Justice criminelle,” 252–­84; AN, X2a 147, fol. 236v, 2 July 1585; AN, X2a 144, fol. 132r, 1 March 1584. 10. Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 65; ADG, 1 B 422, fol. 85, 15 November 1577; ADG, 1 B 422, fol. 28, 7 November 1577.

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In 1558, the Parlement of Bordeaux sought to regulate the use of torture by courts within its jurisdiction, and on at least one occasion, in 1565, it fined a lower court for improper application of torture.11 Unfortunately, it is not always clear why; lack of documentation prevents us from fully understanding the motives of the appeals court.12 Even as they disciplined the practice of torture at lower courts, French parlements themselves also employed torture relatively liberally. The sixteenth-­century parlements of Bordeaux and of Paris tortured approximately 20 percent of defendants, a relatively high rate, compared to late medieval and to seventeenth-­century practice.13 Given that these parlements were also rejecting some lower-­court sentences to torture, it seems logical to assume that courts of first instance applied looser criteria: that they tortured more often and possibly more violently. Some historians explicitly argue that regulatory supervision was necessary because judges at lower courts were unbridled in their application of torture: Alfred Soman, for instance, refers to the undereducated judges in the Ardennes, who over-­relied on torture in early seventeenth-­century witchcraft cases and who were then corrected by the carefully trained magistrates at the Parlement of Paris;14 Bernard Schnapper assumes that the 1539 Edict of Villers-­Cotterêts, which directed all appeals to the parlements (rather than to the intermediate sénéchaussée courts), was “the natural result of the mediocre capacities of the senechal judges and their tendency to confirm the undoubtedly very repressive attitudes of local judges”;15 and finally, Richard Andrews argues that “the subaltern courts in the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris tried to use the question lavishly until at least the mid-­eighteenth century.”16 Yet recent research on courts of first instance suggests that the use of torture at the local level was actually relatively rare, at least by the end of the seventeenth century; indeed, local courts often channeled what we

11. BMB, ms. 367, Registres secrets du parlement, fol. 90, 24 December 1558; Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 65. 12. Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 54–­57; Guyon, “Recherches sur la méthode,” 299–­309.

13. Soman, “Justice criminelle,” 15–­52; Schnapper, “Justice criminelle,” 252–­84; Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 72–­80. 14. Soman, “Décriminalisation de la sorcellerie,” 181–­82.

15. Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 63. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s. 16. Andrews, Law, Magistracy, and Crime, 460.

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would consider to be criminal matters through civil procedure.17 Civil cases were easier on the lower courts: convictions resulted in fines, payable in part to the victim, and the court’s legal costs were covered by either the plaintiff or the defendant. Criminal trials, on the other hand, were paid for by the court and were particularly costly if the sentence was appealed (since lower courts paid to transport appellants to the parlement).18 Historians who advance these arguments portray lower-­court judges as rational actors who sought to minimize conflict and expense by providing relatively efficient and moderate justice to their communities. This research provides a valuable lens through which to analyze the motivations of lower-­court judges around 1700 but does not of course enable us to compare the torture protocols of lower and higher courts a century or more earlier, during the reputedly most violent judicial period of French history. Frustratingly, very few criminal records exist for the pre-­1650 period. The later material is suggestive, however, tending to undercut the assumption that lower courts of the earlier period were torturing more frequently and possibly with more violence than were the parlements. What, after all, would have been their motives in doing so? Why would local judges in the sixteenth century engage in violent practices that were costly and resulted in overturned sentences when they could choose to practice justice in a way that would not be challenged by their superiors? Legal historians generally assume that the parlements’ mitigation of lower-­court sentences was undertaken solely to correct abusive judicial practice. But Laurence Montazel, studying French collections of judicial sentences published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, challenges this assumption, plausibly arguing that the parlements’ overturning of local criminal sentences may also have been a means of enhancing their own authority.19 Leah Otis-­Cour makes a similar claim when analyzing a murder trial from fourteenth-­century Pamiers in which the appeals court critized the immoderate use of torture at the communal court as a means

17. Breen, “Law, Society, and the State”; Crubaugh, Balancing the Scales; Hayhoe, Enlightened Feudalism; Piant, Justice ordinaire; Schneider, King’s Bench; Hautebert, Justice pénale; Hardwick, Family Business. 18. Isambert et al., Recueil général, 11: 634; Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 64.

19. Montazel, “Parlements de France,” 636–­41.

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of discrediting that court’s authority and asserting royal jurisdiction.20 Taking an example outside of France, historian John Brackett argues that the Florentine criminal court, eager to assert political control over the fiercely independent towns of Tuscany, similarly attacked local judges’ use of torture as a means to undermine the credibility of local institutions.21 A similar process might very well have been going on in France. Extensive research on the parlement magistrates of the sixteenth century shows that these were men of considerable education, confident and secure in their relatively high social status, righteous in their defense of local traditions, and serious in their application of the law.22 Indeed, their personal and institutional confidence may have encouraged them to intervene in local justice. Certainly, we know that appeals to the parlements increased dramatically after 1539, as effective oversight of most local courts developed for the first time.23 In the context of the rapid expansion of venality during the mid-­sixteenth century as French kings doubled the size of many parlements in the interests of raising revenue, parlement magistrates, seeking new business, may well have chosen to be lenient and overturn lower-­court judgments to encourage further appeals.24 Such speculation about motivation is made possible by the “arbitrary” nature of legal reasoning in this period, which gave considerable leeway to individual judges in final sentencing. Although French law and custom dictated the punishment for specific crimes, the practice of criminal law in the sixteenth century exhibited a high degree of judicial discretion. The magistrates at the Parlement of Bordeaux, for example, drawing promiscuously on Roman law, local custom, and royal legislation, had a fair degree of freedom in issuing punishments. Both this plurality of legal traditions and the relative brevity of surviving documentation (usually only a final sentence survives) mean that we can rarely determine the precise legal principle that governed any particular sentence.25 20. Otis-­Cour, “Les Enjeux de la torture,” 217. 21. Brackett, Criminal Justice, 78–­96.

22. Dewald, Formation of a Provincial Nobility; Roelker, One King, One Faith; Daubresse, Parlement de Paris. 23. Soman, “Justice criminelle,” 22–­28; Schnapper, “Justice criminelle,” 59–­60.

24. Dewald, Formation of a Provincial Nobility; Maugis, Histoire du Parlement de Paris, 1: 214–­68; Stocker, “Office as Maintenance,” 21–­44.

25. Guyon, “Recherches sur la méthode,” 285–­309; Carbasse, Introduction historique, 168–­77, 200–­ 202.

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Thus we cannot assume that a decision made by parlement magistrates to overturn the sentence of a lower court was always the result of the law being incorrectly applied. The analogous practice of the king’s chancellor granting letters of remission that spared the lives of some who committed homicide suggests that other motivations, such as deference to the political connections of defendants, for example, or a desire to demonstrate largess, could also shape sentencing.26 Although we know that the Parlement of Bordeaux did not hesitate to overturn lower-­court rulings, it is striking that the parlement rarely did so when the Bordeaux jurade was the lower court in question. Indeed, the parlement magistrates regularly confirmed rulings issued by the Bordeaux jurade, a court of first instance that continued to authorize torture throughout the first half of the seventeenth century. The remainder of this essay will consider why the parlement and the jurade enjoyed such a functional relationship, one that left considerable policing and judicial powers in the hands of elected municipal officials. Robert Descimon’s insights about family strategies, as well as his highlighting of the skilled means by which local officials sought to preserve and enhance municipal autonomy, will be proposed as possible explanations for the Bordeaux jurade’s exceptional success in maintaining control over local justice. As in many other French cities, in Bordeaux the jurade combined the political, military, and judicial functions of government in a single institution, an elected city council that was responsible for maintaining the “public good” (bien commun), beginning as early as the thirteenth century.27 Little is known about the social status of the jurats before the sixteenth century, but by the 1520s a mixture of local nobles and men of the law was elected and served on the council.28 Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, the jurade was the chief executive body supervising commerce, regulating guilds, maintaining sanitation, and issuing police ordinances. The jurats were capable of backing up those regulations with a forty-­to sixty-­man city guard (guet)29 and were responsible for organizing

26. Gauvard, “De Grace especial”; Davis, Fiction in the Archives; Otis-­Cour, “Limites de la grâce,” 73–­89. 27. Chevalier, Bonnes villes; Rouxel, Compétence; Coste, Messieurs de Bordeaux.

28. Coste, “Les Jurats nobles bordelais,” 146; Coste, Lys et le chaperon, 207–­8; Darnal, Tillet, and de Lurbe, Chronique bordeloise, 55–­63.

29. ADG, Jean Cavignac, “Répertoire numérique de la cour des jurats de Bordeaux sous-­série 12B” (1963).

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the defense of the city in times of war. Traditionally, the jurade served as the criminal and civil court of first instance for all city residents and all cases occurring in the city or its hinterlands. The jurats also ran the city jail and employed the city’s only executioner, a practical and symbolic measure of their power.30 Nevertheless, the jurade’s ability to maintain public order in Bordeaux was complicated by the presence of a military governor, royal officials, and other institutions, all of which also claimed authority to maintain the public good. During the sixteenth century in particular, the Parlement of Bordeaux, a royal appeals court for the entire Guyenne region, began to assert its superiority over the jurade and to claim for itself executive authority for maintaining public order.31 The dislocation caused by decades of intermittent civil war and the direct interference of the monarchy in Bordeaux’s affairs also threatened the jurade’s independence during the second half of the sixteenth century.32 Yet these external pressures, while they undermined the jurade’s political autonomy, also resulted in a reaffirmation of the jurade’s authority over criminal justice. An exceptional collection of records—­a late sixteenth-­century account book, a fairly comprehensive series of seventeenth-­century criminal sentences, and even a handful of late sixteenth-­century torture interrogation records—­allows a precious glimpse into the mentality and practice of local judges in Bordeaux. Fiercely proud of their policing and their judicial activities, the jurats successfully defended their privilege to judge local criminal cases throughout the ancien régime period, including the right to issue capital sentences, to torture defendants in order to obtain a confession of guilt (la question préparatoire), and to torture after final sentencing to obtain information about accomplices (la question préalable).33 Despite persistent institutional rivalry over policing, the Parlement of Bordeaux nevertheless upheld the city councilors’ privilege to torture until the 1610s and to issue capital sentences well into the eighteenth century.34 Indeed, relative cooperation between the parlement and the jurade

30. Harlé, “Bourreau de Bordeaux,” 29. 31. Rouxel, Compétence, 114–­22.

32. For parallels see Bernstein, Politics and Civic Culture; Konnert, Civic Agendas and Religious Passion.

33. Wenzel, Torture judiciaire, 28–­30. 34. Rouxel, Compétence, 143, 174.

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on most judicial matters resulted in a stable situation that allowed the city council to retain local control over criminal justice much longer than most French municipalities.35 The jurade’s judicial confidence and its moderation can be best illustrated by its practice of torture. Robert Descimon has drawn our attention in his analyses of municipal documents to their function as strategic acts designed to perform specific political functions. Here I wish to treat records of interrogation under torture as political documents created to justify court procedure and maintain local privilege. Determined to defend its privilege to judge all crimes occurring in Bordeaux, the jurade created records that presented its practice of torture as rigorous but well within the bounds of French legislation. The jurade’s approach to torture is clearly represented in the trial records of Mathurin Samaruc, charged with multiple thefts in 1597. Finding him guilty, the jurats condemned him to death but also ordered that, before his execution, “he be put to the question and torture applied in order to know the truth more fully from his mouth.”36 As a result, Samaruc was taken to the torture chamber at the Hôtel de Ville on 5 July. There, in the presence of a jurat and of a priest, the final sentence was read to Samaruc and he swore to tell the truth. The record produced at his interrogation session is quite extensive, some ten folios in length, and during the period covered in the first several pages, the executioner administered no painful procedures. Instead, the interrogator employed psychological pressure, telling the defendant that he would suffer a more painful death, breaking on the wheel as opposed to hanging, if he did not confess fully. Samaruc responded by saying that he “wanted to tell the truth about all the thefts that he could have done and committed.”37 The interrogator began by asking leading questions about the role played in his crimes by Samaruc’s brother-­in-­law Bernard Arnault. Samaruc denied that his brother-­in-­law was directly involved in any of his heists, though he freely admitted that he often sold his stolen goods to 35. Rouxel, Compétence, 136; Zeller, Institutions de la France, 43–­45; Sédillot, “L’Exercice de la justice,” 59–­93. The situation in Toulouse, though not identical to that of Bordeaux, was nevertheless similar: both city councils were linked by family ties to the local parlement and in both cities the parlement largely supported the city council’s authority over criminal justice until the Revolution. Coste, “Jurats nobles bordelais,” 161–­65; Augustin, “Capitouls, juges des causes criminelles,” 183–­211. 36. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 1r.

37. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 1v.

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Arnault.38 Samaruc went on to make several other admissions without torture: he admitted to stealing multiple items, including several sacks of grain as well as a chest containing clothing and gold, from Gailhard Gombault, the merchant who was named as the initiator of the criminal suit. He also confessed to robbing from a surgeon named Robert, a widow who owned a hat shop, and a nearby convent.39 When urged to admit to thefts against other specific individuals, however, Samaruc denied these accusations resolutely; the inquisitor seemed to accept his denials, as he pressed Samaruc no further regarding these charges.40 Only at this point did the executioner attach Samaruc to the torture instruments, his arms and legs tied by cords to metal rings on the rack. As the cords were tightened, Samaruc was exhorted to “tell the truth about his accomplices.”41 At first, he stuck to his story, that only he and one other man, Jehan Nozilheau, were involved in the grain heist.42 But as the executioner tightened the cords on each of his arms twice more, Samaruc begged to be released, saying that if they freed him he would “tell the whole truth and wanted to unburden his soul because he would soon be going to his death.”43 After he was released, Samaruc gave the inquisitor the answers he wanted, asserting that his brother-­in-­law held the ladder in the street during the grain theft while he and Nozilheau entered Gombault’s storeroom.44 Finally, when asked about another potential accomplice, a woman named Jehanne Sollard, his chamber maid, Samaruc rather implausibly claimed that Sollard was always sleeping over at the neighbors’ on the nights when he returned with large amounts of stolen goods and thus knew nothing about his crimes. Apparently satisfied, the interrogator ended the session by reading Samaruc’s confession out loud for him to confirm. The procedure did not end there, however. In order to further test the validity of Samaruc’s confession, he was then confronted with the two

38. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fols. 2v–­3r. 39. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fols. 4r–­5r. 40. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 4v. 41. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 4v. 42. I have found no information regarding Nozilheau’s fate.

43. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 5r.

44. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 5r–­v.

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individuals about whom he had been questioned, namely his brother-­in-­ law and his chamber maid. The brother-­in-­law, Arnault, firmly rejected Samaruc’s accusations, calling Samaruc a bad man, and claiming that Samaruc had always said “that if he [Samaruc] were to die he would make sure that he [Arnault] would also.”45 Samaruc was also confronted by the maid, Sollard, who refused to say anything against him and denied knowing about the thefts. After these confrontations, Samaruc was taken to the “dining chamber” (buvette) to recover, where a priest was summoned to question him one last time. During this conversation, Samaruc, claiming that he wanted to “unburden his soul,” retracted his confession in the torture chamber, thereby reaffiming his brother-­in-­law’s innocence.46 This final exchange ended the interrogations. Samaruc was presumably executed soon afterwards, though the records do not indicate by what method. The final sentences issued against Arnault and Sollard, however, are revealing: the brother-­in-­law, Arnault, was banished, presumably for the crime of fencing stolen goods; the chamber maid, Sollard, was sentenced to be beaten and banished, but not for her involvement in Samaruc’s thefts—­instead for the crime of fornication.47 These relatively moderate final sentences against Samaruc’s supposed accomplices suggest that the court took Samaruc’s retraction made to the priest to be his most truthful confession. This detailed torture interrogation record provides valuable insight into legal procedure at the jurade of Bordeaux, a procedure that can be confirmed by two other extant interrogation records from 1572 and 1596.48 All three of these interrogation records represent the jurats’ practice of judicial torture as highly regulated and conforming to the principles of late medieval European French law. The interrogators followed accepted practice by questioning the defendants before attaching them to the torture apparatus. The psychological threat of pain was exploited to the fullest in the hopes of extracting a full confession without having to resort to torture. Torture occurred only at the end of the trial: in Samaruc’s case after final sentencing, and in the other two cases just before 45. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 9r.

46. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 10r. 47. AMB, FF14d, torture interrogation of 5 July 1597, fol. 11r.

48. AMB, FF14c (torture interrogations of 1572 and 1596). These two cases were judged on appeal by the parlement, and then the defendants returned to the jurade to be tortured.

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final sentencing with the aim of obtaining a confession of guilt. The jurats evidently understood that torture was a measure of last resort, to be applied to extract a confession of guilt or to expose the collaboration of accomplices. Although we cannot be sure that torture was always applied according to these principles at the jurade, the clerk transcribing the interrogation sessions generated documents that would have satisfied the scruples of the most educated sixteenth-­century French jurist.49 These documents also make clear that torture was intensely painful. During the 1596 torture of Pierre Bernard, accused of having murdered a woman and thrown her body into a lake, the clerk notes at the end of the interrogation record that the accused was subjected to torture for a full “hour and a half,” which was generally the outer acceptable time limit for a single torture session. He repeatedly cried out in pain “my God, have mercy” and swore that he was telling the truth; he also swore that, even if the judges broke his body on the wheel, he would say nothing more; despite his long ordeal, Bernard maintained his innocence to the end.50 Samaruc, the following year, found his torture so painful that he begged to be detached so that he could tell the judges the story that they were clearly prompting him to tell. Documenting the length of the session and noting each time the cords were tightened were means by which the clerk could demonstrate that the interrogator had done his utmost to extract a confession. The jurats were eager to show they had done a thorough job. Unlike records of torture produced by the Parlement of Paris in the late seventeenth century, which are so laconic that the reader gets the impression that the officials were merely going through the motions without much hope of discovering the truth,51 these late sixteenth-­century Bordeaux torture interrogations suggest that the jurats employed pain systematically and with careful attention to the information produced. These documents also demonstrate that the Bordeaux city councilors were well aware of the risk that pain could produce falsehood rather

49. A unique torture interrogation at the Parlement of Bordeaux in 1602 confirms that the practice of torture at the jurade was very similar to that of the appeals court; ADG, 1 B 704, 2 March 1602. 50. AMB, FF14c, torture interrogation of 2 October 1596. For a partial transcription of this interrogation, see Harlé, “Bourreau de Bordeaux,” 32–­33.

51. See for example AN, X2b 1332, 1 April 1664; AN, X2b 1332, 27 June 1664; AN, X2b 1332, 11 July 1664; Wenzel, Torture judiciaire, 64–­66.

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than truth. In the torture chamber, Samaruc confessed what the judges wanted to hear, that his brother-­in-­law Arnault had been his accomplice. Yet, in the end, the judges’ relatively lenient sentence against Arnault indicates that they granted some weight to the retraction Samaruc made before a priest when recovering in the dining chamber. This willingness to be skeptical about the truth value of torture confessions suggests that the jurats had already assimilated the critique of judicial torture articulated by Michel de Montaigne, former mayor of Bordeaux, when he published his Essais in 1580. Montaigne’s insights that torture was more a test of endurance than a test of truth and that torture could produce a confession of guilt from an innocent were not new ideas at the end of the sixteenth century.52 Such misgivings had been built into French practice since the thirteenth century and were later echoed by jurists such as Bertrand de La Roche Flavin, who borrowed heavily from Montaigne’s analysis in his Treize livres, first published in 1617.53 It seems that the Bordeaux jurats were well aware of such critiques, though they continued to use torture in cases in which significant evidence against the accused existed and in which they sought the death penalty. These records thus demonstrate that the jurats were well versed in the law of proofs and that their practice of torture was in line with royal legislation. An account book from 1570 and a series of criminal sentences from the seventeenth century confirm that Samaruc’s experience was by no means unusual. Between the 1570s and the 1640s, the jurade was remarkably consistent in its practice of torture, in a way that in fact anticipated the more restrictive royal legislation promulgated in 1670. The vast majority of cases that came before the jurade were of course not serious enough to warrant torture: Minor assaults, fiddling with weights and measures, pickpocketing, smuggling, and prostitution were the everyday offenses the jurats had to consider.54 For such infractions, the jurats usually issued sentences of public apologies, restitution

52. Durand, “Les Juristes sont-­ils sans cœur?,” 303–­323.

53. O’Brien, “Le Magistrat comme philosophe,” 221–­34; De La Roche-­F lavin, Treize livres des parlements, 1135–­37.

54. By far the most common violent crime adjudicated by the jurade was minor assault between relative equals. See ADG, 12 B 2–­6. See also Farr, Hands of Honor, 159–­95; Augustin, “Capitouls, juges des causes criminelles.”

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of property, fines, and/or flogging.55 When faced with more serious crimes, however, such as an accusation of aggravated theft in which no confession of guilt was forthcoming, the jurats were willing to sentence both men and women to torture. In 1570, the judges sentenced Jehanine Garteau to torture when she was accused of having stolen goods from Pierre Emsein but refused to confess.56 Similarly, in 1637, Toussain Boussac was charged with murder. Only after the judges had considered the surgeon’s report, interrogated Boussac without torture, and confronted him with the testimony of witnesses, all without success, did the judges determine that the only way to obtain the “whole truth” was to torture him.57 The jurats also sometimes found torture necessary after a death sentence had already been issued in order to identify accomplices: for instance, in 1616, three men deemed guilty of aggravated theft, Anthoine Ducros, Gabriel Basteste, and Georges de Lahaye, were sentenced to be tortured to discover the other members of their criminal gang.58 Such sentences were nevertheless quite rare. A systematic analysis of the years 1616, 1620, 1627, 1630, and 1643 reveals that the jurats sentenced between one and twelve persons to torture each year, during a period when the court tried over two hundred individuals annually.59 The jurade mandated torture only for crimes énormes, crimes deemed sufficiently serious to warrant the death penalty. This principle, that torture could only be justified in cases in which the death penalty was at stake, would only be enshrined in French legislation decades later, in 1670.60 The fact that between 1570 and the 1610s the Parlement of Bordeaux, when appealed to, regularly confirmed the sentences of the jurade to torture and to capital punishment suggests that the royal mag55. ADG, 12 B 1, 5 February 1600; ADG, 12 B 2, 13 May 1615; ADG, 12 B 2, 17 October 1617; ADG, 12 B 3, 26 August 1620. 56. AMB, FF17, Livres des Amendes, fol. 289r, 24 November 1570. 57. ADG, 12 B 5, 1 July 1637.

58. ADG, 12 B 2, 11 June 1616.

59. Some of these sentences involved several individuals being sentenced simultaneously. ADG, 12 B 2, 16 January 1616; ADG, 12 B 2, 11 June 1616; ADG, 12 B 2, 15 June 1616; ADG, 12 B 2, 30 July 1616; ADG, 12 B 2, 20 June 1616; ADG, 12 B 2, 21 November 1616; ADG, 12 B 4, 6 October 1627; ADG, 12 B 4, 29 August 1630; ADG, 12 B 4, 18 September 1630; ADG, 12 B 4, 25 October 1630; ADG, 12 B 4, 14 December 1630; ADG, 12 B 5, 14 March 1640. See also ADG, 33, Répertoire numérique de la Cour des Jurats de Bordeaux (sous-­série 12 B). 60. Isambert et al., Recueil général, 18: 413.

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istrates considered the jurats to be acting with restraint and with proper attention to legal procedure.61 This is not surprising given that the jurade was practicing torture with more moderation than was the parlement. Bernard Schnapper, sampling the records of the Parlement of Bordeaux, has found that the higher court was much more severe than the jurade in its application of torture, —­even sometimes stretching the bounds of royal legislation. Between 1510 and 1565, the parlementaires sometimes tortured individuals more than once for the same crime, a practice strongly discouraged by the 1498 legislation.62 The parlement magistrates also applied torture against individuals charged with less serious crimes, such as the use of false money and minor theft—­crimes that did not call for capital sentences even when the defendant confessed. Schnapper concluded that by 1565 defendants were being tortured in over 22 percent of cases, a higher rate than earlier in the century. This finding is not remarkable, when we consider that the parlement was an appeals court for a very large region and that half of the appeals brought before the court were for the crimes énormes of homicide and theft.63 Nevertheless, this data shows that the parlement was more freewheeling in its use of torture than the jurade. The jurade of Bordeaux was by no means a typical court of first instance. In addition to being located just around the corner from the parlement, the jurade was one of a handful of city councils that held onto its privileges to judge serious crimes throughout the ancien régime. This retention of judicial privileges was not accidental but rather the result of a deliberate and consistent policy on the part of the jurats. Despite the fact that judging criminal matters was costly,64 the jurats repeatedly resisted efforts of the monarchy to replace them with a venal lieutenant de justice, even going so far as to purchase the office from the Crown.65 The jurats’ success in maintaining local control over policing and criminal justice may in fact be attributable to its relatively restrained judicial practices, including that of torture. We know very little about criminal justice at the 61. AMB, FF17, fol. 288r, 1 August 1570; AMB, FF17, fol. 289r, 24 November 1570; ADG, 12 B 2, 19 April 1614; ADG, 12 B 2, 30 July 1616. 62. Astaing, Droits et garanties de l’accusé, 330–­35. 63. Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 58–­59. 64. Follain, “L’Argent,” 27–­37.

65. Rouxel, Compétence, 135; Darnal, Tillet, and de Lurbe, Chronique bordeloise, 80.

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jurade before 1570 and so cannot know whether the jurade’s practice with regard to torture was a long-­standing local tradition or a recent reaction to the rapid political changes of the second half of the sixteenth century.66 We can observe, however, that the jurade was under increasing political pressure after 1548 and was determined to maintain its privilege to administer haute justice in the city. Judicial moderation may have a response to these political pressures. By the sixteenth century, the Bordeaux jurade had a long and proud history of relative autonomy from the French monarchy. As the capital of the province of Guyenne, Bordeaux was reintegrated into the French polity relatively late, after centuries of English rule. During the English period, the jurade of Bordeaux was the dominant executive and judicial authority for non-­nobles in the city and its hinterland, an area comprising almost one hundred square kilometers. These powers and privileges were retained when Guyenne returned to French control after the Hundred Years’ War and remained intact until the tax revolt of 1548. To punish Guyenne, Henri II reacted to the notorious gabelle (salt tax) rebellion by outlawing both the Parlement of Bordeaux and the jurade. He presently relented: by 1550, the king had restored both institutions. But the city council had permanently lost some of its powers. Although the jurade regained its authority over criminal justice in 1560, civil justice, an important source of revenue, was transferred to a royal court of law, the sénéchaussée.67 The jurade’s political autonomy was also permanently compromised. Only after several years of good behavior did the king in 1566 return to the jurade control over the city militia and over the keys to the city. The monarchy also undermined the traditional political autonomy of the jurade by redefining the rules governing its composition and election. The number of city councilors was halved and the composition of the council strictly regulated: after 1550 only six men sat on the jurade, two of them nobles, two of them bourgeois, and two of them lawyers.68 In 1572, the Edict of Amboise further compromised the policing authority of the jurade when the king mandated the creation of a Chambre de po66. Rouxel, Compétence, 26–­58.

67. Rouxel, Compétence, 80–­102; Powis, “Guyenne 1548,” 1–­15.

68. Coste, Messieurs de Bordeaux, 30–­138. For the general contours of this process, see Finley-­ Croswhite, Henry IV and the Towns; Breen, Law, City, and King.

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lice, comprised of one president of the parlement, one magistrate of the parlement, one bourgeois, and one jurat, to maintain order in the city (the Chambre was finally abolished in 1598 with the return to peace). Grégory Champeaud argues that after 1548 the autonomy and independence of the jurade was broken and much executive authority in Bordeaux was transferred to the parlement.69 Laurent Coste, however, maintains that the jurade was by no means stripped of its power; the city councilors still exercised considerable authority over policing and justice—­theirs were not merely symbolic or ceremonial posts.70 Both arguments are valid; although the jurade was brought under the political wing of the monarchy and of the parlement during the second half of the sixteenth century, the city council was still an important local policing institution. Nevertheless, the jurade clearly was on the defensive during the second half of the sixteenth century, struggling to maintain its previous powers in the face of royal interference and a confident parlement. Royal support in fact became critical to the jurade’s survival. When, in the late sixteenth century, the parlement tried to attack the policing authority of the jurade, the king’s council interfered to maintain the jurade’s traditional privileges.71 Repeated royal interference in municipal elections also served to remind the jurats on which side their bread was buttered.72 The jurade’s determination to hold onto local justice could not have met with success, however, had the city council not also succeeded in working with, rather than against, the Parlement of Bordeaux most of the time. It is easy to exaggerate the rivalry between these two institutions. On most judicial matters, the two courts were in agreement: the jurade for example did not challenge the parlement’s authority to judge heresy cases, an important reason that the policing powers of the parlement expanded so rapidly during the second half of the sixteenth century. In return, as long as the jurade did not presume to try royal officers or nobles, the parlement upheld and supported the jurade’s exercise of haute justice.73 69. Champeaud, Parlement de Bordeaux, 134–­37.

70. Coste, Messieurs de Bordeaux, 49–­59; Rouxel, Compétence, 125.

71. Rouxel, Compétence, 112–­16.

72. Rouxel, Compétence, 120–­21; Coste, Messieurs de Bordeaux, 135–­38.

73. Rouxel, Compétence, 94–­103, 114–­20; Arrêt donné au parlement sur le règlement fait en jurade, le 12 décembre 1617.

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Robert Descimon’s research on the family strategies of elite Parisian families has inspired historians of provincial cities to explore elite patterns of political, social, and economic advancement and their impact on regional politics. In the case of Bordeaux, close cooperation between the jurade and the parlement was likely shaped by interpersonal ties that linked the two institutions. Laurent Coste has demonstrated that the two courts were tied closely together by bonds of family, alliances that helped to cement the parlement’s “tight supervision of the city council.”74 Magistrates of the parlement were strictly forbidden to serve as jurats, but it was common for different branches of the same family to serve both in the parlement and at the jurade simultaneously. In fact, most of the jurats of noble status had relatives in the parlement.75 Because jurats were elected for two-­year terms and forced to rotate off the council regularly, institutional continuity at the jurade was in the hands of the two executive officers, the greffier (records officer) and the procureur-­syndic (public prosecutor). Both posts were usually held by men with legal training; the post of procureur-­syndic was dominated between the 1550s and 1670s by just two noble families, the Le Blancs and the Mullets, both with ties to the parlement.76 Although most jurats were not from parlementaire families, the fact that some were probably helped to ensure the largely functional working relationship between these independent and fiercely proud institutions. That, alongside the jurade’s obvious competency in criminal matters, encouraged the parlement to support the jurade in its bids to retain control over local criminal justice after the Fronde and again after the 1675 rebellion. By the early seventeenth century, however, the parlement gradually ceased to support the jurade’s practice of torture. Because the parlement’s criminal records for the seventeenth century are poor, it is impossible to fully understand how and why this change took place. Nevertheless, the records of the jurade, which note when appeals were confirmed, clearly demonstrate that the parlement was more hesitant to uphold sentences of torture after 1610.77 In 1640, the jurade sentenced 74. Coste, Messieurs de Bordeaux, 134.

75. Coste, “Jurats nobles bordelais,” 145–­66.

76. Coste, Les Jurats de Bordeaux de 1550 à 1789; Le Mao, Parlement et parlementaires.

77. In these cases, the jurade sentenced the defendant to be tortured, but the outcome of the appeal is uncertain. See ADG, 12 B 2, 30 December 1614; ADG, 12 B 3, 29 August 1622; ADG, 12 B 4,

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Anthoine Anguin to be tortured to establish whether or not he had committed a homicide, but there is no note in the jurade records that the parlement confirmed the sentence.78 The parlement’s refusal to confirm such sentences resulted in a rapid decline in the practice of torture at the jurade after 1610. This shift in practice was not the result of the jurade changing its criteria for using torture; the jurade, as it had since at least 1570, followed French law in sentencing torture only at the end of a trial when all other avenues for obtaining truth had been exhausted, and in mandating torture only for serious crimes. Instead, it was the parlementaires themselves who evidently had a change of heart. Research into the practice of torture at other French parlements during the seventeenth century reveals a marked decline in its use.79 Historians generally agree that this shift in practice occurred before 1670 when new criminal justice legislation closed, once and for all, the loopholes that allowed for more than one application of torture. At many courts, the shift away from torture resulted from the increased willingness of judges to convict defendants of crimes énormes without a confession of guilt. This practice of sentencing criminals to death based on circumstantial evidence alone marked a significant break with the late medieval law of proofs that only appeal courts could authorize.80 Judges also became reluctant to sanction torture because they came to understand its primary purpose to be punitive. Anecdotal evidence from the registers of the Parlement of Bordeaux shows that this shift in thinking occurred relatively early; a debate in 1629 found the magistrates assessing “whether the sanction of torture was less than the sanction of flogging,” a discussion that suggests they increasingly perceived torture to be a form of punishment.81 Although we know that the parlement 6 October 1627.

78. ADG, 12 B 5, 14 March 1640. It is clear that, when motivated to do so, the parlementaires could be very efficient in confirming some sentences, particularly death sentences for women convicted of infanticide by the jurade. See ADG, 12 B 2, 6 October 1615; ADG, 12 B 4, 2 May 1628; ADG, 12 B 3, 16 January 1619.

79. Wenzel, Torture judiciaire, 61–­70; Pinson-­Ramin, “La Torture judiciaire en Bretagne,” 549–­68; Silverman, Tortured Subjects, 71–­85; Durand, “Arbitraire du juge,” 141–­79.

80. Indeed, some courts, such as the Parlement of Paris, resisted this innovation well into the eighteenth century. Astaing, Droits et garanties de l’accusé, 352–­75; Bongert, “Le Pro modo probationum” 13–­39; Montazel, “Parlements de France,” 638–­40; Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof.

81. AMB, ms. 787, p. 424, 20 August 1629. I wish to thank Mathieu Servanton for sharing these archival references regarding the practice of torture at the Parlement of Bordeaux including AMB,

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continued to use torture occasionally for particularly sensational cases, its practice greatly decreased during the first half of the seventeenth century as compared to a century earlier. As the parlement’s own use of torture declined, it became increasingly reluctant to approve its use at the jurade. The jurade, however, did not immediately change its ways, which suggests that the parlement made no effort to discipline the jurats directly. The jurade continued to issue torture sentences a handful of times a year until at least the mid-­1640s, even though the parlement seems to have ignored them. On the other hand, as late as 1706, the parlement continued to uphold some death penalties issued by the jurats.82 The jurats’ privilege to try serious crimes was not at issue; rather, the parlement magistrates specifically sought to curb the practice of torture. In doing so, the parlement was not disciplining abusive practices at the jurade but limiting a legal interrogation technique that they presumably deemed to be increasingly superfluous to successful convictions. The Bordeaux jurade’s continued willingness to issue interlocutory sentences authorizing torture, a tendency noted at other courts of first instance, was not necesssarily the result of bloodthirstiness. Indeed, it is possible that the willingness of a lower court to continue to issue sentences of torture decades after the appeals court refused to confirm them may have been motivated by procedural necessity rather than by cruelty. Convinced by physical and circumstantial evidence that a defendant was guilty of a capital crime but lacking a clear confession of guilt, the local court had little option but to authorize torture as a means of signaling to the parlement that it thought this individual’s crimes warranted the death penalty. The alternative, issuing a death sentence with anything less than a confession of guilt, was not an option since it would almost inevitably be overturned on appeal and violated the system of proofs. Thus, local courts particularly were caught in a procedural bind: if the lower court did not wish to free the suspect, its options were either to issue a lesser criminal sentence (banishment or galleys) or to issue a sentence of torture

ms. 787, fol. 68, 9 December 1639; AMB, ms. 789, p. 173, 7 February 1640. See also Servanton, “Les registres du Parlement,” 17–­35.

82. ADG, 12 B 9, 18 February 1706. See also ADG, 12 B 5, 21 November 1635; ADG, 12 B 5, 22 July 1637. The parlement frequently mitigated the jurade’s death sentences during the seventeenth century: ADG, 12 B 9, 3 January 1699; ADG, 12 B 2, 9 July 1618.

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so that more information could be obtained.83 The apparent enthusiasm of some local courts for torture may have been a rational response to the restrictions of the French legal system and represented a conservative adherence to the law of proofs. Conversely, the overturning of such sentences by a parlement signaled not that the lower courts were torturing with abandon but that the appeals courts were no longer privileging the confession of the accused over other forms of evidence. Further research on the evidentiary practices of individual municipal and appeals courts needs to be undertaken before we can attribute more sinister motivations to lower-­court judges. Robert Descimon’s focus on the local always seeks to reveal the microdynamics of politics that reflect fundamental shifts in power relations over time. In Bordeaux, the jurade was fundamentally transformed by the turbulence of the Wars of Religion, and the political convulsions of the seventeenth century fundamentally transformed the jurade into a more politically docile institution that was more fully integrated into a royal system of authority. Maintaining its hold over haute justice was not only a thin thread of continuity with the proud autonomy of the late medieval city but also a forceful demonstration of local power in a society in which the threat of imprisonment or corporal punishment remained a key element of political authority. Finally, how much can the examination of the practice of torture in Bordeaux tell us about the situation in other cities at the time? Bordeaux was exceptional in at least two ways: the close links between the upper and lower courts, and its long-­standing exercise of criminal justice. Bordeaux succeeded in maintaining local control over haute justice throughout the ancien régime; indeed, it is because of this fact that we still possess the documents that demonstrate its restrained use of judicial torture. It is tempting to speculate that its judicial restraint contributed to its success, and it is useful to ask whether other courts of first instance, less successful, though no doubt equally eager to maintain their control over justice, might have adopted similar policies in the hopes of avoiding a clash with appeal courts. Certainly in Bordeaux, local authorities, though they may have lacked the legal training of the 83. ADG, 12 B 3, 28 July 1620; Schnapper, “Répression pénale,” 70–­71; Schmoeckel, “Absolutio ab instantia”; Andrews, Law, Magistracy and Crime, 436–­41; Bongert, “Le Pro modo probationum,” 24–­ 31; Astaing, Droits et garanties, 352.

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parlementaires, were savvy administrators whose interest in maintaining municipal privileges was sometimes served by following French law to the letter.

Works cited Archival sources ADG = Archives Départementales de la Gironde 12 B 1–­12, Cour des Jurats de Bordeaux

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1 B 422, Registres du parlement 1 B 704, Registres du parlement

AMB = Archives municipales de Bordeaux FF14c, procès verbaux de torture

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ms. 787, Registres du Parlement de Bordeaux

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Jallamion, Carine. “Entre ruse du droit et impératif humanitaire: La politique de la torture judiciaire du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle.” Archives de politique criminelle 25 (2003): 9–­35.

Konnert, Mark W. Civic Agendas and Religious Passion: Châlons-­Sur-­Marne during the French Wars of Religion, 1560–­1594. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1997.

Langbein, John H. Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Régime. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977.

Le Mao, Caroline. Parlement et parlementaires: Bordeaux au Grand Siècle. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2007. Maugis, Édouard. Histoire du Parlement de Paris de l’avènement des rois Valous à la mort d’Henri IV. 3 vols. in 2. Geneva: Slatkine, 1977.

Montazel, Laurence. “Les Parlements de France et la torture judiciaire du XVe au XVIIIe siècle.” In La Torture judiciaire: Approches historiques et juridiques, edited by Bernard Durand and Leah Otis-­Cour, 2: 613–­41. Lille: ANRT, 2002. O’Brien, John. “Le Magistrat comme philosophe: La Roche Flavin, lecteur de Montaigne et de Charron.” Bulletin de la Société des amis de Montaigne 55 (2012): 221–­34.

Otis-­Cour, Leah. “Les Enjeux de la torture: Une affaire d’homicide à Pamiers aux années 1330.” In La Douleur et le droit, edited by Bernard Durand and Jean Poirier, 211–­17. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1997. ———. “Les Limites de la grâce et les exigences de la justice.” Recueil de Mémoires et Travaux publiés par la Société d’histoire du droit et des institutions des anciens pays de droit écrit 17 (1996): 73–­89.

Piant, Hervé. Une Justice ordinaire: Justice civile et criminelle dans la prévôté royale de Vaucouleurs sous l’ancien régime. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006. Pinson-­Ramin, Véronique. “La Torture judiciaire en Bretagne au XVIIe siècle.” Revue historique du droit français et etranger 72 (1994): 549–­68.

Powis, Jonathan. “Guyenne 1548: The Crown, The Province and Social Order.” European Studies Review 12 (1982): 1–­15.

Roelker, Nancy Lyman. One King, One Faith: The Parlement of Paris and the Religious Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Rouxel, Marcel. La Compétence de la Cour des jurats de Bordeaux. Bordeaux: Bière, 1949. Schmoeckel, Mathias. “L’Absolutio ab instantia: Son dévéloppement en Europe et ses implications constitutionnelles.” Revue d’histoire des facultés de droit et de la science juridique 19 (1998): 171–­86.

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Schnapper, Bernard. “La Justice criminelle rendue par le Parlement de Paris sous le règne de François I.” Revue d’distoire du droit 52 (1974): 252–­84.

———. “La Répression pénale au XVIème siècle: L’exemple du Parlement de Bordeaux (1510–­1565).” In Voies nouvelles en histoire de droit: La justice, la famille, la répression pénale, XVIème-­XXème siècles, 53–­105. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991.

———. “Testes inhabiles: Les témoins reprochables dans l’ancien droit pénal.” Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 33 (1965): 575–­616.

Schneider, Zoë A. The King’s Bench: Bailiwick Magistrates and Local Governance in Normandy, 1670–­1740. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008.

Sédillot, Sophie. “L’Exercice de la justice par la commune de Doullens en Picardie: Un exemple de la lutte pour l’affirmation municipale (XIIIe–­XVIIIe siècles).” Revue du Nord no. 384 (2010): 59–­93.

Servanton, Mathieu. “Les Registres du Parlement de Bordeaux sous Louis XIII, présentation et enseignements.” Histoire, économie et société 31 (2012): 17–­35.

Silverman, Lisa. Tortured Subjects: Pain, Truth and the Body in Early Modern France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Soman, Alfred. “La Décriminalisation de la sorcellerie en France.” Histoire, économie et société 4 (1985): 179–­203. Reprinted in Alfred Soman, Sorcellerie et justice criminelle: Le Parlement de Paris (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle). Hampshire-­Bookfield: Variorum, 1992.

———. “La Justice criminelle aux XVI–­XVIIe siècles: Le Parlement de Paris et les sièges subalternes.” In Actes du 107e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes (Brest, 1982): Section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610, 1: 15–­52. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1984. Reprinted in Alfred Soman, Sorcellerie et justice criminelle: Le Parlement de Paris (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle). Hampshire-­Bookfield: Variorum, 1992.

Stocker, Christopher W. “Office as Maintenance in Renaissance France.” Canadian Journal of History 6 (1971): 21–­44. Wenzel, Éric. La Torture judiciaire dans la France de l’ancien régime. Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2011.

Zeller, Gaston. Les Institutions de la France au XVIe siècle. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1948.

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Chapter 4

Urban Elites and Politics in Sixteenth-­Century Dijon Mack P. Holt I first became aware of Robert Descimon in 1985, when I read his debate with Élie Barnavi on the nature of the League in Paris published in Annales in 1982, and then Descimon’s own book published the following year: Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et réalités de la Ligue parisienne.1 I bought this book in Paris in the summer of 1985, and I have been constantly reading and re-­reading it ever since, continually mesmerized by the two things that stood out immediately from my first reading: Descimon’s convincing revision of the history of the League in Paris—­les Seize—­and his revision of the way historians write political history. Descimon’s convincing revision of the narrative of the Catholic League is now well known, and we do not need to go over it again here. Suffice it to say that after the publication of Qui étaient les Seize? it was no longer possible to write off the Paris League as a bunch of radical opportunists who were on the wrong side of history for not supporting the inevitable victory of Henri IV and the politiques, as so many previous historians had done. That Robert Descimon’s work also inspired a new methodology for doing political history, however, is less well known to those outside early modern French history, and it is this subject that I want to address here.

1. Descimon and Barnavi, “La Ligue à Paris,” “Réponse à Robert Descimon,” and “La Ligue”; Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?

a

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What initially intrigued me most about Descimon’s book on the League was that he seemed to be writing a political history of the League in Paris, but he was using a variety of sources I had naively believed to be primarily useful for social historians rather than political historians, above all, notarial records. His later work on the échevinage of Paris in the sixteenth century and the noblesse de robe in Paris from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries only confirmed this.2 So, when I began my research on the religious wars in Burgundy, I started by reading the deliberations of the Hôtel de Ville, which seemed a natural place to start to learn about local politics. But inspired by Descimon’s model, I eventually turned to the notarial records, the état civil of baptisms and marriages, the tax rolls, and even the criminal records of the city of Dijon, sources I had been aware of, but again primarily through the work of social historians. Thus I hesitate to make any broad generalizations about Robert Descimon’s contribution to the discipline of history, but it is clear that Descimon’s work has influenced me and a host of other scholars in a variety of ways. First, he has demonstrated that we need a wider definition of what politics is in the ancien régime. If we take a broader definition of politics—­the negotiation for power by all those who claimed to have a stake in it—­it becomes clear from Descimon’s work that you cannot really understand urban politics at all unless you are also a cultural and social historian. Second, this has pushed me beyond a study of just the elites, as negotiations for power necessarily involved a much wider share of the urban community, an insight that has led to my search for interactions and relations between urban elites and vignerons in Burgundy. As all Descimon’s work has demonstrated, social relations and politics are symbiotic. Indeed, as seems to be the case so often in this period, social relations—­ not ideology, religion, or class—­are often the key to understanding how the ancien régime worked in practice. Finally, Descimon’s work has forced me to try to understand politics as a process of negotiation rather than just an analysis of the outcomes of these negotiations. His thoughts on absolutism—­along with those of his co-­author Fanny Cosandey—­have been especially useful in this regard.3 So, what I propose to do for the rest of this essay is look at some examples of the kinds of sources—­actual 2. Descimon, “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV”; and Descimon and Haddad, Epreuves de noblesse. 3. Cosandey and Descimon, L’Absolutisme en France.

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documents in the archives—­that I once naively thought were of very little use for writing about politics. Let’s begin with notarial records. Until Descimon published his marvelous prosopography of the 225 members of the Paris Sixteen as part of his first book, I had never imagined that notarial records—­wills, marriage contracts, sales of property, loans, and the like—­could be so useful for understanding local politics. Social historians had been using notarial records for decades, but it had never occurred to me that they could be useful for studying political history. This was obviously a personal lacuna, as had I been paying attention, I would have noticed that many other scholars, including Denis Richet, one of Descimon’s mentors, had been using notarial archives to write political history for some time.4 Nor was Qui étaient les Seize? the very first work to point out that politics and social relations were symbiotic.5 Today, using notarial records to help us better understand early modern French politics is very well established,6 but for me in the early 1980s, Descimon’s book was a revelation. It became very clear that relations between the elites of Dijon and the city’s vignerons were well represented in the notarial records of the period. For example, how did vignerons stay afloat in times of shortage, and how could they possibly finance the purchase of additional parcels of vines or the improvement of their holdings? The short answer is that they did so like vignerons still do today: they borrowed against their potential for future earnings. Without a system of credit and debt, the wine industry in the sixteenth century would never have been able to meet expanding market demands caused by demographic growth and increased demand from afar for Burgundy’s best wines. There were a variety of different kinds of credit, or loans, available to sixteenth-­century vignerons living in Dijon, primarily because the city had a critical mass of wealthy elites from merchants to royal officers and judicial officials connected with the royal courts. These affluent individuals often had spare cash to invest in the wine industry and they were anxious to do so, especially because of one 4. See the thèse secondaire of Denis Richet, written in 1964 but published posthumously in 1991, “Une Famille de robe: Les Séguier avant le Chancelier.” 5. See, for example, the wonderful article of Ranum, “Courtesy, Absolutism, and the Rise of the French State.”

6. For just a few of many recent examples that could be cited, see Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy; Le Roux, La Faveur du roi; Le Person, “Practiques” et “practiquers”; Boltanski, Les Ducs de Nevers et l’état royal; and Tulchin, That Men Would Praise the Lord.

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particular form of loan, a rente. Like every form of monetary transaction, a rente provided benefits as well as risks to both parties. But much like the cens (on which I shall elaborate shortly), which allowed vignerons to control and administer their own vines, rentes were heavily weighted toward the elite lenders, who could financially benefit much more significantly than they would simply by lending money at a fixed rate of interest. They worked as follows: an investor provided a significant sum up front to a potential borrower, who agreed in return to pay the investor a small sum, usually about one-­sixteenth of the principal, on a certain date each and every year in perpetuity, with all his heirs inheriting this same obligation. The rente actually referred to the annual sums paid each year to the investor, so the borrower was technically referred to in such contracts as the vendor of the rente, selling the rights to collect some annual income for a much larger payment up front. For elite investors, the only real risk was that the borrower might default and be unable to pay the annual rente due to him, or that even if he could, he might die soon and without heirs and thus prevent any significant return on the lender’s investment.7 In order to understand the rente’s significance and how it operated in Burgundian viticulture, it is necessary to examine one of these agreements in detail. On the twelfth day of November 1611 before noon in Dijon in my office and in the presence of me, Nicolas Guenot, royal notary and record-­keeper, established and living in Dijon, Rue de la Verrerie, and also in the presence of the witnesses listed below, are standing before us Louis Joyot, vigneron living in the village of Tallant, the principal, and Pierre Joyot, vigneron, [his father] also living in Tallant and in the house of the said Louis Joyot, his co-­signer and nevertheless co-­principal, who, both the one and the other and each of them alone as well as together without any distinction, have sold an annual rente, which by this [contract] is binding on them and their heirs, to noble Master Philibert Boulier, barrister in the court of the Parlement of Dijon, who is acquiring also perpetually for him and his heirs the annual and perpetual rente of six livres and five sous tournois. This sum is 7. For more on the rente, see Cabourdin and Viard, Lexique historique de la France, 281–­82; and Schnapper, Les Rentes au XVIe siècle.

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payable each year without exception to the said Mr. Boulier in his house in Dijon and to his heirs on the same day every year as today, the twelfth of November, so that one year from today in 1612 the first payment will be due, continuing from each year to the next without exception, in return for the sum of one hundred pounds tournois, which is being paid, counted, and delivered to the said constituents [the Joyots], along with the sum of 21s. 4d. owed to the notary and witnesses, 16s. of which they are currently holding in coins and consider payment in full that the said Mr. Boulier has provided. By this contract the said sellers and constituents [the Joyots] have assigned and do so allocate the [payments of the] said rente, for both the principal as well as any other charges, to fall upon each and all of their heirs for the present and in the future if they should ever have recourse to default on the payments for one or more terms of the said rente of six livres and five sous, as well as for any additional costs or reasonable expenses. They promise by the terms of the loan to agree forever to pay each year the amount of six livres and five sous without exception to the said gentleman [Boulier], on the date and at the place stated above, on pain of all costs plus interest, the security of which they have firmly pledged and are obliged to pay from all their property and that of their heirs, including both moveable and immoveable property, both at present and in the future, to be enforced by the Chancellery court of the Duchy of Burgundy and any other royal courts which may judge this contract. And they renounce all claims to the contrary, even the law that says a general renunciation is not valid unless the purchaser [Boulier] predeceases the said parties [the Joyots]. Made, read, and agreed on the date and at the place specified above in the presence of Simon Gouhan, merchant living in Fontaine-­ lès-­Dijon, and George Simon, vigneron living in Tallant, as the required witnesses, as well as the notary.8

8. ADCO, E 2225 (notaires), fols. 9v–­10v, 12 November 1611: “L’an mil six centz et unze le douziesme jour de novembre avant midy a Dijon en l’hostel et pardevant moy Nicolas Guenot, notaire royal et garde notte hereditaire estably et dem[eurant] aud[it] Dijon, rue de la Verrerie, et en presence des tesmoings en fin nommez ont estez presentz en leurs personnes Loys Joyot vigneron dem[eurant] a Taland principal et Pierre Joyot vigneron [son pere] aussy dem[eurant] aud[it] Taland dud[it] Loys Joyot sa caultion [co-­signer for security] et neaulmoings aussi principal lesquelz l’ung pour l’autre

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In November 1611 at the notary office in Dijon, Nicolas Guenot, two vignerons, Louis Joyot and his father and co-­signer Pierre Joyot, signed a contract for a loan—­or rente—­of 100 livres tournois, from Philibert Boulier, a barrister in the Parlement of Dijon. In return, they and their heirs promised to pay every year in perpetuity the sum of 6 livres and 5 sous tournois at Boulier’s home every 12 November to Boulier and his heirs. Should Joyot or his heirs ever fail to make this annual payment, the loan was secured by all his and his heirs’ moveable and immoveable property. Thus, in the legal language of the rente a vigneron “sold” the right to an annual payment of 6.25 livres tournois to a barrister in the Parlement of Dijon for the “purchase price” of 100 livres tournois. This clearly represented the transaction through the eyes of the investor. Seen through the eyes of the borrower, however, the transaction looked very different: a vigneron borrowed a sum of money from a wealthy lawyer and agreed to pay it back at a fixed rate of infinite interest, but with each and every annual payment only counting as interest and the principal never being paid off. To be sure, the borrower always had the right to repay the entire loan in a lump sum of 100 livres tournois—­that is, to repurchase the rente—­once he accumulated enough capital to do that, paying an annual interest rate of 6.25 percent in the interim. But even though most boret chascun d’eulx seul et pour le tout sans division ny ordre de disention ont vendus constitue par cestes perpetuellement pour eulx leurs hoirs et ayant cause a noble maistre Philibert Boulier advocat a la cour de Parlement dud[it] Dijon present et acquerant aussi perpetuelle pour luy et les siens la rente annuelle[9v/10r] et perpetuelle di six livres cinq solz t[ournoi]s payable chacun an sans division aud[it] sieur Boulier en sa maison aud[it] Dijon et a ses[dit]s hoirs et ayant cause a tel et pareil jour que la date des presentes douziesme de novembre auquel jour q[ue] sera dhuy en un an que l’on comptera mil six centz et douze sera le premier terme et payement et dillec continuant de terme a aultre sans cesser et ce moyennant la somme de cent livres tour[noi]z ausdictz constituantz payee nombree et delivree contant reallement et de faict presentz lesd[its] not[air]e et tesmoings en pieces de vingt et ung solz quatre deniers et seize solz dont ilz se sont tenuz et tiennent pour contans bien payez et satisfaictz et en ont quicte et quictent led[ite] sieur Boulier acquerera Par quoy lesdictz vendeurs et constituantz ont assigne et assignent lad[ite] rente tant en principal que arrivages a escheoir sur tous et chacungs leurs liens et de leursd[its] hoirs et ayans cause presentz et advenir quelconques pour y avoir recours au desfault de payement des arrivages de lad[ite] rente de six livres cinq solz après ung ou plusieurs termes passez ensemble pour tous fraiz et despens raisonnables. Promectant par termes preste avoir a jamais pour agreeable lad[ite] presente constitution de rente et de payer chacun an icelle rente de six livres cinq solz sans division aud[it] sieur et au terme et lieu susdict a peine de tous despens et interests a la seurthé de quoy ilz ont insolidement que dict est oblige et obligent tous et chacuns leurs[dit]s biens et de leurs[dit]s hoirs et ayans cause meubles et immeubles presentz et advenir par la cour de la Chancellerie du duche de Bourgongne et aultres royalles quil apartiendra pour en estre contrainctz comme de chose adiugee renonceans a toutes choses a ce contraires mesme au droict disant que generalle renonciation ne vault si la specialle ne precede lesdictes parties faictes leues et passes aud[it] Dijon les an jour et lieu susd[it]s presentz Symon Gouhin marchant demeurant a fontaine lad[it] Dijon et George Symon vigneron dem[eurant] aud[it] Taland tesm[oins] requis et ont signe lesdictes parties et tesm[oins] avec led[it] not[air]e sur la minutte.”

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rowers were relatively prosperous vignerons, the vicissitudes of the annual grape harvest meant that they were seldom in a position to do that, thus indebting themselves and their heirs to their creditors in perpetuity. Indeed, the repayment of the entire principal was so rare and so completely unanticipated by both parties that contracts such as this never even spelled this out. Indeed, most wealthy investors only invested in rentes because they were certain that the borrower would be unable to repay the entire sum at one time. During the ancien régime, of course, this was how a rente was supposed to work. In the messier practice of daily life, the specific terms of the contract might temporarily be abandoned or even dissolved altogether for a variety of reasons: one or both parties might die without any heirs, either party could move away, the borrower might default through poverty without any significant property to secure the loan, or the lender or his heirs might simply refuse to prosecute a borrower in default. Ultimately, however, rentes were a way for many vignerons who had some vineyards of their own to raise capital in order to increase their holdings and ultimately raise their standard of living. For others, they were a means of survival. They were relatively popular too, given the numbers that are recorded in the notarial archives of Dijon. As such, these kinds of loans made it possible for some of the most prosperous vignerons to expand their holdings and purchase additional vines, even if through a cens, as outlined below. And prosperous vignerons were exactly the kind of borrowers that would-­be investors were looking for, as they offered the least risk for their investment. Suffice it to say here that the rente provided one of the more common relationships that some vignerons had with the city’s elites. Even if this relationship consisted of a face-­to-­face encounter only once per year, the necessity to prepare for that annual encounter by producing the cash to cover the annual payment served as a stark and constant reminder of the social gulf separating even the most wealthy and prosperous of vignerons from men such as the lawyer, Philibert Boulier. Most vignerons who possessed vineyards did so through a contract called a cens, which gave them perpetual use of a specified parcel of vines (called the censive). In many ways a cens was like perpetual rental of property.9 For just one example, a vigneron named Etienne Malechart signed a contract with the canons of the Sainte Chapelle, the Duke of

9. Tournier, “Notes sur la culture de la vigne,”152–­55.

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Burgundy’s private chapel, in February 1417 for half of a parcel of vines of seven quartiers (or one and three-­quarters arpents, about six-tenths of a hectare), for which he was required to pay “an annual and perpetual assessment indefinitely . . . of 20 sous and one gros” to the clergy of the Sainte Chapelle.10 These cens, being perpetual contracts, could be passed on to heirs or sold, almost as if vignerons such as Malechart actually owned the vineyards outright, and the notarial archives in Dijon are full of examples of this kind of transaction. Indeed, either Malechart or his heirs did sell this parcel of vines at some point: it was held by a merchant named Jean Mathieu who sold it to another merchant in April 1506 for 15 livres tournois. The new buyer, like all previous owners of the cens, had to continue to pay the customary 8s. 4d. of cens annually to the clergy of the Sainte Chapelle.11 These duties, while seemingly a small though not insignificant amount, were typical of the ancien régime, in that even though the holders of a cens enjoyed exclusive rights to the property and all it produced, they remained a constant irritant and often proved to be a financial burden, especially in a poor harvest year. Moreover, they were emblematic of the variety of feudal dues that a great many landholders in France still owed their social betters or the church, if the land they paid for was originally part of a seigneurial or ecclesiastical estate.12 Beyond these financial considerations, contracts such as rentes and cens created ties of obligation between the vignerons and their social betters that augmented their social relationships in the city. They also did more than just bring into direct contact two seemingly disparate cohorts of city residents: the vignerons who left the city each day to tend their vineyards in the countryside and the wealthy lawyers, merchants, clergymen, and other bourgeois whose work and lives were so different inside the city. Even when these contracts worked as they were supposed to, in 10. AMD, B 445, fols. 283–­84, 8 February 1416 [old style, i.e., 1417 new style]: “Acensement annuel et perpetuel en Emphitéote passé pardevant M[onsieu]r le bon notoire le 8 fevrier 1416 a Etienne Malechart vigneron a dijon par les vénérable doyen, chanoines et chapitre de la chapelle de Monseigneur le Duc de Bourg[og]ne d’une piece de vigne contenant environ la moitié de 7. quartiers seize au finage de dijon au lieu dit en hastereau, du coté la vigne que tenoient pour lors les vénérables chanoines, qui estait partageable avec led[it] maléchart. Item d’une piece de terre de la contenances de 7. quartiers en laquelles se prenoit lesd[its] 3. quartiers et demy d’une part, et la vigne de M[onsieu]r Girard de Passequoy pretre d’autre part, moyennant le cens de 20 s[ous] et un gros en Emphitéote payables chacun an auxd[its] venerables par le reteneur aux clauses y contennues.” 11. AMD, B 445, fol. 297, 3 April 1506.

12. For more on the cens and censive, see Cabourdin and Viard, Lexique historique de la France, 54; and Beik, Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France, 26.

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a legal sense the obligations of the elites ended once they turned over the money being loaned or the vineyards being leased. For the vignerons, however, their obligations continued indefinitely, until their rente could be repurchased or their censive was forfeited to the owner or sold to another buyer. In a different sense, however, these contracts also obligated the creditors to concern themselves with the economic viability of the vignerons, upon which their investments depended. And these obligations could also have political repercussions, which became very clear during the sixteenth-­century religious wars. Just one obvious example is the way that the vignerons of the city pressured and lobbied Dijon’s city council and Parlement in the 1590s, during the period of domination by the Catholic League in Burgundy, to protect their vineyards from marauding soldiers of the royalist forces who interrupted the grape harvest, ransacked the vineyards, and often attacked the vignerons as they went to or from their work.13 As early as March 1594, less than a year after Henri IV’s abjuration of his reformed faith and conversion to Catholicism, some vignerons were heard shouting “Long live the king” in the vineyards. Four months later, as a result of these complaints, the city council sent a commission to the first president of the Parlement of Dijon, Denis Brulart, to see if a peace or at least cease-­fire with Henri could be achieved.14 This began a period of negotiations in which the city council and Parlement would eventually recognize Henri IV as king and welcome him into the city the following year.15 External threats to the livelihoods of the vignerons thus helped forge an about-­face in policy by Dijon’s elites, many of whom were clients of the Duke of Mayenne. The bonds of obligation created by rentes and cens tied everyday forms of social relations to the politics of the city. If we shift from notarial records to tax rolls and baptismal records in the état civil, we can better understand how vignerons lived and interacted with their neighbors when they were not working in the vineyards. An analysis of one particular street in the parish of St. Michel in Dijon and everyone who lived on it can give us a much better idea of the material lives and social relations of these same inhabitants. The street selected for this close examination was one of the longest streets in the

13. See Drouot, Mayenne et la Bourgogne, 2:288–­93.

14. AMD, B 231, fol. 144r, 8 March 1594; B 232, fol. 67r–­v, 8 July 1594. 15. AMD, B 232, fols. 277v–­284v, 29 May–­4 June 1595.

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parish, the rue Vannerie, so called because in the late Middle Ages it was the street where a number of basket-­weavers resided, and a few still did in the sixteenth century. It ran directly from the plaza on the north side of the parish church of St. Michel due north all the way to the parish boundary near the parish church of St. Nicolas.16 In the middle section of rue Vannerie, a cross-­street called rue Roulotte bisected it (rue Roulotte is the present-­day rue du Lycée). For the purposes of this study, all the inhabitants who lived on the rue Roulotte are being combined with those living on the rue Vannerie, as many of the tax assessors also did in the sixteenth century when going door to door to record tax assessments of all the inhabitants of Dijon by street name. Thus, when referring to rue Vannerie in the discussion that follows, I am actually referring to a cross-­shaped street, with the three sections of rue Vannerie forming the longer vertical section of the cross and rue Roulotte forming the shorter horizontal section. Another reason for selecting this street is that it contained a true cross section of the city’s population as a whole, from nobles to paupers, as well as a very good cross section of Dijon’s vigneron population, from poor day laborers to property owners who owned some vines. Besides the vignerons, the tax rolls show that the rue Vannerie contained a few nobles, other well-­to-­do fiscal officers, professionals such as doctors and notaries, and just about every kind of artisanal trade imaginable: barrel makers, woodworkers, turners, carpenters, bakers, butchers, vinegar makers, drapers, dyers, tanners, cloth cutters, barbers, pastry makers, tilers, builders, roofers, masons, locksmiths, weavers, wool carders, and so on. And what is most striking is that all these trades were evenly distributed throughout the street regardless of income and wealth. As the tax assessors went door to door, we can clearly see that rich and poor lived side by side. It was very common for someone in the top quintile of wealth to have neighbors on both sides in the bottom quintile. For example, a poor widower paying less than 1 sou in tax lived next door to a clerk of the court who paid 30 sous in tax, and a wealthy vigneron paying 25 sous in tax lived next door to a pauper who paid nothing. This was the rule rather than the exception, as the exterior of the house often gave no indication at all what kind of person lived within it.

16. For a good overview of the history of rue Vannerie, see Fyot, Dijon, 466–­82.

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Tax rolls from the period list each inhabitant by name and occupation as well as the amount of tax assessed, except for those who were exempt from paying tax because of their social status, such as nobles, or extreme poverty. A number of important families lived in the parish of St. Michel, and just on the rue Vannerie alone, the noble De Saulx family lived at the top end of the street (present-day no. 15). Jean de Saulx, sire de Courtviron, a judge in the Parlement of Paris and also a councilor of the Duke of Burgundy, constructed the house, and his great-­grandson Gaspard de Saulx, sieur de Tavanes (1509–­1575) was born in this house in 1509.17 Another important family, the Le Compasseur family, also lived on rue Vannerie in the sixteenth century, at the lower end of the street nearer the parish church (present-­day no. 66 ). The noble Bénigne Le Compasseur, seigneur of Jancigny, occupied the house in the sixteenth century, and he was a royal officer in the Chambre des comptes in Dijon.18 Table 1: Tax Assessments in the Parish of St. Michel, Dijon: 1523 and 1552 (all tax values are given in sous tournois) Year

Total Households

Mean Tax

1523 1552

489 614

10.26 9.48

Vigneron Vigneron Households Mean Tax 180 164

7.24 7.78

Rue Vannerie Households

Vannerie Mean Tax

82 90

9.34 7.37

Vannerie Vannerie Vignerons Vigneron Tax 38 34

7.34 7.85

Source: AMD, L 164, fols. 20–212 (1523) and L 189, fols. 68–284 (1552).

But living cheek by jowl with families such as the De Saulx and Le Compasseur families were also vignerons, merchants, artisans of virtually all trades, widows, and even paupers. The figures in table 1 give a good overview of the diversity of wealth of the inhabitants of rue Vannerie. These figures come from the tax assessment rolls of the taille, the personal property tax imposed on all goods and property in Dijon. In 1523 there were a total of 489 households in the parish of St. Michel, of which 180 were headed by vignerons. Thus, while vignerons made up between 20 and 25 percent of all households in the city of Dijon in the sixteenth century, in the parish of St. Michel vignerons made up 37 percent of all households. Excluding the heads of four exempt households, three of

17. Fyot, Dijon, 481. 18. Fyot, Dijon, 467.

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which were exempt for holding royal offices and one for extreme poverty, the mean or average tax assessment in the entire parish in 1523 was 10.26 sous.19 The mean tax assessed to the vigneron households was lower, only 7.24 sous. So the vignerons as a group fell below the mean for the entire parish. If we focus on rue Vannerie specifically, we see a similar pattern: eighty-­two total households of which thirty-­eight (46.3 percent) were headed by vignerons. The mean tax assessment on rue Vannerie was 9.34 sous, while the vignerons on rue Vannerie were assessed a mean of 7.34 sous, again below the mean for the entire street. This, however, disguises the fact that many wealthy vignerons lived on rue Vannerie. Based on the tax assessment for 1523, the sixth highest assessment on the entire street—­more than 25 sous—­was paid by the widow of a vigneron, Girard Gagnière. And seven other vignerons paid between 11 and 15 sous, all above the mean for the entire parish: Simon Noirot, Mathieu La Vielle, Pierre Jacquelin, Jean Malnourry, Thibault Nault, Jean Quarrey, and Guiot Horry. As a cohort, the vignerons on rue Vannerie ran the gamut of the entire social spectrum, however, as there was one in the highest quintile (the top 20 percent of all households on the street), eleven in the next quintile, seven in the middle quintile, fourteen in the next quintile, and five in the bottom 20 percent. If we move to the 1552 tax assessment nearly three decades later, we see that the vignerons had become a little wealthier in relation to their neighbors on rue Vannerie. For example, while the mean tax assessment for the entire parish in 1552 was 9.48 sous, the vignerons in the parish as a group were assessed a mean of 7.78 sous, which was slightly closer to the parish mean than their counterparts of 1522.20 Moreover, the mean tax assessment on rue Vannerie was 7.37 sous, while the vignerons on the street were assessed an average of 7.85 sous, which was higher than the mean for the entire street. Indeed, six of the ten highest tax assessments on the entire street were for vignerons, including both Thibault Nault and Jean Malnourry from the 1523 tax roll. Broken down by quintile, there were seven vignerons in the top 20 percent, eight in the next quintile,

19. AMD, L 164, fols. 20–­212. The tax assessments in the documents are given in francs, gros, and blancs, all of which I have converted to sous for comparison. For rates of conversion, 1 blanc = one-­ fourth of a gros (5 deniers); one gros = one-twelfth of a livre tournois (1 sous and 8 deniers); one franc = 1 livre (20 sous). 20. AMD, L 189, fols. 68–­284.

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eight in the middle quintile, five in the next quintile, and five in the bottom 20 percent of households on the street. So even though the vignerons made up a smaller percentage of the total population of the parish in 1552 (26.7 percent) compared to 1523 (36.8 percent), those vignerons still living on rue Vannerie had increased their net worth, not just in relation to their neighbors on the street, but in relation to the entire parish. What kinds of houses did these vignerons live in? What we can say is that most vignerons, like a majority of the inhabitants of the city, rented their dwellings. The terms of these agreements were usually only two to three years, and sometimes even less, even for families that occupied the same residence for long periods of time.21 But what do we mean by a house? A household on the tax rolls may in fact refer only to a couple of rooms, or in some cases, a single room in a multiroom townhouse. It is equally clear, however, that some of the wealthiest vignerons were owners of their own residences, or at least owners of a cens entitling them to permanent residence in them.22 Thibault Nault, for example, already mentioned above as one of the most prosperous vignerons living on rue Vannerie, did own the rights to his home through a cens. He lived on the part of the street known as the rue Roulotte, and in May 1519 he first acquired the cens for a house on the street that required him to pay an annual payment of 6 s. and 8 d. to the clergy of the parish church of St. Michel, who owned the house outright. The house remained in the Nault family until 1652, when Louise de la Grange, widow of Pierre Nault, vigneron, remarried to a man named Nicolas Baittent. At this time the cens and the house were divided, with half going to Louise de la Grange’s son, a parchment maker named Pierre Nault, and the other half going to Baittent’s heirs. More than a century later in 1770, Jean-­Bernard Nault, a professor of law at the university in Dijon and a lawyer who argued cases before the Parlement, purchased the other half of the house, measuring 26 feet long and 20.5 feet wide, from a tenant of the Baittent family for 675 livres tournois, as well as a sales tax (lods) of 46 livres tournois 17s. 6d., restoring it to the Nault family as it had been since 1519.23 This is not only a case of a prosperous vigneron family owning their own house, but

21. On the turnover and mobility in neighborhoods for non-­elites, see Farr, Hands of Honor, 157–­59. 22. Galanaud and Labesse, “Les Vignerons à Dijon.”

23. ADCO, G 3579 (liasse), 6 May 1519, 7 April and 15 October 1652, and 25 July 1770.

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an example of significant and dramatic social advancement of a family over multiple generations, from a prosperous vigneron in the sixteenth century to a lawyer and professor in the eighteenth century. Shifting to the baptismal records of the état civil shows a different kind of social relation between the vignerons and the city’s elites, especially the segment of the elites made up of lawyers, judges, royal officers, and other officials associated with the judicial and financial court system in Dijon: godparentage. In Burgundy the tradition was to have one godfather and one godmother at the baptism, and the Council of Trent prescribed that this was the maximum number allowed. Normally, a male child was christened with the first name of his godfather, and a female child with the first name of her godmother; this was the case in Dijon with very few exceptions.24 To be asked to be a godparent was an honor, and it necessitated regular contact between the godparent and the godchild throughout the child’s upbringing.25 But it was also an honor for the godchild and his parents if the godparents came from a significantly superior social status. What is striking in Dijon is that a significant number of children of vignerons had godfathers who were échevins, lawyers or judges in the Parlements, or royal officers in one of the other sovereign courts in the city, or had godmothers who were either married to or daughters of men holding these positions. Lots of examples could be provided, even from the neighborhood around rue Vannerie in the parish of St. Michel. For example, the godfather of Drouhin Braconnier, son of a vigneron, born on 18 November 1581, was Drouhin Breunot, eldest son of Gabriel Breunot, a judge (conseiller) in the Parlement of Dijon; his godmother was the widow of another judge in the Parlement, Antoine Fyot.26 The godfather of Michelle Le Bon, daughter of a vigneron born on 24 September 1583, was Zacharie Goudran, son of a solicitor (procureur) in the bailliage court in Dijon; her godmother was Michelle Morelet,

24. The surviving records of the état civil in Dijon only begin in 1578 for baptismal records. All the examples and figures below come from the baptismal records of five of the seven parish churches in the city from 1579 to 1610, forming a data sample of over 2,000 baptisms. These records are in AMD, État civil B 482 (Notre-­Dame), 490–­91 (St. Jean), 494–­95 (St. Michel), 504 (St. Nicolas), and 506 (St. Pierre). There are no surviving état civil records for this period for the parishes of St. Médard and St. Philibert. 25. For more on what was involved in being a godparent, see Van Gennep, Manuel de folklore français contemporain, vol. 1, Naissance, baptême, fiançailles, 128–­31. 26. AMD, État civil B 494, fol. 12v.

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daughter of Jean Morelet, a judge and maître des comptes in the bailliage court.27 Michelle Morelet’s brother, Bénigne Morelet, was the godfather of Felicitée George, daughter of a vigneron born on 11 September 1584; her godmother was Felicitée des Barres, daughter of Bernard des Barres, former mayor of Dijon and one of the six presiding judges in the Parlement of Dijon.28 And the godfather of Bernard Turllot, son of a vigneron born on 14 November 1591, was noble Bernard Le Goux, son of noble Guillaume Le Goux, a barrister (avocat) for the king in the chancellery court in Dijon; his godmother was Hélène Bourrelier, daughter of Jean Bourrelier, a judge and receiver-­general in the chancellery court.29 These anecdotal examples illustrate the larger trend that a significant number of vignerons had social links with the social elites of the city. If we examine the entire database of more than two thousand baptisms, it is clear that 41 percent of all children born to vignerons had godparents of roughly equal social status as the parents—­usually other vignerons or journeyman artisans. Another 28 percent of these children had at least one godparent of a higher social status—­various bourgeois, master artisans, ushers (huissiers) in the various sovereign courts, and notaries. Yet fully 31 percent of children born to vignerons had at least one godparent who was of significantly higher social status: judges, barristers, and solicitors in the Parlement, mayors and city councilors (échevins), or royal officers in the bailliage and chancellery courts. But how do loans to vignerons, the residence and tax patterns on an urban street, and patterns of godparentage inform us about early modern politics? One thing I have stressed throughout this essay, and this is a theme of Robert Descimon’s own work as well, is that social relations and politics were symbiotic. What I would also like to emphasize, however, is that social relations between the city’s elites and vignerons were also symbiotic. If I have given more space to the impact of the city’s elites on Dijon’s vignerons, it is equally true that there was a significant impact of the vignerons on the city’s elites, as the example of the vignerons’ pressure on the mayor and city council to recognize Henri IV as king in 1594 suggests. Thus, the influence of the vignerons on the politics of the city

27. AMD, B 494, fol. 38r. 28. AMD, B 494, fol. 56r. 29. AMD, B 495, fol. 4v.

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and province was often public and very visible. And at no time was this more evident than in February 1630, when a group of vignerons resorted to violence to demonstrate their displeasure at the king’s proposed raising of the octroi—­the tax on all wine entering the city, which had not been increased since 142830—­that resulted in the burning of the contents of the homes of seven royal officers including that of the First President of the Parlement. In this instance, the city’s elites were divided, as they were much more concerned about the king’s plan to replace the Estates of Burgundy with royal officials to assess and collect taxation in the province than with the octroi. In the end, the judges and barristers of the Parlement fully supported the tax reforms while the mayor and city councilors were opposed, though they could not risk open dissent. Instead, they allowed the vignerons of the city to assemble and demonstrate against the tax reforms, demonstrations that quickly turned violent.31 As the discussion above makes clear, the expanded definition of politics I have drawn from Robert Descimon’s work—­the negotiation for power by all those who claimed to have a stake in it—­illustrates how social relations between elites and vignerons translated into political negotiations. First of all, although Dijon’s vignerons never held any municipal or royal office in the sixteenth century, they did participate, often actively, in political life in the city. As a corporation they were represented by the juré vignerons, who were selected by the mayor and were sworn to serve the city in a variety of ways. Above all, they decided when the grapes were ripe enough for the annual grape harvest to begin each year, policed the vineyards in the weeks beforehand, and issued fines to anyone caught picking the grapes before the bans de vendange were announced. The vignerons also voted in mayoral elections, demonstrated against and harassed the city’s Protestants in the 1560s and ’70s, and strongly supported the recognition of the king and the end of the civil wars after Henri IV’s abjuration and conversion in 1593 despite the Duke of Mayenne’s continued opposition. Vignerons clearly believed that they had a stake in the political outcomes of decisions made in the Hôtel de Ville, the Parlement, and the other sovereign courts in the city. Their relations with their social betters in all areas of life not only kept them informed of national as well as local politics; those relationships were 30. The octroi was established at the rate of 20 sous per queue (a barrel of approximately 456 liters) in 1428 and had not risen since. See Tournier, “Le Vin à Dijon de 1430 à 1560.” 31. See my “Culture politique et culture populaire au XVIIe siècle.”

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themselves a significant component of their negotiation for political relevance in the community. And the elites of the city not only loaned money to vignerons and rented housing to them, but they also bought wine from them, served as godparents to many of their children, and obviously worshipped and prayed together with them in the parish church every Sunday. Social relations and politics were thus symbiotic, and the relations between Dijon’s vignerons and the city’s elites were also symbiotic.32 The work of Robert Descimon stands squarely behind all of this. Moreover, because so little of his work has been published in English, only academic seiziémistes can fully appreciate the monumental influence he has had on the field of early modern French history on both sides of the Atlantic. It is no exaggeration to say that because of him, political history has never been the same.

Works cited Archival sources ADCO = Archives départementales de la Côte-­d’Or, Dijon Cens G 3579

Notaires E 2225

AMD = Archives municipales, Dijon Cens B 445

Déliberations de l’Hôtel de Ville B 231, 232 État civil B 494, 495

Rôles de taille et taillon L 164, 189

Secondary sources Beik, William. A Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Boltanski, Ariane. Les Ducs de Nevers et l’état royal: Genèse d’un compromis, ca. 1550–­ca. 1600. Geneva: Droz, 2006.

Cabourdin, Guy, and Georges Viard, eds. Lexique historique de la France. Paris: Armand Colin, 1978. Cosandey, Fanny, and Robert Descimon. L’Absolutisme en France: Histoire et historiographie. Paris: Editions de Seuil, 2002.

32. For examples of all these activities, see my own work as follows: Holt, “Popular Political Culture and Mayoral Elections”; Holt, “Wine, Community and Reformation”; Holt, “League in Burgundy”; Holt, “Henri IV et les privileges municipaux à Dijon”; Holt, “La Religion vécue en Bourgogne”; Holt, “Religious Violence in Sixteenth-­Century France”; and Holt, “Les Réseaux d’autorité.”

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104 a Urban Elites and Politics in Sixteenth-Century Dijon Descimon, Robert. “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV (1594–­1609): Autonomie urbaine, conflits politiques et exclusives sociales.” In La Ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’état moderne (XIIe–­XVIIIe siècle), edited by Neithard Bulst, 113–­50. Paris: C.N.R.S., 1988.

———. Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et réalités de la Ligue parisienne (1585–­1594). Paris: Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris de l’Île-­de-­ France; Librairie Klincksieck, 1983. ———, and Élie Barnavi. “La Ligue à Paris (1585–­1594): Une révision”; “Réponse à Robert Descimon”; and “La Ligue: Des divergences fondamentales.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 37 (1982): 72–­128.

———, and Élie Haddad. Epreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la haute robe parisienne (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle). Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010. Drouot, Henri. Mayenne et la Bourgogne: Étude sur la Ligue (1587–­1596). 2 vols. Dijon: Bernigaut et Privat, 1937.

Farr, James R. Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550–­1650. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Fyot, Eugène. Dijon: Son passé évoqué par ses rues. Dijon: Damidot, 1927.

Galanaud, Anne, and Henri Labesse. “Les Vignerons à Dijon au début du XVIe siècle.” Cahiers d’histoire de la vigne et du vin 3 (2002): 87–­96.

Hardwick, Julie. The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France. State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Holt, Mack P. “Culture politique et culture populaire au XVIIe siècle: L’émeute de Lanturelu à Dijon en février 1630.” Histoire, économie et société 16 (December 1997): 597–­616.

———. “Henri IV et les privilèges municipaux à Dijon: La politique de la réconciliation.” In Lendemains de guerre civile: Réconciliation et restauration en France, edited by Michel De Waele, 17–­38. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2011. ———. “The League in Burgundy: A bourgeoisie seconde?” French History 17 (2003): 1–­15.

———. “Popular Political Culture and Mayoral Elections in Sixteenth-­Century Dijon.” In Society and Institutions in Early Modern France, edited by Mack P. Holt, 98–­ 116. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.

———. “La Religion vécue en Bourgogne à la veille des guerres de Religion.” In Le bon historien sait faire parler les silences: Hommages à Thierry Wanegffelen, edited by Fabien Salesse, 165–­91. Toulouse: Méridiennes, 2012.

———. “Religious Violence in Sixteenth-­Century France: Moving Beyond Pollution and Purification.” In Ritual and Violence: Natalie Zemon Davis and Early Modern France, edited by Graeme Murdock, Andrew Spicer, and Penny Roberts, 52–­74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

———. “Les Réseaux d’autorité et de pouvoir à l’Hôtel de ville at au Parlement de Dijon entre 1580 et 1630.” Annales de Bourgogne 85 (2013): 19–­35.

———. “Wine, Community and Reformation in Sixteenth-­Century Burgundy.” Past & Present 138 (February 1993): 58–­93. Le Person, Xavier. “Practiques” et “practiquers”: La vie politique à la fin du règne de Henri III, 1584–­1589. Geneva: Droz, 2002.

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Le Roux, Nicolas. La Faveur du roi: Mignons et courtisans au temps des derniers Valois, vers 1547–­vers 1589. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2000. Ranum, Orest. “Courtesy, Absolutism, and the Rise of the French State, 1630–­1660.” Journal of Modern History 52 (1980): 426–­51.

Richet, Denis. “Une Famille de robe: Les Séguier avant le Chancelier.” In Denis Richet, De la Réforme à la Révolution: Etudes sur la France moderne, 155–­306. Paris: Aubier, 1991.

Schnapper, Bernard. Les Rentes au XVIe siècle: Histoire d’un instrument de crédit. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1957.

Tournier, Claude. “Notes sur la culture de la vigne et les vignerons à Dijon entre 1430 et 1560.” Annales de Bourgogne 24 (1952): 141–­59.

———. “Le Vin à Dijon de 1430 à 1560: Ravitaillement et commerce.” Annales de Bourgogne 22 (1950): 7–­32. Tulchin, Allan A. That Men Would Praise the Lord: The Triumph of Protestantism in Nîmes, 1530–­1570. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.

Van Gennep, Arnold. Manuel de folklore français contemporain. 8 vols. Paris: A. and J. Picard, 1982.

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Chapter 5

The Notary as Rural Power Broker Maître Coujard and Pierre Collenot, Syndic of Alligny James B. Collins What have we learned from Robert Descimon? His lifetime of painstaking research into the lives of sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century Parisians has reminded us that they lived, just as we do, in the micro: their lives consisted of innumerable small acts, woven into the fabric of their lives. These threads combined to make the larger tapestry of their time. Historians can see that larger pattern and the individual figures embedded within it, but have too rarely stopped to examine the remarkable juxtaposition of threads local and forain. We must also seek out those who drew the small details in the larger cartoons. In a village like Alligny-­en-­Morvan, a team of “artists” created the picture of their society and then worked with others patiently to stitch together their little corner of the tapestry of France. Their brush held ink, not paint; control of the written word meant control of the village. Their lives show us that writing was more than a cultural attainment. Rather, it was the essence of governmentality: royal, provincial, and seigneurial.1 1. See Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, on Foucault’s concept of governmentality. Recent research suggests that the relationship among these levels of government was less adversarial than

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Robert Descimon’s work has enabled historians to understand how ten thousand individual decisions, taken for particular reasons, collectively make sense. That is true not simply of obvious mass decisions, like emigration, but of individual choices of beverage, or music, or movies. In early modern France, as in the twenty-­first-­century United States, the cultural milieu of the family, formal education, and professional formation all circumscribe choices and action. These combined individual decisions become a sort of maelstrom from which few can escape.2 Recreating the lives of Parisians through their marriages, their purchases or sales of property, including offices and rentes, and their innumerable transactions, Descimon has taken what had been incomprehensible and made it, at long last, intelligible. In a recent collective project, Épreuves de noblesse, Descimon and his collaborators establish the foundation of the next generation of research on the nobility by redefining the early modern French nobility through their social practice.3 Parisian robe families carried out “plural, open, and evolving” practices to define themselves and to preserve social, economic, cultural, and political capital. Nobility in this sense was a category manipulated by many actors, including the monarchy. If Louis XIV’s legislation made the nobility a more clearly defined legal category, within the order, the cultural divide—­measured through social practice—­widened.4 Genealogies and family histories followed what Élie Haddad rightly calls a “logic of illustration,” having a specifically political and patrilineal purpose. Moreover, the monarchy did the same thing.5 The royal heraldry arbiter Charles d’Hozier found the self-­authored family genealogy of President Bragelongne of the Parlement of Brittany to be so outrageous that “no right-­thinking man could fail to be indignant at its ridiculous vanity.” D’Hozier, in the copy held by the king’s cabinet of titles, crossed

historians believed ca. 1977.

2. Bourdieu, Distinction. A recent study in England divided people into seven “classes ” based on their tastes; Jones, “Great British Class Survey finds seven social classes in UK.” 3. Descimon and Haddad, Épreuves de noblesse.

4. Descimon and Haddad, Épreuves de noblesse, 298–­302. See the chapters on the Spifame family by Robert Descimon, Élodie Milles, and Pavel Ouvarov, and on the Hurault de l’Hospital family by Patrice Alex. See also Haddad, Fondation et ruine d’une “maison.” 5. Haddad, Fondation et ruine d’une “maison,” 35. Louis XIV specifically defined Salic line as applying only to descendants of Saint Louis (Louis IX); he thereby abrogated the legitimate succession rights of the Courtenay family, which descended in the male line from Louis VI.

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out the term maison (house) in the title and wrote “the plain bourgeoisie must content itself with the word family.”6 Far from Paris, we find the same Descimonian web of social relations, power, and local politics, and that same creation of a social category, implemented by mechanisms familiar to the robes nobles in Paris. We see a privileged world of exchange: marriages within a specific group, often by siblings to the siblings or first cousins of one’s spouse; exchanges of property, sold not on an open market but only to a select few; intricate patterns of sociability, with families cemented by godparenting and witnessing of key transactions; socioeconomic webs woven by constant loaning and borrowing of money; and an intimate connection of social ties and political power. As in the Spifame case, we see the ebb and flow of family fortunes; when one branch of the family falters, another one might profit from the collapse. Much as in Paris, cultural factors defined ins and outs. In a rural parish like Alligny-­en-­Morvan, the key cultural indicator was literacy. Female literacy in particular marked out the families at the top of the hierarchy of rural commoners.

The tyranny of the written word: Tax fraud at Alligny This story begins with the tax fraud case of Chrestian Bouillet, master of accounts in the Chambre des comptes of Dijon, who visited the parish of Alligny on 1 October 1675, as part of his tour of the bailiwick of Autun on behalf of the Estates of Burgundy. Roughly once a decade, the Estates sent out commissioners to investigate the fairness of the tax distribution. Alligny’s fourteen hamlets and bourg had 220 taxable hearths in 1675.7 Bouillet’s visit to this isolated parish offers an outsider’s look at the real world of rural early modern France, in which a literate elite spun a web to ensure control of a parish or even an entire region. The web often spiraled 6. Martine Bennini, “‘L’Audace’ de la généalogie des Bragelongne,” in Descimon and Haddad, Épreuves de noblesse, 161–­89.

7. ADCO, C 4752. Aside from the bourg (village center, around the church) and the hamlets of La Ruère and Ferrières, Alligny was a serf (mainmortable) village. Many serfs in Alligny lived in a community of goods to escape escheat to the seigneur, who inherited any serf ’s property if the heirs did not live in the same house as the deceased. The tax rolls usually listed only one person, sometimes with the notice “and consorts.” An independent adult was a taxable hearth (feu), even if only renting a room as a day laborer. In 1675, the tax roll had fewer women (10 percent) than was usual at Alligny (14–­15 percent).

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out from a town with a royal court, like Autun or Saulieu, and could have threads extending to Dijon or even Paris, as was the case in Alligny. The legal elite often acted under the aegis of the parish seigneur, in this case the Quarré family, which had particularly strong ties both to Louis XIV and to the powerful sovereign courts of Burgundy.8 Through men like Gaspard Quarré, the king’s avocat (solicitor) general at the Parlement, his sons Pierre and François, and Claude Espiard, judge in the Parlement, the long arm of the aristocracy reached into even isolated parishes like Alligny. The perpetrators of the fraud of 1675 were the Quarré family’s clients in the parish, and they included a mixture of new families and old. The Quarré men rarely stayed in Alligny. Pierre served with the armies and Gaspard, then François, at the Parlement of Dijon. Female members of the family actually resident in Alligny, above all Vivande de Bouillard, provided local leadership.9 The initial accusations focused on four people: community procureur Pierre Collenot; the lieutenant (chief judge) of the seigneurial court, Denis Breneault [Breneau]; and Claude Coujard, notary and greffier (chief clerk) of Alligny, and his son Jacques, who arrived in 1656 or 1657. Breneault and Collenot, from old-­time Alligny families, followed a similar career trajectory: praticien, then procureur of the community, then lieutenant in the seigneurial court, and, in Collenot’s case, bailli.10 The three families had close ties: Collenot’s half-­sister, Thomasse Beugnon, married Denis Breneault, nephew of the lieutenant. The Collenot, Breneault, and Coujard families regularly godparented each other’s children; all of them received the privilege of a godparent from the Quarré family. The unnamed accusers said that Collenot should be paying 40 l. and Jacques Coujard and his mother, 60 l., which would have been the second and eighth highest assessments. Bouillet checked the roll: Jacques Coujard and his mother (under her name) carried 15 s. and Collenot, 18 s.

8. Gaspard Quarré had a distinguished military career and then became second avocat general of the Parlement of Burgundy from 1641 to his death in January 1659. His office passed to Jean Nicolas, husband of Quarré’s niece, thence back to Gaspard’s second son, François. Gaspard’s brother, Étienne, and his son, Pierre, were famous French military heroes. 9. She was the widow of Pierre de Xaintonge, avocat general of the Parlement, who had resigned his office to Gaspard Quarré, who was married to her niece Marguerite Perreault de la Sarrée.

10. Alternate spellings of surnames are in brackets. The term procureur had many meanings; here it means agent. A praticien did low-­level legal work. The bailli of a seigneur was the chief judge of his court. The greffier was the chief clerk. See general glossary for details.

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Breneault’s assessment of 7 l. put him below the median, no more than a third of what an important farmer (laboureur) would have paid.11 On the previous year’s roll, Coujard père (d. November 1674) had paid 2 l. That roll does not survive, but in both 1663 and 1664, Claude Coujard appears for 5 s. The parishioners told Bouillet that Claude Coujard and Collenot had carried on like this for at least ten years, demanding presents for lowered assessments; they reduced the assessments of those who could pay and raised those of others.12 Bouillet quickly discovered that the collectors had assessed double the usual fee for the “right of collection” and, through other minor fees, had amassed 222 l. in costs. Bouillet immediately rebuked them for excessive costs, cut the greffier’s (Coujard’s) take to 3 l., and banned further payments to a procureur (Collenot) without written authorization from the Élus (intermediary commission) of the Estates.13 He also mandated that any violations be repaid, with interest, by the collectors themselves. If the villagers are to be believed, this was the least of the irregularities. It seems that Pierre Collenot and Jacques Coujard, greffier in the court of Alligny, “taking advantage of the weakness of the said inhabitants,” gave direct tax assessment at their own discretion during the drawing up of the rolls; the greffier put down the contribution of everyone at his whim without consulting the assessors, which was all the easier because the assessors were often illiterate. Collenot and Coujard alone put in the

11. For an explanation of measures and money, see the note at the end of the chapter. A Denis Breneault (5 s.), of no listed occupation, appears on the 1663 roll in the bourg. An Olivier Breneau, who had been the lieutenant in 1661, divided his large holdings among his children in that year, perhaps anticipating his death; ADCO, 4 E 49 13, étude (notarial practice) of Claude Coujard, 1661–­1663. Edmé Breneault, the lieutenant Denis’s father, had been procureur of the village in the 1650s. Pierre Collenot was not listed in 1663 or 1664; he perhaps lived with his stepfather, Emiland Beugnon, laboureur à deux boeufs (7 l.), prior to his 1664 marriage. In most parts of France, as in Burgundy, a laboureur—­from the verb labourer, “to plough”—­was a peasant possessing a plough team. Burgundian peasants rarely owned the team in question; as at Alligny, peasants leased the plough team animals in an arrangement called a bail à cheptel. In most cases, they leased the plough team from someone other than the landlord whose farm they worked; Fortunet, Charité ingénieuse et pauvre misère. Coujard’s papers show many examples of overdue payments for a bail à cheptel; the lessee demanded, and got, his or her money at the time of the lessor’s demise. At Alligny, a real laboureur had four oxen (quatre boeufs), not two (deux). 12. Lacking the records, one can only guess at the chronology of the greffe (registry) of the seigneury of Alligny, perhaps something like this: C. Coujard, 1658–­63, 1664–­69, 1670–­74 (death); J. Coujard 1674–­75, 1676–­81; J. Devissuzenne, 1682–­88; J.-­B. Cordier, 1689–­94. An Emiland Morin was a “greffier” in 1659, perhaps holding the lease from 1658 to 1663, or perhaps greffier for the seigneury of Réglois; his son, Jean, worked in the château of Réglois. 13. ADCO, C 4752, fols. 91–­94v.

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solvys—­the marks indicating the tax had been paid—­and thus could cover up any fraud. The tax roll’s preamble says that Coujard drew it up in the house of Denis Breneault. The roll further states that the two procureurs, Jean Guilleminot and Jean Regnault, were unable to sign. The evidence in this case ends there. The next surviving tax roll for Alligny dates to 1682; it suggests only minor adjustments had taken place.14 Although the 1675 fraud accusation at Alligny seems a petty, local matter, it reveals the inner tension at the core of the French direct tax system. The top quartile of taxpayers paid about 75 to 80 percent of the direct taxes. Two specific social groups contributed most of this money: the large farmers (laboureurs) and the bourgeoisie of small-­and medium-­ sized towns not exempt from the direct taxes.15 Documents generated by provincial estates and by local and national assemblies related to the Estates General of 1560, 1576, 1588, and 1614 reveal the deputies’ concerns that the “rich ” pay their fair share of the direct taxes; royal legislation echoed these sentiments. The laboureurs and the bourgeoisie engaged in a desperate struggle to shift the burden onto the other group. The laboureurs had few means at their disposal to get some sort of exemption, aside from the regular request of their noble landlords, as deputies to representative assemblies, that métayers and millers of nobles be exempt from the direct taxes.16 The bourgeoisie spent all of their time trying to get an exemption or reduction. They could buy a royal office that either provided exemption from taxes (rare) or exemption from quartering troops in one’s house, a matter of great importance in a frontier province like Burgundy.17 Their second alternative was to get involved in chicanery of some kind. Alligny’s tax rolls of 1663, 1664, 1675, and the 1680s all show that the literate local elite—­the seigneurial officers above all—­paid derisory sums, while the illiterate big ploughmen—­Guilleminot and the Girard-­Regneault-­Boisseau clan of Fétigny—­paid the heaviest taxes.

14. As we shall see below, the hamlet of Fétigny had much to complain about in terms of the distribution of the tax burden; in the 1690s, Fétigny did manage to convince the authorities that it should have its own, separate tax roll, perhaps a long-­term outcome of the complaint lodged in 1675. 15. I base these comments on my research on parish tax rolls; I have read something like a thousand such rolls from every region in the northern two-­thirds of France. 16. The general cahiers of the nobility in 1560, 1576, and 1588 all repeated this demand, as did many local noble cahiers from 1614.

17. The investigations of the 1650s and before all include testimony by village after village about the depredations of French troops quartered in the village on their line of march.

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Bourgeois in towns liable to direct taxes—­like Saulieu, the town nearest to Alligny—­could also avoid paying their fair share by claiming tax residence in a place where they had minimal real estate, which then made them exempt in all other parishes, where they might own large farms.18 The 1611, 1625, 1634, 1645, and 1656 visits of the Estates’ commissioners and the intendant Claude Bouchu’s 1666 visit to check on communal debts give a long-­term perspective on Alligny’s tax traditions. In 1611, the greffier de la Grange had drawn up the tax roll: in 1624, it notes only the name of the community procureur and receiver—­Pierre Collenot.19 In 1634, the new greffier of the court of Alligny, Edmé Pelletier of Monts, paid 3.5 l. in taille (land tax), only a third of what his predecessor, Humbart Gouhault, had paid the year before.20 In 1645, one of the two collectors was an Emiland Collenot, probably the grandfather of the Pierre of 1675.21 All three of these families remained active in the 1670s. None of these four investigations mentions any trouble. The 1656 commissioner Guillaume Millière, like Bouillet a master of accounts, told a different tale. The parish authorities could not produce a tax roll, and he had to order them to come to the nearby village of Cissey the next day with a copy. Pierre de Remonchenot, village procureur and collector, brought the rolls for 1655 and 1656. Millière was aghast: instead of listings by full name, profession, and location, the rolls, done by the notary Pierre Martin of Moux, listed the amounts by hamlet only, “which is an extraordinary manner of proceeding with the division of the tailles, a manner not used anywhere in the province.” Remonchenot claimed it had been done that way for three or four years; he remained evasive when questioned, perhaps because he could not write.22 Millière’s 18. The parishioners interviewed in the Burgundian hearth examinations of the 1670s and 1680s endlessly repeat this complaint. That said, in 1657 Saulieu had 365 taxpayers, supposedly paying 7.200 l., roughly five times the per capita assessment at Alligny, a clear indication that the system did get access to some urban wealth; ADCO, C 4849.

19. ADCO, C 4746, fols. 115–­16. The Pierre of 1675 was the son of Emiland Collenot, who died in 1638; he grew up in the house of his stepfather, Emiland Beugnon. Jacques Jeannin, a laboureur of the bourg, was procureur d’office in 1611. His descendants had ties to the elite of the 1670s. 20. ADCO, C 4749, fols. 285–­289v, visit of 20 August 1634. The 1611 census describes Gouhault as a laboureur, owning his house in la Ruère, where he still lived in 1633. A Jean Gouhault was the community procureur in 1611; ADCO, C 4745, fols. 314v–­319. 21. ADCO, C 4750, published by Dumay in Mémoires de la société Éduenne.

22. Pierre Remonchenot, procureur, living in Monts, paid 10 l. in 1663. The 1664 roll calls him a “laboureur à deux boeufs” (12.35 l.); he paid 13.5 l. in 1675. Pierrette Primard, Pierre Collenot’s wife, stood as godmother to Pierrette Remonchenot, Pierre’s granddaughter, in 1671. Millière says that

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comment notwithstanding, rural tax rolls compiled prior to the 1660s rarely listed occupations, and of the surviving seventeenth-­century tax rolls for Alligny prior to 1691, only those of 1663 and 1664 have occupations, and they do so in a haphazard manner: neither Denis Breneault nor Claude Coujard, for instance, has an occupation noted in either year. Article 16 of the March 1600 Rules of the Taille makes it obvious whom the government wanted to single out, and why: To recognize when inspecting and reading the tax rolls if the taille has been fairly assessed or not, the occupation [condition] of the taxpayers shall be appended to their name, such as Judge, Greffier, Notary, Sergeant, Procureur of the seigneurie, merchant, artisan, or laboureur.23 What a coincidence that the parishioners of Alligny who had the greatest interest in leaving out the “condition” all practiced precisely the professions specified in the royal legislation. Millière wrote to Gaspard Quarré and to the curé (village priest), Lazare Auribault; the good priest had to bring a genuine tax roll all the way to Autun to meet Millière at the Auberge des Trois Rois.24 Even these rolls did not pass muster, lacking taxpayers’ occupations. The 1663 and 1664 tax rolls have some occupations, but Leonard Girard offers a typical case of occupational opacity: in 1663, he was listed as sergeant of the seigneurial court; in 1664, cottager; in Coujard’s register, laboureur. In a parish that had a dozen mills, only one miller—­Adrien Choureault (2 l.), the lord’s miller at Marnay—­appears on the roll. Why did the rolls leave out miller Jacques Serpillon, to whom Vivande de Bouillard, dame of Réglois, leased the “mill of Alligny” in 1660 for the equivalent of 500 l. a year?25 The 1611 investigation offers a clue: the commissioner noted that Martin drew up the roll of 1652 presented to him.

23. Edict du Roy, contenant Reglement  . . . des Tailles (Paris, 1607), edict of March 1600, registered by the Tax Court (Cour des aides) in August. The tax roll was also supposed to specify if the laboureur worked his own land or that of others, and how many “charrues.” This last phrase is ambiguous, because it could mean how many ploughs (charrues) the laboureur had, or, more commonly, how much land he worked, a charrue in that case meaning the size of a field that could be properly maintained by one plough team. 24. ADCO, C 4750 (1656) and C 4745 (1611). This 1655 tax roll does not survive.

25. ADCO, 4 E 49 12, papers of C. Coujard, 3 March 1660. The lease identifies Serpillon as a miller in the adjoining parish of Liernais; his wife was Philiberte Breneau.

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the lord’s métayer, living in the basse-­cour of the château, and his miller had both been left off the roll. In the cahiers de doléances (grievance lists) of provincial estates and Estates General (in 1560, 1576, 1588, and 1614), nobles had demanded such an exemption for their métayers and millers; the king had always refused, and singled out this abuse in article 19 of the 1600 Rules of the Taille. The lords of Alligny seem to have enforced the exemption on their own.26 During the intendant Claude Bouchu’s 1666 investigation of Burgundy’s communal debts, he met a large delegation of villagers at Alligny: Claude Coujard, Pierre Collenot, Denis Breneault, Jean Guilleminot, and twenty-­four others, most of them with personal and business ties to these four men.27 They told the intendant that they levied 60 l. for the upkeep of the church, 30 l. for the vestrymen (marguilliers), 50 l. for abandoned hearths, 50 l. for “voyages,” 40 l. for the rolls, and 2 s/l (160 l.) for the collector—­some of the same illegal surtaxes mentioned in 1675. The villagers claimed that they leased out the right to collect the taxes, sometimes paying as much as 3s/l or 4s/l (20 percent) because of so many “insolvent and non-­paying” hearths.28

Region and jurisdiction: The paradise of fraud Claude Coujard’s movements show how the geographic location of Alligny played so important a role in the successful scheme. Those movements indicate two patterns within the village elite: those at the top of the hierarchy lived within a regional framework, and they interwove themselves with the leadership of the more permanent families. Coujard moved from the Nivernais to Moux, part of which lay in the jurisdiction of the Quarré 26. ADCO, C 4745, fol. 114v. Later investigations mention the exemption for the métayer living in the basse-­cour, but do not mention the miller. At Moux (fol. 403), the miller of the seigneur (Menesserre) similarly remained off the roll.

27. Among those present were René Bailly, Leonard Genreau, Étienne Labbé, Denis and Edmé de Bize, Pierre Boedot, Lazare and Claude Boire, François Beugnon, Leonard Girard, and Emiland Pelletier, all of whom had marriage ties to Collenot and/or Breneault. Every one of these families did business with the seigneur on Coujard’s records. Article 18 of the 1600 legislation forbade interference by the seigneur in the assessment of the tailles.

28. ADCO, C 2852. The villagers told Bouchu the tailles for 1665 had been 2,560 l., but that over 500 l. remained unpaid, so their comment about non-­paying insolvents had empirical foundation. They further told him that no one had stepped forward to “lease” the tailles for 1667. Surtaxes would be listed as shillings in the pound (s/l) or pence in the pound.

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family. He soon transferred his practice next door to Alligny and leased the registry (greffe) of the seigneury. Moux was an especially good place to game the fiscal system because two-­thirds of it lay in the duchy of Nevers. The Nivernais was a pays d’élection, so part of Moux turned its tax money over to the royal receiver of the tailles of the élection of Château-­Chinon, while taxpayers in the Burgundian third of Moux paid the receiver of the Estates of Burgundy. If a person moved from one side of town to the other, he took his tax assessment with him: taxpayers could only be assessed in one location. Because each taxpayer could only be assessed in one place, a wealthy family would have a house in one jurisdiction and pay a small tax there, and have its main lands in another jurisdiction, where it could legally claim to be exempt from tax on the land because the household had already been assessed elsewhere. The separate tax administrations would not trade information, and the notarial families made sure they had control of drafting the parish’s tax rolls, usually by leasing the registry of the seigneury.29 A little group of notaries played hide-­and-­seek across this border for at least forty years.30 In case after case, a member of the greffier’s family appears as a sergeant in the parish, where he issued the greffier’s orders; this arrangement was the case with the Martenne family at Moux and the de la Grange, Pelletier, and Barbotte families at Alligny. In 1663, Denis Breneault of Marnay is listed next to Emiland Breneault, “sergent à la baguette,” surely meaning a royal sergeant, as they carried a wand (verge) topped by a fleur-­de-­lis, colloquially known as a baguette. Millière’s 1656 investigation provides fascinating details on this border region because he so often mentions three notarial families with ties to Alligny: Coujard, Martenne/Martin, and Devissuzenne. These families had lived in the nearby Burgundian villages of Saint-­Prix, Moux, 29. The greffe of a court was leased to the highest bidder. Sebastien Barbotte was a “royal notary” in Moux; his relative Pierre Barbotte was “chief sergeant” of Alligny in the late 1650s and agent of Marguerite de la Sarrée, widow of the seigneur, in 1664. Mangeotte Barbotte married Claude Martenne of Moux; their daughter, Claude, was the godchild of Claudine Martin, wife of Claude Coujard, and of Claude Espiard, judge in the Parlement of Burgundy and seigneur of parts of both Moux and Alligny. Marie Elisabeth Pelletier was the godmother of Claude Marchand’s eponymous son.

30. Rich taxpayers did the same within Burgundy, shifting nominal residence from one bailiwick to another. Surnames and clans obviously straddled parish boundaries. Even the auditing jurisdictions differed: Nivernais got audited in Paris, Burgundy in Dijon. Article 22 of the 1600 legislation tried to prevent this tactic. About two-­thirds of France had local financial districts called élections; that region was known as the pays d’élection, in which a royal bureaucracy collected the money. The areas with provincial Estates, like Burgundy, were called the pays d’États, and had their own collection apparatus.

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Anost, and Glux, while Pierre Pelletier and Jean-­Baptiste Cordier, royal notaries and greffiers of Alligny in the 1630s and late 1680s, respectively, hailed from Montsauche-­les-­Settons in the Nivernais, which abutted both Moux and Alligny. Coujard’s father came from the Nivernais town of Château-­Chinon; Claude Taboureau, praticien and clerk at Alligny in the 1670s, became a notary in Gouloux, another abutting parish in the Nivernais, in which the Quarré family held partial jurisdiction as they did in Moux. The surnames Devissuzenne and Martenne keep popping up in discussions of irregularities in Burgundian investigations of hearths. In 1645, at Anost, Vincent Devissuzenne, a merchant with an income from annuities of 600 or 700 l., refused to pay his tailles on the grounds that he had turned over all of his property to his children in return for upkeep. He had been paying 15 or 20 l., which would put him in the elite echelon of taxpayers in that region in 1645. At Moux, the merchant Jacques Martenne was one of the collectors in 1645. In 1656 (shades of Alligny), when the collector was absent and the roll along with him, the “honorable” Jacques Martenne met with the commissaire and produced a tax roll that had been drawn up by “Martenne, greffier” (which could have been either Étienne or Claude). Jacques brought only the roll for the étapes (military winter quarters, a much smaller sum than the tailles). The Pierre Martin who had drawn up Alligny’s tax rolls in the 1650s had married a Martenne; Coujard inherited Martin’s practice and strengthened ties with the Martenne clan.31 A generation later, Jacques Devissuzenne replaced Jacques Coujard as greffier of Alligny.32 In 1675 at Glux, the home parish of Claude Coujard’s mother, Bouillet reported an extraordinary story: the collector, Jean du Fond, simply ran away with the tax roll and hid. The parishioners claimed that the 31. Guillemette Martenne, daughter of Étienne, the notary at Moux, married Pierre Martin, notary of Saint-­Prix, which was the hometown of Claude Coujard’s wife, Claudine Martin. Pierre Martin later moved to Moux, where he died in 1657. Claude Coujard took over Martin’s practice. A Claude Martenne was also a notary at Moux. Jacques Martenne the younger, son of the merchant, was a sergeant at Moux. He married Simone Barbotte, whose family included sergeants at both Moux and Alligny. Claude Martenne the younger received his enfranchisement from Vivand de Fussey, baron of Menesserre, in 1676.

32. Jacques Devissuzenne, notary of Anost, suddenly began to get business from Alligny in late 1680; that business exploded in 1681, and he moved to Alligny in 1682. Pierre Collenot witnessed Jacques’s marriage; Jacques’s brother Vincent, a doctor or surgeon (documents use both terms), also moved to Alligny and became a popular godfather. Jacques’s son Hugues appears regularly as a godfather in later years.

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rich refused to be collectors because the poor could not pay and the rich did not wish to be stuck paying for them; in 1674, the parish had had to pay a large sum to a Jean Martenne to collect its taxes. Bouillet never did find du Fond and left Glux without visiting any of the houses because no one would show him around, a unique outcome for the entire bailiwick of Autun.33 At Saint-­Prix, another Jean Martenne, who ran an inn, enlisted the greffier in his efforts to avoid paying taxes; the inhabitants had had enough and asked Bouillet to have the Estates of Burgundy send a separate tax assessment to Martenne and to reduce their taxes by that amount.34 In short, we find dubious practices in Saint-­Prix, Glux, Moux, Anost, and Alligny between the 1640s and the 1680s: the Martenne, Coujard, and Devissuzenne families played a central role in each case.

Taxes and the seigneurial apparatus at Alligny Claude Coujard died in November 1674, so his son and widow had to answer to investigators for him. Most of the records of his notarial practice from 1656 to 1665 survive, giving us the same opportunity that the minutier central (archive of Parisian notaries) has provided to Descimon and his Parisian team. Using investigations of hearths going back to 1611, the limited tax roll data of 1633 to 1691, some of the baptism-­marriage-­ burial records of the area, and Coujard’s records, we can piece together the elaborate connections among the families of the seigneurial officials and their allies in and around Alligny. Through them, the seigneur carried out high, middle, and low justice over most of the parish. In 1675, Pierre Quarré, usually away with the army, was an absentee lord, but local church records show that other members of the family, particularly its women, were often present in Alligny. The main parish oriented south, toward Moux and Autun, and west, toward the Nivernais; in the north, the rich hamlet of Fétigny oriented toward Saulieu. Coujard’s records virtually never have a document related to Fétigny.35 Aside from the bourg and two hamlets, Alligny was 33. ADCO, C 4752, fols. 239ff.

34. The Estates regularly used this procedure for large individual farms and for powerful, rich individuals; ADCO, C 4752, fols. 99–­100. 35. Saulieu had several royal courts; in 1788, it had five notaries; Lamarre, Petites villes et fait urbain

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mainmortable: heirs had to live in the house of the testator, so many families lived in a “community of goods” to avoid escheat.36 Coujard’s records regularly show Denis Breneault enforcing the seigneurial rights of Vivande de Bouillard, or buying, leasing, or selling land on her behalf.37 When Pierre Colleray, laboureur of the hamlet of Jarnoy, died, his son François had to sell four pieces of property to pay debts to Mme. de Bouillard; the purchasers in the Byzantine series of transactions that settled Pierre’s estate were, unsurprisingly, part of the little mafia running the parish. François netted only 21 l., the rest going to Mme. de Bouillard (80 l.) and a priest suggestively named Jean Martin (40 l.).38 Violators of Mme. de Bouillard’s seigneurial rights often had to sell land to pay their fines; somehow those properties immediately ended up in the hands of families allied to Breneault.39 Breneault brought a case of escheat against the heirs of Anne Laurent, mainmortable, in 1659, selling her lands to the laboureur Emiland Collenot—­likely Pierre’s grandfather—­for 100 l.40 Denis Breneault witnessed ten of the sixty-­one documents from 1665. Pierre Collenot was one of the two witnesses in an astounding thirty-­ four of these documents. Claude Taboureau, Coujard’s clerk, was the other common witness, a practice that deputies to the Estates General specifically denounced.41 en France au XVIIIe siècle, table 38.

36. On mainmorte, see Bart, La Liberté ou la terre.

37. Members of the seigneur’s family—­Marguerite de la Sarrée, Vivande de Bouillard, Gaspard Quarré—­occasionally show up in Coujard’s registers, but they usually just sent a procureur, typically Denis Breneault. All members of the Quarré could sign their name. When Vivande de Bouillard signed the contract to sell a piece of land to Jean Reviere, “mason,” of La Cremaine in 1657, they performed the exchange at the château of Alligny; ADCO, 4 E 49 12, 2 December 1657. She signed several contracts at the château in late 1657, one of them a lease to Philibert Choureau, described as a laboureur of Bazolles; Choureau was also the seigneurial miller.

38. Buyers Denis de Bize and Philibert Serpillon were next-­door neighbors in the bourg and shared property there; Claude de Bize was Colleray’s neighbor in Jarnoy. Dimanche Perruchot of Bazolles witnessed all four transactions; he signed his name. Perruchot also witnessed a transaction between Leonard Girard, sergeant and husband of Emilande Colleray, and François Bourloux, husband of Jacquette Perruchot, on the same day. The many transactions related to the estate were typical of peasant land sales; see the essay by Mack Holt in this collection. 39. Bouchu estimated Alligny property as costing 10 l. for an arpent of arable land, 100 l. for an arpent of woods, and 50 l. for a soiture of meadow. 40. She likely belonged to the same family as Anne Laurent, wife of Philippe Choureau, miller.

41. See, for example, AM Blois, BB 17, fol. 74, cahier de doléances of 1614. The men drawing up this particular set of grievances were virtually all royal officers; their articles dealt with specific abuses in the legal system. The clauses about notaries in the Ordinance of Blois of 1579 discuss witnesses but do not mandate this restriction.

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These transactions show that the seigneurial officers primarily lived in Mme. de Bouillard’s little hamlets of Marnay and Réglois. The officers had close ties to the seigneurial millers Serpillon and Choureau. Denis Breneault, judging from Coujard’s papers, seems to have been exclusively her agent. Unlike Gaspard or Pierre Quarré, Vivande de Bouillard lived in the parish and she chose to be buried in its church. She offers an excellent example of the role of resident noble women, implemented both through economic management of the seigneury and through the social capital of godparenting.42 At the end of the seventeenth century, Burgundy’s capitation rolls show that most of the nobles resident in the countryside were, in fact, women. Alligny was not so poor as most outside observers claimed, but its peasants, like those in most of Burgundy, had lost much of their economic independence in the previous one hundred years.43 In 1611, the investigating commissioner reported that 80 percent of those on the tax roll owned their houses; in 1675, only about a third of the parishioners owned their houses and a bit of land. Fifteen laboureurs owned their own plough team in 1611; only three owned one in 1656 or 1675. Even those leasing their team had a smaller one; in 1624, thirty laboureurs had a “full team” of four oxen, but only three had a full team in 1663.44 The declining ownership of animals and of arable land among the peasants exacerbated their financial vulnerability to higher taxes. Even so, in 1675 the richest contributors of Alligny paid between 30 and 75 l., a hefty sum for a Burgundian taxpayer, the middling sort between 10 and 25 l., and the poor only 1 to 4 l.45 The three main culprits of 42. Vivande de Bouillard does not appear in person on any of Coujard’s documents. I have not consulted the baptism and marriage records of the 1640s through 1660s (many of which are badly damaged), and she does not appear as a godmother on the baptisms of the 1670s. In 1664, when the village curé, Lazare Auribault, died, Pierre Barbotte, procureur d’office of Marguerite de la Sarrée, enforced mainmorte: Auribault’s heirs had to pay 300 l. to keep what remained of his goods. 43. Aside from Millière, the outsiders say the village grew only rye, but local documents show some fields sown in wheat; Collins, “La Campagne bourguignonne à la fin du XVIIe siècle.” For Saint Jacob’s key articles, see the collection edited by Clère, Des Terroirs et des hommes.

44. ADCO, C 4950 (1656 report). The 1645 report explained that it required four oxen for the first ploughing so that those with only two oxen helped each other. The Guilleminot family, which paid the highest assessment on every tax roll from 1633 to 1682, owned a house and a plough team of four oxen in 1611. In 1663/64, many people not described on the tax roll as a laboureur, such as Denis de Bize, clearly had plough teams. 45. The 1611 listing includes only four women and has no entry for Jarnoy. Alligny had 149 taxpayers in 1624; in 1633, 25 of the 168 taxpayers (14.9 percent) were widows. Even allowing for the missing women, the percentage of homeowners was far higher in 1611 than in 1675.

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1675 had ridiculously low tax assessments even in 1663/64: Breneault (5 s.), Collenot (not on the roll), and Coujard (5 s.). Some of their allies, like the cabaret owners Claude Labbé and Denis de Bize, the grain merchant and vestryman Edmé Barot, and the blacksmith Jean Gauthard, similarly carried assessments of 2 l. or less in 1663/64.46 In 1675, Gaspard Labbé replaced his father, Claude Labbé, paying 1 l., while de Bize’s widow paid 0.6 l. Dimanche Perruchot, the literate witness of the 1658 Collenay transactions, paid only 2 l. On Coujard’s records, all of these men appear as laboureurs. Yet a typical laboureur à deux boeufs paid about 15 l. in 1663, which rose to about 20 to 25 l. in 1675. Bouillet stopped at the house of Pierre Bodeau, hotelier, where a delegation led by the most heavily assessed taxpayer, the laboureur Jean Guilleminot, awaited. Jean Guilleminot, laboureur in La Ferrière (Bazolles), with son-­in-­law Jean Collenot47 (75 l. ) Jean Morin, laboureur, bourg (1.25 l.) Philibert Gauthard, blacksmith, in the bourg (10 l.) Noel Collenot, with partner François Bourgeois, in Jarnoy (Alligny) (6.5 l.) Odinot Marchand, La Ruère (Bazolles) (4.25 l.) Edmé de Bize, La Ruère (Bazolles) (11 l.) These men constituted a single, vast, extended family, woven together by marriage, godparenting, and shared property. The Collenot family intermarried extensively with the Guilleminot, and Mangeotte Collenot married Odinot Marchand.48 Jean Morin ties in the seigneur once more. Jean, the son of Emiland Morin, greffier at Alligny in 1659, had been the valet of the seigneur of Réglois (Gaspard Quarré the younger), and was so sat46. Labbé was assessed 1 l., Gauthard 2 l., and de Bize 1.5 l. Jean Gauthard was the father of the Philibert Gauthard involved in the fraud of 1675. 47. ADCO, C 6194, [1675 tax assessment] Bouillet simplifies the geography of the parish; I have used the tax roll location.

48. Pierre Collenot’s uncles Jean and Lazare, and his aunt, Jeanne, married three of Jean Guilleminot’s children: Pierrette, Jeanne, and Jean. Jeanne Marchand, daughter of Claude, from Moux, was the wife of the notary Jean-­Baptiste Cordier, who took over as greffier of Alligny in 1689. Claude was almost certainly Odinot’s brother of that name, who regularly lent money to peasants in Alligny, based on Coujard’s records. Adrien Breneau lived commun en biens with Emiland Guilleminot, and then with Philibert de Bize. Denis Breneault sold property to the Guilleminot brothers. The various families all stood as godparents to each other’s children.

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isfied with his work that he gave Morin 200 l. as a wedding gift when he married “honorable young woman” (honorable fille) Jeanne de la Grange, daughter of the late parish clerk, Jacques, in 1658.49 Visits from outside authorities explain the survival of the only four tax rolls at Alligny prior to 1682: 1633, 1663–­64, and 1675. Bouillet tells us that Alligny had paid 2,034 l. of tailles in 1674, distributed among fifty-­four laboureurs who each held a plough “team” (only three of whom owned their plough team and arable land), twenty-­two widows, ten weavers, six hoteliers, the blacksmith, and the rest poor day laborers. The “occupations” make no sense; the parish had several millers and a wide variety of other professions, and Bouillet’s own report (procès-­verbal) shows that people like Pierre Collenot, Denis Breneault, and Jacques Coujard certainly did not fit any of these descriptions. No tax-­related source ever calls anyone a greffier, lieutenant, procureur, or notary prior to Jean-­Baptiste Cordier in 1691. Prior to 1691, only the rolls of 1663/64 provided to intendant Claude Bouchu during his investigation of rural debt, gave the occupations. Bouchu was not a man to be trifled with, and he had access to Millière’s report. Most villagers could not sign documents but the literate group of Alligny included a fair number of officials and merchants.50 In the world of the law, even the women could sign. For instance, Collenot’s wife, Pierrette Primard (daughter of a notary) printed her name, as did Philiberte Breneault, daughter of Denis. Notary Jean-­Baptiste Cordier’s wife, Jeanne Marchand, could not sign at all; in contrast, Marie Coujard, daughter of Claude, signed in halting cursive. In the abutting parish of Gouloux, Elisabeth Garnier, daughter of the notary Jean, had a fine cursive hand; Elisabeth Charry, from a family of legal men, and Agathe, wife of Claude Charry, signed clearly. Elisabeth Charry even made an artistic combination of her initials at the start of her signature. The Quarré family women signed clearly in cursive. The eight collectors of 1675, who were not part of the group that met Bouillet, came from middling members of the rich families; they 49. Another member of the de la Grange family had been greffier in 1611, while Edmé de la Grange was receiver of the taxes in 1634 and a Guillaume de la Grange was a notary at Saulieu in 1557.

50. AD Nièvre, 4 E 3, Parish registers of 1671–­1674, 1682–­1689, and 1701–­1708 (available online only from 1701). My thanks to the staff of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, at their McLean, Virginia, reading room, where I consulted a microfilm of the often badly damaged originals.

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made sure their family’s interests were served, but protected the powerful members from the obligations of the collector to advance money to the Estates’ receiver.51 The collectors included men like Dimanche Labbé (5 l.), not Edmé (46 l.), Pierre Girard (9 l.), and Martin Girard (8.5 l., of Marnay), not the four Girard laboureurs of Fétigny (nearly 200 l.). Only two of the eight men—­Regnot Bailly (21.5 l.), [laboureur] of La Cremaine, and Martin Pichenot (14.5 l.), laboureur of La Chaux—­paid more than 10 l. The group had members of the Choureau, Grandvault, and Pelletier families; that is, the families of the seigneurial miller and two local officials. Even those with no apparent tie to the leadership, like Martin Pichenot, could be reached; he and his brother had been given the right to pasture their animals in a field owned by the baron of Alligny (Pierre Quarré) for 10 s. a year in 1660.52 As for the cottager Denis Donet (4.5 l.) of Pensières, surely he would listen to Philibert Choureau, who had lent him 220 l. to purchase a meadow from Choureau himself in 1661.53 Such a group of collectors was in no position to trouble the elite, particularly since no document shows any of them signing his name.54 The legislation of 1600 recognized all these problems: it mandated that all taxpayers take a turn serving as collector (article 11) and remarked how easy it was for greffiers to fool most of the collectors “because most of them do not know how to read or write” (article 18). How accurate were the accusations? If we start with heavily assessed Fétigny, the roll began with four members of the Girard-­Guichard family—­Regnot, Guyard, Michel, and George—­each assessed for 46.5 l.; these four men paid 8.55 percent of the entire parish’s taxes. Three families in Fétigny—­Girard-­Guichard, Regnault, and Boisseau—­paid just under 51. From 1599 onward, royal legislation made clear the parish’s collective responsibility for its taxes. During hard times, if some parishioners could not pay, the royal tax receivers would imprison the parish collectors to force the parish to pay. Local records show that in some years hundreds, perhaps thousands, of parish collectors ended up in jail for this reason. To avoid imprisonment, the tax collector would have to advance the money from his own pocket and seek later payment from his neighbors. The richest villagers thus usually avoided the position of official tax collector, but made sure someone closely allied with them was among the group of four to ten people who held the position of assessor-­collector. Henri IV also combined the hitherto separate responsibilities of those two positions on the grounds that the need to advance the money of delinquents would encourage fairer assessments. 52. ADCO, 4 E 49 13, 8 May 1661.

53. ADCO, 4 E 49 13, October 1661. The price included a previous rente of 60 l., now paid off; he owed an annual payment of 11 l. 54. Other members of the Bailly, Pelletier, and Labbé families did sign in Coujard’s registers.

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19 percent of the total taxes of the parish, while the Guilleminot family paid just under 6 percent. Pierre Collenot had close ties to the Girard-­ Guichard family since Regnot’s daughter, Anne, married Collenot’s half-­ brother, Philibert Beugnon, and George Girard-­Guichard witnessed the marriage of Lazare Collenot and Jeanne Guilleminot. People like the Girard-­Guichard or Guilleminot families shouldered a substantial share of the tax burden, but was it their fair share? In most of the parish of Alligny, the records do not allow us to provide much of an answer, because they do not give data on land distribution. In Normandy, the more precise tax rolls allow us to compare tax assessments and wealth for those on the roll. The documents follow the king’s rule, listing name, occupation, owned land, rented land, and variety and number of animals. The Norman tax rolls themselves thus show that the richest taxpayers paid a high percentage of the taxes, but they held an even higher percentage of the arable land. Burgundian records have no such information about landholdings and animals, so we cannot know whether, say, the Guilleminot’s tax assessments, considerable though they were, represented their fair share. The high assessments for laboureurs like Guilleminot, in contrast to the pittance contributed by a Coujard or a Collenot, do show the relative disadvantage of the laboureurs vis-­à-­vis the rural bourgeoisie with respect to avoiding taxes. Those living in Fétigny certainly had reason to complain about their relationship to the parish as a whole. The hamlet had paid 17.6 percent of the taxes in 1633, but that figure rose to 28 percent in both 1663 and 1675. Fétigny’s share peaked at just over one-­third in both 1682 and 1691, at which point the hamlet obtained the right to a separate tax roll. This problem, too, had drawn the king’s attention in 1600: at that time, he noted the separate commission often sent to isolated hamlets, which had complained that the bourg overassessed them. He ordered the use of a single commission for each parish and instructed the élus to review carefully the distribution of the taxes in each parish in which a hamlet (or hamlets) was reunited to the main commission.55 The 1676 terrier of Fétigny gives remarkably detailed knowledge of who held what, and it shows that within the hamlet the tax burden was distributed fairly. 55. Edict du Roy, contenant Reglement . . . des Tailles, art. 9. He did exempt such hamlets from suffering fiscal solidarity with the main parish for its debts, and vice versa.

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Two examples illustrate the general pattern: Regnot Girard-­ Guichard, one of the men paying 46.5 l., held fifteen different parcels (many shared, each with a separate person), including his house, over 14 journaux of arable land, 12 soitures of meadow, some woods, and a share of a tanning mill. Benoist Fauconnet, who had a house and four parcels, of 2.5 journaux of land and a tiny meadow, paid only 3.5 l. in taxes. Was the higher overall share of Fétigny related to the purchase of Alligny in 1637 by the Quarré family, which did not possess most of Fétigny? Given that their seigneurial officers dominated the tax assessment process, it is hard to imagine the shift was a coincidence.

“Fair” taxation: The evidence from Coujard’s registers Coujard’s registers provide details about how the web operated in the social, as well as economic, world.56 Drawing inspiration from Descimon’s work on notaries in Paris, let us look into Coujard’s papers to see what might be learned about some of the characters involved in the Alligny tax fraud.57 Aside from making manifest the ridiculously low assessments for Collenot, Coujard, and Breneault, Coujard’s registers suggest as well a pattern of underassessment for many of the seigneurs’ clients, particularly those whose wealth was not based on farming. The millers Adrien Choureau (6.5 l., admittedly more than the 2 l. he paid in 1663) and André Choureau (1.5 l.) paid paltry amounts and kept those levels of assessment into the 1690s. Philibert Gauthard, blacksmith, paid 10 l.; he was still assessed for 7.5 to 9 l. between 1682 and 1691. The standard rates of assessment were about 2 to 5 l. for a cottager, day laborer, or widow; the dozen big laboureurs, one or two per hamlet (often in community of goods households), paid 35 to 50 l. They obviously could not compare in wealth to Coujard, paying his 5 sous, but what about the Choureau family? The survival of Coujard’s notarial records, and of some of the baptism-­ marriage-­burial registers of the parish church, enables a closer look at the

56. The run has considerable gaps; 1663 is missing. I have not consulted the étude of Jean-­Baptiste Cordin (ADCO, 4 E 124), which begins in 1673. Cordin seems to have arrived in Alligny in 1686; he appears for 0.5 l. in that year’s tax roll; in 1691, he is listed as the greffier of Alligny, assessed for 6.4 l. I would imagine he took over the lease of the greffe in 1689. 57. ADCO, C 6194, tax rolls of Alligny. Jacques Coujard was not on the roll in 1682.

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complex patterns behind this simple fraud case. The Breneault and Collenot families held seigneurial offices since at least 1624. Coujard provided notarial services and was the greffier of the parish, a position Pierre de Saint Jacob rightly called the most important one in the seigneurial edifice.58 The greffier worked with the lieutenant, the procureur, clerk(s), and local sergeants. The seigneur relied as well on his or her millers, baker, and métayers. Coujard’s registers and the parish registers show the close social and economic ties between the Quarré family and these clients. The Choureau family gradually took over the four mills at Marnay; by 1714, the sons of André Choureau rented them all. Unsurprisingly, the family had ties to Collenot, Coujard, Guilleminot, and the seigneur.59 In 1673, Claude Coujard stood as godfather to André Choureau’s son Claude; a year later, François Quarré held André’s son François at the font.60 André’s daughter Gasparde married the miller of Jarnoy. Vivande de Bouillard’s miller, Jacques Serpillon, did not appear on the rolls of either 1663 or 1664; he was conveniently married to Blaisette Breneault, Denis’s first cousin.61 In the next generation, their son Gaspard, jointly with Sebastien Pellier, was one of the ten largest taxpayers in the village, while his cousin Lazare ran a tavern. They show the cultural divide: Gaspard, like the millers in the Choureau family, could not sign; Lazare, like the other merchants in the bourg, could write. He was surely related to the merchant Lazare Serpillon of Saulieu, whose fight with the town government over his tax assessment in 1657 had prevented any tax roll from being drawn up before November.62 The unusual first name Gaspard(e) gives a hint at how closely connected these families were to the seigneur, Gaspard Quarré, and his family. Alligny followed traditional practice of naming the child for the godparent of the same sex, except when the opposite sex godparent was of unusually high status. Denis Breneault had a daughter named Gasparde 58. Saint Jacob, Les paysans de la Bourgogne du nord, 59.

59. In the early seventeenth century, Catherine Jeannin, daughter of Jeanne Choureau, married Emiland Collenot, a cousin of Pierre’s father, also Emiland. The Choureau had ties later to the Devissuzenne family, who took over the greffier’s position in 1682. Hugues Devissuzenne was godfather to one of André Choureau’s daughters. 60. The godmother was Marie de Bize.

61. As noted above, the lease price was 500 l., which would indicate a taille contribution of at least 50 l., in terms of what we know about the ratio between rents and taxes. 62. ADCO, C 4849, fol. 7.

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(b. 1656). The names Gaspard(e) and Vivand(e) show up repeatedly in the main families of Alligny: Collenot, Breneault, de Bize, Chouault, Guilleminot, Labbé, Pelletier, and Serpillon, among others. Vivande de Brouillard (d. 1673) seems to have been particularly active in the parish. Her officers regularly show up in Coujard’s records: enforcing her seigneurial rights in Réglois, buying and selling land, leasing properties. Her first name appears among girls and boys; the extreme case was surely the baptism of Vivande Boire, daughter of Claude, one of the métayers of the large, independent farm of Les Vallottes, whose godparents were Vivand Bailly and Vivande Bourgeois.63 The parish registers of 1671 to 1674 show four members of Pierre Quarré’s family acting as godparents: his unmarried daughter, Marie; his brother François, avocat general; Pierre’s unmarried cousin Gaspard, a retired military officer; and his cousin Pierre, a cathedral canon from Dijon. Who received this special privilege? Canon Pierre Quarré gave his name to Pierre Breneault; François Quarré stood for François Beugnon and for Françoise Cottin.64 Marie Quarré was godmother to Marie Bailly, but also to Claude Marchand and to Pierre Grandvault. Gaspard Quarré was godfather to Marie Elisabeth Chaunot, daughter of Gaspard Chaunot and of Vivande Pelletier (Réglois).65 Having a godparent from the seigneur’s family and not taking that godparent’s name offered a stunning opportunity for an utterance of social daring. Marie Elisabeth took the name of her godmother, Marie Elisabeth Pelletier, granddaughter of Edmé Pelletier, greffier of Alligny in the 1630s, and daughter of Pierre Pelletier, royal notary at Monsauche.66 Claude Marchand took the name of his godfather, Claude Taboureau, Coujard’s clerk and right-­hand man, soon to be a notary. The small group running the parish thus had vertical ties (up to the seigneur, down to key laboureurs and millers) and horizontal ties (to

63. Remonchenot is probably the later Remoissonet; Regnault appears in several variations.

64. Jean Cottin was one of the few laboureurs who could sign their names; he printed it. The Cottin intermarried extensively with the families mentioned herein. 65. Marie Elisabete Chaunot was surely related to Marie Chaunot, mother of Pierre Collenot, and to Gaspard Chaunot (1.25 l.) in Réglois. 66. Marie’s grandmother was Gasparde Guillemette, whose father had been the procureur d’office of Gouloux, a village that abutted Alligny; he bought the seigneury there. As the many examples of Gasparde and Vivand show, even opposite sex children took their first name from a godparent of the seigneur’s family in almost all cases.

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notarial families in nearby villages). The downward vertical ties took in families like Collenot, Guilleminot, Pelletier, Regnault, Marchand, and Breneault, who had all owned houses in Alligny in 1611.67 As for Coujard, given that he married one Claudine Martenne, surely he took over the practice of the nefarious Pierre Martin (d. 1657) who played a role in the 1656 fraud system. Pierre Martin had started his practice in Claudine’s hometown, Saint-­Prix-­sous-­Beuvray. Claudine’s godson Guillaume Martin (Pierre’s son) later took over this practice and moved to Barbirey-­sur-­ Ouche.68 Information about dowries of families allied to the leadership is more common than about those of the leaders’ daughters.69 “Honorable young woman” Adrienne Bailly, daughter of the “merchant” Claude (he of the 21.5 l. tax assessment) married “honest son” (honest fils) Emiland Remonchenot, son of Pierre and Catherine Pelletier in 1659.70 A typical peasant woman brought a dowry of 60 to 80 l. and basic household linens with perhaps a wooden chest and, in some cases, a bed. Adrienne brought 200 l. in cash, a “garnished bed,” various linens, a coffer, a cow with her calf, six she-­goats and kids, a “wedding dress suitable to her quality and condition,” and 14 l. for jewels.71 In 1658, at the house of Denis Breneault, another member of the Bailly clan, “honorable fils” Dimanche, son of Pierre, blacksmith at Pensières (and of Claudine Boisseau), signed his marriage contract with “honorable young woman” Gasparde Guilleminot, daughter of the most highly assessed village taxpayer, Jean Guilleminot. She brought the astounding sum of 340 l., a cow, six she-­goats, a wedding dress, and a large trousseau with double the usual amount of goods. Eight years later, Guilleminot’s daughter Pierrette brought the same dowry, plus 15 l. worth of jewels, to Jean Collenot, who became Guilleminot’s partner. 67. ADCO, B 11511, fols. 211v–­217v. Several families went back to 1543 or even 1476; recherche des feux of 1543 (now online); B 11510, 1475 (o.s.).

68. In addition to my research in the baptism, marriage, and burial registers for Alligny (samples from 1671–­74, 1682–­89, 1701–­8) and Coujard’s étude, I have consulted work by family genealogists. On Coujard, see genealogy of the Coujard family (search “Coujard, Claude” for details on his father and grandfather). The site does not list Coujard’s son Pierre, godson of Pierre Collenot, who died as an infant. I also consulted the ADCO’s website about notaries. 69. Pierre Collenot got married in 1664; his contract is not in the Coujards’ register.

70. The Pelletier family went back to 1476, the Bailly to 1551. A Pelletier was a notary at Alligny in the 1540s.

71. This marriage thus tied together two of the collector families of 1675 and the organizer of the 1656 fraud.

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These dowries contained clear markers of social status. Quite apart from the money, the goods and animals defined status. Coujard’s files regularly involve the peasant families Guilleminot and de Bize, who were tied to the legal elite. The hierarchy of goods was clear: a young woman like Marguerite Beugnon brought a wedding dress, along with her 160 l., as did Marie de Bize, even though her dowry was a mere 60 l., and no other dowry of that size mentioned a wedding dress. Only women at the top of the village hierarchy had a jewelry allowance.72 Sisters Jeanne and Françoise Boire, in their 1659 wedding to brothers Vivand and Jean Gauthard, brought the usual goods and animals and a wedding dress for Françoise, the elder of the two.73 Pierre Collenot, praticien, was one of the witnesses; Lazare Boire, father of the brides, was part of the delegation that met Bouchu in 1666 and worked, in conjunction with others, one of the main freestanding farms, Les Rousselottes.74 This marriage followed by just two weeks the union of the Gauthard boys’ sister Edmée to Claude Boire, also of Les Rousselottes. Claude’s brother Denis married Vivand’s sister Vivande seven years later. Coujard’s records and the parish registers show that many peasants in Alligny followed this intermarriage model. Parisian robe families, even major aristocrats like the Rohan, did the same, to keep family property intact. The Quarré family could tangibly express its approval of a marriage. Shortly after their wedding, Mme. de la Sarrée (widow of Gaspard Quarré) sold Vivand Gauthard and Jeanne Boire 15 journaux of land—­one of the largest land transactions in Coujard’s register—­on which they were to build a hay silo. They lived at the large farm of La Fontaine Blanche, on the fringes of Alligny; the purchased land was completely surrounded by Alligny’s communal property. The couple paid only 60 l. with an annual seigneurial rent of 10 s.; the document specifies that they are of “condition mainmortable, like all our other subjects of Alligny.”75 Mme. de la Sarrée next sold 8 journaux of drained land to Lazare Boire for 80 l. and 8 s. 72. By way of comparison, the only wedding of a notary in Coujard’s papers involved a dowry of 1,110 l. and a contribution by the husband, a mercer, of 1,500 l.; the two families were not from Alligny. 73. ADCO, 4 E 49 14, March 1667, marriage contract of Vivande Gauthier.

74. Jean Gauthard, blacksmith, living in the bourg, paid a tax of 2 l. in 1663; Claude Boire, sabot maker, in the hamlet of La Cremaine, paid 3.25 l. while Lazare Boire (father of the brides), a charcoal maker (charbonnier), paid 4 l. The dowries in question suggest the men should have paid two or three times as much in direct tax. 75. Applying Bouchu’s estimate, the 15 journaux were worth 300 l.

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seigneurial rent.76 In both transactions, the purchasers got a bargain, if we can accept Bouchu’s estimate of 10 l. per arpent. A loyal client, like the clerk Claude Taboureau, could get an extraordinary social reward. On 13 July 1672 in Gouloux, Taboureau married Elisabeth Garnier, daughter of the royal notary Jean of that village. The list of witnesses to the wedding included several local notaries, Claude Coujard among them, and “high and mighty lord” Étienne Quarré. Just short of nine months later, Coujard’s daughter Marie was godmother to their daughter. Three years later, the baptismal certificate of their son Claude shows that Taboureau had become a notary, taking over the practice of Elisabeth’s father.77 Robert Descimon’s work shows us the best path toward figuring out how governance worked at the local level. In Alligny, just as in Paris or in Nantes, someone did not sell land or an office to just any buyer.78 Local judges used court systems to manipulate land markets and to make sure their families and friends got their hands on every worthwhile piece of land sold in a region.79 Seigneurial officers could manipulate the tax roll, particularly since the seigneurial greffier was often the one who drew it up. In a place like Alligny, where so many people lived “commun en biens,” the permutations of a given marriage, or a given inheritance, were astonishingly complex, as Coujard’s papers often demonstrate. His documents reveal the meaning of this system of domination, lived in ways we can scarcely conceive. Microhistory in a parish like Alligny helps us understand macro-­ level changes. The local tax records make it obvious that the bourgeoisie of the areas subject to direct taxes—­not just the countryside but almost all the towns too—­steadily gained de facto exemption, or at least underassessment, from these taxes. The capitation of 1695 looks like an effort not merely to tax nobles and the exempt bourgeoisie of towns like Lyon or Paris but to regain the contributions of the bourgeoisie throughout France. The capitation did not do an effective job of the latter; we know that capitation assessments originally set by twenty-­two “classes” soon 76. ADCO, 4 E 49 14, transactions of 13 and 14 June 1666. Lazare, too, got a break of 50 percent. 77. AD Nièvre, 4 E 129, art. 1, parish register of Gouloux, available online.

78. See Collins, “La Formation et la reproduction des magistrats du Parlement de Bretagne,” on how this process worked for offices in the Parlement of Brittany. 79. Schneider, King’s Bench. For eighteenth-­century Burgundy, see Hayhoe, Enlightened Feudalism.

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became simply a percentage of what one paid for the regular tailles for members of the Third Estate. The eighteenth-­century taxes on income—­ the dixième, later vingtième—­did a much more effective job of taxing the wealth of the bourgeoisie, particularly after 1749, when the government introduced stringent requirements for proving one’s income.80 The curé, the lieutenant of the court, the greffier-­notary, the sergeant, the millers, the baker, the main métayers—­it was a tight little circle, all of whom had close ties to the seigneur of the parish. When thinking about early modern French society and how it functioned, we need to consider that many an isolated village had closer ties to the main political, economic, and social currents than previously imagined. We need to think about how the seigneur, or his wife, could use social capital—­ like godparenting—­to reaffirm the political and social structure of a village. We need to consider as well the networks of local notables, like the Martenne-­Coujard-­Collenot-­Devissuzenne, who dominated villages through their exclusive control of the culture of the written word. The women of these families make obvious the staggering cultural gap: the records of Coujard and the parish church regularly show the signatures of women from the Breneault, Coujard, and Pelletier families, or those of newcomers like Pierrette Primard and Elisabeth Garnier—­ all members of the tight little circle of notaries, greffiers, and seigneurial officials in and around Alligny. Literacy defined cells within the larger group. Neither Jean Guilleminot nor his sons Jean and Guillaume, the most heavily assessed taxpayers in the parish, could sign their names. The millers, laboureurs, and métayers rarely signed. However much money the Guilleminot had, the daughter of a Pierre Collenot or a Denis Breneault was not going to marry into their family.81 The local elite had room to integrate outsiders like Coujard and Devissuzenne into existing village networks, and members of elite literate families sought marriage partners from the same social milieu in nearby villages. Whatever else may be said about them, the members of the group remained loyal to each other to

80. The king was the only person initially exempt from the capitation of 1695, but the government quickly came to agreement with the clergy about its exemption. The dixième (tenth) and vingtième (twentieth) taxed income and so paid no attention to personal status or office. Collins, State in Early Modern France, provides extensive details. On the innovative nature of the dixième in particular, see McCollim, Louis XIV ’s Assault on Privilege; and Rowlands, Financial Decline of a Great Power.

81. Breneault’s niece Philiberte married Hugues Devissuzenne, son and successor of the notary Jacques.

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the end. When Claude Coujard died in 1674, Pierre Collenot signed the register. When Collenot died in 1694, Jean-­Baptiste Cordier and Jacques Devissuzenne bore witness.82

Works cited Archival sources AD = Archives départementales ADCO = Côte d’Or

C 2852, Investigation of communal debts by intendant Claude Bouchu, 1665 C 4849, 1657 report on tax collection in Saulieu

C 4950, 1656 report on malfeasance in tax collection C 6194, tax rolls of Alligny

Hearth investigations of the bailiwick of Autun: B 11510, 1475

B 11511, 1543: Alligny, fols. 211v–­217v C 4745, 1611: Alligny, fols. 314v–­319 C 4746, 1624: Alligny, fols. 115–­116

C 4749, 1634: Alligny, fols. 285–­289v

C 4750, 1656, published by Gabriel Dumay, ed., Mémoires de la société Éduenne, new series, 5 (Autun: Dujussieu, 1876), 269–­484 C 4752, 1675

4 E 49 12–­14, notarial archive (étude) of Claude Coujard, 1656–­1667 [incomplete]

AD Nièvre

4 E 3, parish registers of Alligny. Samples used from 1671 to 1674, 1682 to 1689, and 1701 to 1708. Available online only from 1701. The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints made a microfilm, which can be ordered through any of their libraries. The registers go back to the 1620s, with major gaps; long stretches of the existing pages, prior to 1660, are badly damaged.

82. Cordier later witnessed the burial of Vincent Devissuzenne; Cordier’s wife, Jeanne Marchand, was the daughter of a Claude Marchand of Moux, surely the man of that name who so often lent money to peasants in Alligny. Jacques moved his notarial practice back to Anost in 1688. A remarkable list of Jacques’s marriage contracts for 1671–­82 and 1688–­92 at Anost, prepared by Philippe Duchatel and Alix Noga, is available online (http://www.notaires21.fr/gpage143.html). The six-­year gap indicates that the greffe of the seigneury, like its mills, was leased for six years at a time. At this time in France, depending on the region, men were two or three times more likely than women to be able to sign their name.

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132 a The Notary as Rural Power Broker 4 E 129, art. 1, parish register of Gouloux, available online: http://archives.cg58.fr/ ark:/60877/a011352393386X5o3qY/1/1.

AM = Archives municipales

Blois, BB 17, fol. 74, cahier de doléances for the Estates General of 1614.

Primary sources Edict du Roy, contenant Reglement general sur le faict des Tailles (Paris, 1607), edict of March 1600, registered by the Tax Court (Cour des aides) in August.

Genealogy of the Coujard family: http://h2.heredis-­online.com/fr/chrispitois/ch_pitois/ individus#50141. All references given in the text have been cross-­referenced with other sources. Marriage contracts for 1671–­82 and 1688–­92, at the parish of Anost, prepared by Philippe Duchatel and Alix Noga, from the notarial archive of Jacques Devissuzenne: http://www.alix21.fr/index.php/villages-­a/8-­villages-­a-­b/9-­anost-­71.

Secondary sources Bart, Jean. La Liberté ou la terre. Dijon: Publications du Centre de recherches historiques de la Faculté de droit et de science politique, 1984. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Collins, James B. “La Campagne bourguignonne à la fin du XVIIe siècle.” In Campagnes en mouvement en France du XVIe au XIXe siècle: Autour de Pierre de Saint Jacob, edited by Antoine Follain, 235–­50. Dijon: Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2008.

———. “La Formation et la reproduction des magistrats du Parlement de Bretagne: Question sociale ou question politique?” In Les Parlements de Province, edited by J. Poumarède and J. Thomas, 601–­20. Toulouse: Framespa, 1996. ———. The State in Early Modern France. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Descimon, Robert, and Élie Haddad, eds. Épreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la robe parisienne. XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010.

Fortunet, François. Charité ingénieuse et pauvre misère: Les baux à cheptel simple en Auxois au XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Dijon: Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 1985. Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–­ 1978. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Haddad, Élie. Fondation et ruine d’une “maison”: Histoire sociale des comtes de Belin (1582–­ 1706). Paris: Pulim, 2009.

Hayhoe, Jeremy. Enlightened Feudalism: Seigneurial Justice and Village Society in Eighteenth-­Century Northern Burgundy. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008.

Jones, Sam. “Great Britain Class Survey finds seven social classes in UK.” The Guardian, 3 April 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/apr/03/great-­british-­ class-­survey-­seven (accessed March 2014).

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Lamarre, Christine. Petites villes et fait urbain en France au XVIIIe siècle: Le cas bourguignon. Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 1993.

McCollim, Gary B. Louis XIV ’s Assault on Privilege: Nicolas Desmaretz and the Tax on Wealth. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012.

Rowlands, Guy. The Financial Decline of a Great Power: War, Influence, and Money in Louis XIV ’s France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Saint Jacob, Pierre de. Les Paysans de la Bourgogne du nord. 1960. Reprint, Caen: AHSR, 1995.

———. Des Terroirs et des hommes: Études sur le monde rural et le pays bourguignon. Edited by Jean-­Jacques Clère. Dijon: Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2008. Schneider, Zoë. The King’s Bench: Bailiwick Magistrates and Local Governance in Normandy, 1670–­1740. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008.

Measures and money arpent: measure of arable land, in Burgundy, about 0.4 hectares.

journal (pl. journaux) measure of land, based on the area that could be ploughed in a day, around 0.4 hectares. soiture: measure of meadow, the area that could be mown in a day, in Burgundy about 0.34 hectares.

French money: 1 livre tournois (l.) or pound of Tours = 20 sous (s.) or shillings = 240 deniers (d.) or pence. The French livre was a money of account, not an actual coin, and its value fluctuated. To avoid confusion with the English pound, which was worth far more, I have kept the French abbreviation “l.”

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Chapter 6

Reading Municipal Lists, Interpreting Civic Practice from the Insights of Robert Descimon to Seventeenth-­Century Bourges Hilary J. Bernstein In his 1994 article “Les Scrutateurs des élections échevinales à Paris,” Robert Descimon makes a short but methodologically revealing remark. After analyzing the changing social composition and precedence of the four vote examiners for municipal elections in Paris from the mid-­ sixteenth to the mid-­seventeenth century, he comments that “Hidden within lists seemingly without significance, two divergent models of designation reveal the strategies that contributed to the invention of the traditions of the corps de ville (city government). Thus is fashioned the spirit of an institution.”1 Although the names of Parisian vote examiners might at first seem to provide little important information, placing each of these men by profession and seniority within the corps de ville actually reveals an important change within Parisian municipal government. Whereas during the Wars of Religion it was common to select the most socially prominent individuals repeatedly to serve as vote examiners, by the reign

1. Descimon, “Les Scrutateurs des élections échevinales à Paris,” 207. All translations from the French are the author’s.

a 134 b

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of Louis XIII each quartenier (captain of the quarter) and member of the conseil de ville (city council) could expect to be chosen in turn, and experience as the fourth vote examiner frequently preceded election as an échevin (alderman). Such practices testified to a changing role for these individuals. Whereas in the sixteenth century, members of the municipal government chose vote examiners of high status in order to protect the bureau de ville (city government) from any possible attacks on its privileges and authority, by the seventeenth century, these measures no longer seemed necessary. Now that the Crown had come to see the corps de ville as an unenthusiastic but reliable support in maintaining order within the city, the first vote examiner took on the role of representing the hôtel de ville’s (city hall) new clientelistic relationship with the monarchy. With less of an external political burden placed on the other positions, they could now be used to reward seniority within the bureau de ville or to signal the body’s choice of future échevins. This image of lists of names and the question of what they might reveal about civic practice will strike any scholar of urban institutions as particularly vital. The concern immediately arises: What lists does one examine or compile and to what purpose? In my research on the political practice and civic culture of Poitiers from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the reign of Henri IV, I was particularly interested in learning not only who held office in the corps de ville but also which members were most assiduous about attending council deliberations. Part of the way that I added substance to the lists of names I encountered was to pay attention to who attended meetings regularly, who repeatedly brought up issues needing to be addressed, who expressed themselves persuasively, and who agreed to take on the numerous burdens of urban administration, such as enforcing police measures, examining the fortifications, overseeing poor relief, and many more.2 I also kept in mind that the content of such lists can reveal much about contemporary social and political assumptions: whether they include simple names only, honorific titles, seigneuries, or offices and professions says much about how social qualities were seen to relate to municipal office, just as the choice of organization by social characteristics or by institutional seniority constitutes an implicit comment on

2. Bernstein, Between Crown and Community.

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the importance of the corporate body in relation to the identities of the individual members. From his earliest work on Paris, especially his Qui étaient les Seize?, Robert Descimon has addressed these seemingly opaque lists of names and what they can reveal about the shifting layers of prescriptive acts, customary practices, social choices, and political attitudes that together informed municipal government. A glance at the long series of intricately related articles that he has dedicated to Parisian civic institutions and society over the last thirty-­odd years suggests an approach that has evolved in roughly three stages. First, his early writings reflect the conviction that political events and attitudes, such as adherence to the Catholic League, can be elucidated through a sophisticated sociological analysis that pays attention not only to levels of wealth and profession, but also to degrees of honor within urban society, family ties, and adherence to municipal traditions.3 Second, his work turned from an analysis originating in political events to one more explicitly focused on urban structures. Here, Descimon’s work demonstrates that in order to understand how municipal government functioned and to what purpose, it is essential to examine the social composition of its many constituent bodies, paying attention to the ways that political practice, social organization, and ideological assumptions all interrelated and focusing on the points of conflict as well as agreement.4 Third, and perhaps as a natural consequence of his previous approaches, his latest work on the urban milieu is predicated on the realization that, just as it is important to uncover the social relationships embedded in municipal practice, so it is crucial to understand how urban office holding fit within the strategies of alliance and advancement of the Parisian families involved. Here, Descimon shifts the focus from institutional procedures and their underlying social assumptions to the aspirations of a broad range of Parisian lineages as reflected in their marriage alliances, choice of profession, and self-­representations in notary contracts.5 While a good number of urban historians have sought to 3. Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?; Descimon, “La Ligue à Paris”; Descimon, “Prise de parti.”

4. Descimon, “Les Assemblées de l’hôtel de ville de Paris”; Descimon, “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV”; Descimon, “La Vénalité des offices politiques de la ville de Paris”; Descimon, “Le Corps de ville et les élections échevinales à Paris”; Descimon, “Les Scrutateurs des élections échevinales à Paris”; Descimon, “Les Élections échevinales à Paris.” 5. Descimon, “Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVIIe siècles”; Descimon, “Réseaux de famille, réseaux de pouvoir?”; Descimon, “Les de Thou au miroir des archives notariales”; Descimon, “Le Change-

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analyze the social characteristics of members of French city governments, few have chosen to reverse the point of view so thoroughly in asking how municipal office holding fit within the familial strategies exercised by urban elites.6 From this broad body of work, Descimon has provided a crucial model for interpreting municipal sources and the relationships embedded in them. Key to his approach, in my view, is the contention that although prescriptive texts can tell us much about the ways that municipal government functioned and the social and political assumptions that underlay these procedures, it is even more important to unearth changing customary practices in order to pinpoint the social relationships and ideological assumptions on which they were based and that they also helped inform. For example, in “Le corps de ville et les élections échevinales à Paris aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” Descimon shows how the original formulation of the electoral practices of the Parisian corps de ville in 1450 and the restatements of 1554 and 1615 all affected different social elements within the Parisian bourgeoisie and particularly sought to maintain a working balance between the royal officials and merchants within this group. Yet, changes in practice that had nothing to do with legislation, such as the fact that by the seventeenth century the conseil de ville became a stepping stone to the échevinage (council of aldermen) rather than the reverse, also had a profound impact on the balance of power within the corps de ville and the social composition of the larger governing group within the municipal government. In the much more recent “Les élections échevinales à Paris (mi-­XVIe siècle–­1679),” this change in usage helps to illustrate the competing conceptualizations of civic representation. As Descimon summarizes his argument, The Parisian municipal system would thus be reconfigured under the effect of linked factors, both external (the dominance of the monarchy, the pressures of the artisanal guilds and associations of officials) and internal (the increase in the power of the intermediate bodies of the city government, the conseil and the quarteniers). The principle of electoral representation by territory ment social à Paris.”

6. See for example, Saupin, Nantes au XVIIe siècle; Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors; Mouysset, Le Pouvoir dans la bonne ville; Coste, Les Lys et le chaperon.

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was thus confronted with the competing principle of heredity and venality, on the one hand, and with the principle of corporate representation on the other. The result of these contradictions led to a recomposition of civic practices based on narrow institutional alterations, which were customary and not legal in nature.7 As Descimon explains, the institutionalization of the practice of resignation of royal offices in the 1520s inaugurated a model of venality of office that had profound effects on the Parisian bureau de ville. With the exception of the period of the Catholic League, resignations of office became ever more common and accepted among the conseillers de ville and the quarteniers over the course of the sixteenth century, with a “paulette” for municipal offices being established in 1633. Although the prévôt des marchands (mayor) and the échevins continued to be elected, the practice in place by the seventeenth century of alternately electing a quartenier or a conseiller de ville to the échevinage meant that the principles of heredity and venality also impacted this body. At the same time, the quarteniers sought to increase their control over the selection of the bourgeois mandés (bourgeois electors) for each quarter of the city, while certain socio-­professional groups, such as the Six Corps des marchands (the six most powerful merchants’ guilds) worked to assure that a merchant was chosen as échevin every year. Largely thanks to these competing interests, the Parisian bureau de ville remained a vital institution that assured a social equilibrium among the many groups composing the bourgeois elites of Paris, but the influence of these groups certainly led to a decline in electoral competition by the mid-­seventeenth century. As these examples suggest, equally important to Descimon’s approach is the view that institutional forms were thoroughly enmeshed in social structures, so that it is impossible to understand the theory and practice of civic government without delving into the social choices that municipal office helped to channel. Descimon’s analysis of numerous families who played a large role in the Parisian bureau de ville in the sixteenth century thus helps to reveal how a conception of a united Parisian elite, in which families combined the advantages to be gained from trade, legal practice, and royal office holding, eventually ceded to a more corporate

7. Descimon, “Les Élections échevinales à Paris,” 242.

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approach, in which royal officials increasingly distanced themselves from municipal office and merchants sought the advantages to be gained by official pressure groups such as the Six Corps and official quotas for election as échevins.8 Given these mutations in social and political expectations of the sixteenth century, it was no accident that the first three decades of the seventeenth century proved a period of great change in civic practice. It was in this later period that royal office as a form of property was fundamentally established by the Paulette (1604), a situation inevitably leading to an escalation in the cost of office holding and rendering it far more difficult for the middling groups of Parisian bourgeois to make their fortunes via service to the Crown. This shift in social possibilities among Parisian elites had a noticeable impact on the composition of the bureau de ville and the political balance it maintained among these elite groups.9 The period of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century stands out not only as the major focus of Descimon’s work on Parisian society and municipal structures but also as the moment when early modern officials and historians themselves began to focus on the documentation produced by municipal governments in their published works. As the genres of city histories and collections of urban privileges developed, these texts often came to include lists of officeholders in addition to descriptions of the main liberties granted to the town by the kings of France. By the second half of the seventeenth century, local scholars also began to append genealogies of elite urban families to their historical narratives. Clearly, their focus on lists of names was just as intense as that of Descimon, even if their underlying reasons and relationships to those names differed from his. Descimon’s remark about these lists and their meanings thus sparked for me the question of how contemporaries, interested in the rights and privileges of municipal government and the long series of individuals who had served in civic office, interpreted these texts and practices themselves. The remainder of this article is designed to begin to answer that question. To do so, it will focus principally on the work of Jean Chenu (1559–­1627), an avocat (attorney) and erudite scholar from Bourges, author of a Recueil des antiquitez et privileges de la ville de Bovrges, et de 8. Descimon, “‘Bourgeoisie Seconde’”; Descimon, “Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVIIe siècle”; Descimon, “Les de Thou au miroir des archives notariales.” 9. Descimon, “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV”; Descimon, “Le Changement social à Paris.”

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plvsievrs autres villes capitales du royaume (1621). Although not currently a well-­known figure, Chenu had solid contacts and a successful legal career in his own day. A client of the La Châtre and L’Aubespine families, he served as counsel to Claude de La Châtre, maréchal de France, in the Parlement of Paris for over a decade and dedicated his Privileges octroyez avx maires et eschevins, bourgeois, & habitans de la ville & septaine de Bourges to Guillaume de L’Aubespine, conseiller du roi (royal counselor) in the Conseil d’État and Conseil Privé, in 1603.10 He amassed a good deal of wealth and acquired the office of bailli (presiding judicial officer) of the châtellenie (castellany) of Brécy in Berry.11 He was also a relatively prolific author, publishing works on the privileges of Bourges, a history of the bishops and archbishops of France, two collections of legal commentaries on an assortment of questions involving inheritance practices, seigneurial rights, ecclesiastical benefices, and customary law, and a collection of royal edicts and judicial rulings on the rights and prerogatives of royal and ecclesiastical office, his Recueil de reglemens notables.12 Yet, of these works, only the last was truly successful, going through seven editions between 1602 and 1635, whereas there are indications that a number of his other works sparked criticism or met with resistance to publication.13 Further, although he was well known in erudite circles, maintaining a regular correspondence with royal historiographers Scévole and Louis de Sainte-­Marthe, he failed in his ambition to serve as échevin of Bourges.14 10. Chenu, Privileges (1603), 3–­7. Chenu mentions having served as counsel to La Châtre in the Parlement of Paris in his dedication to La Châtre in his Recveil de reglemens notables (1603), unpaginated. 11. Chenu’s testament of 1627 reveals that he had provided substantial dowries for his daughters and amassed a good deal of property. See Thaumas de la Thaumassière, Histoire de Berry, 1:167–­73. On his judicial office, see Chenu, Notables et singvlieres qvestions (1620), 383–­438. Here, Chenu recounts his part in prosecuting eighteen individuals for witchcraft.

12. Chenu, Privileges (1603); Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez; Chenu, Archiepiscoporum et episcoporum Galliae chronologica historia; Chenu, Cent notables et singulières questions de droict; Chenu, Notables et singvlieres qvestions (1620); Chenu, Recueil de reglements notables (1602) and subsequent editions.

13. In the 1603 edition of the Recueil des reglements notables, a preliminary sonnet by N. Renouard of Bourges defends Chenu for having published these “saincts decrets” (unpaginated front-­matter). Likewise, in his Recueil des antiquitez, Chenu defended himself from criticism he had received following the publication of his 1603 Privileges that he should not have divulged the privileges of the city (p. 341). Finally, in 1621, Chenu informed the brothers Sainte-­Marthe that he was having difficulties obtaining a privilege for his work, likely the Archiepiscoporum et episcoporum Galliae chronologica historia. See BNF, NAF 6208, fol. 177r, Letter from Jean Chenu to Monsr. [Scévole] de Sainte-­Marthe, dated 7 January 1621 from Bourges. 14. For Chenu’s correspondence with the Sainte-­Marthe brothers spanning the years 1602 to 1621, see BNF, NAF 6208, fols. 171r–­180v. In a handwritten comment on the title page of his copy of Chenu’s Recueil des antiquitez, the chevalier Gougnon claimed that Chenu “auoit volu estre Eschevin

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Despite these disappointments, Chenu provides an important example of how urban elites in the early seventeenth century thought about the electoral practices and privileges that underwrote the corps de ville. Although by this time published collections of urban privileges were becoming common, only Chenu thought to accompany his examination of the privileges of Bourges with a survey of the privileges of other French cities, focusing heavily on their institutional organization and electoral forms. This unusual approach may have been suggested by the origins of the work itself. As Chenu explains, he first included specific information on the privileges of Bourges in the first edition of his Recueil de reglements notables (1602) but subsequently removed this material on his hometown to constitute a separate volume, the Privileges octroyez avx maires et eschevins, bourgeois, & habitans de la ville & septaine de Bourges (1603).15 As he was revising both the Privileges and the Recueil de reglements notables for new editions in the 1610s, he began to collect new rulings not only on office holding but also on urban privileges and electoral practices. To do so, he consulted a range of published works on the municipal organization and privileges of other cities, including Antoine Loisel’s Mémoires de Beauvais (1617), Gabriel de Lurbe’s Privileges de Bordeaux (1593), and a Livre des ordonnances de l’escheuinage de Paris (1556).16 Additionally, he obtained further privileges and information from personal contacts, such as Simon des Coutures, avocat du roi (king’s attorney) at Limoges, and Baptiste Chancel, a former mayor and conseiller (judge) in the presidial court of Périgueux, and he collected relevant recent rulings from the Conseil d’État.17 From the Recueil des antiquitez, then, it is possible to deduce a significant amount about Chenu’s purposes and research. It is, however, often difficult to assess how contemporaries read and interpreted such works. Fortunately, in this case, there is evidence of how learned individuals in Bourges read the text and other collections of urban privileges published in the following decades, since several extant copies retain extensive marginalia. From these texts and their commentaries, we can

et a tousiours este rejetté.” See below for a discussion of Gougnon’s comments on this work. 15. Chenu, Privileges (1603), 3–­4.

16. For Chenu’s mentions of these works, see Recueil des antiquitez, 22–­23, 342, 462–­63. 17. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 343, 470, 480.

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gather how contemporaries departed from prescriptive texts to theorize about the ideal social composition of the corps de ville and how their fascination with lists of previous officeholders connected with these social concerns. The history of the composition of Bourges’s échevinage presented serious problems to any commentator of the city’s privileges. Governed through much of the fifteenth century by four prud’hommes (goodmen) elected in a general assembly, the city saw its municipal organization overturned by Louis XI in May 1474, due to his anger at a “detestable commotion” that broke out over the payment of a barrage tax to fund work on the fortifications the month before.18 Henceforth, Bourges was to be governed by a mayor and twelve échevins appointed by the king.19 By June, however, the king had relented somewhat and provided that the mayor and échevins could nominate four candidates for each place in the corps de ville annually, from which he would select the most suitable. Louis XI also granted the privilege of nobility to the mayor and échevins and their offspring, and the right of Bourges to enjoy the same privileges as La Rochelle and Tours.20 By 1492 (n.s.), however, this setup had been completely reworked, since Charles VIII granted Bourges the right to elect a mayor in addition to its four échevins. They would be chosen through a new, indirect process in which a general assembly would be summoned in each of the four quarters of the city to elect eight bourgeois to participate, along with the royal officials, in the election of the mayor and two new échevins at an assembly convened for the purpose. These bourgeois electors would then constitute the body of up to thirty-­two conseillers (counselors) to advise the échevins throughout the year.21 Every collection of Bourges’s privileges, from Chenu’s Privileges of 1603 to an independent edition of 1661, proudly displayed these three sets of privileges, completely ignoring the punitive circumstances under which the letters of 1474 were issued.22 Indeed, in his 1621 Recueil des antiquitez, Chenu presented the letters of June 1474 as a foundational document, attributing it to Louis XI’s concern to repopulate Bourges and 18. Rivaud, Les Villes et le roi, 86–­90; Raynal, Histoire du Berry, 108–­11.

19. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 23–­26; Raynal, Histoire du Berry, 115–­16. 20. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 26–­33.

21. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 121–­25.

22. In addition to Chenu’s collections of privileges, these texts include the Recveil des privileges de la ville de Bovrges (1643); Privileges de la ville de Bovrges (1659); Privileges de la ville de Bovrges (1661).

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comparing it to the beneficence that Alexander the Great had heaped on Alexandria.23 Yet the presentation of these three sets of privileges left a noticeable gap, since they could not explain how Bourges’s corps de ville had altered from a mayor and twelve échevins who nominated their own successors, as the letters patent of June 1474 provided, to four échevins elected in a general assembly of the city, a setup that was subsequently modified in the letters patent of April 1492. What was quietly omitted from all of these compendia was that Charles VIII had issued other letters patent of 1484 (n.s.), with a confirmation in 1487, which provided that the échevinage would henceforth be composed of only four échevins elected in a general assembly and which revoked all of the provisions of the letters patent of June 1474, presumably including the privilege of nobility accorded to the mayors and échevins of Bourges. These letters patent and confirmation of the 1480s were particularly elusive, since Gaspard Thaumas de la Thaumassière, the most accomplished historian of Bourges of the seventeenth century, had never seen them, but letters patent of Louis XIII of 13 December 1634 duly mentioned them as having been produced at that time to support the confirmation of Bourges’s privilege of nobility.24 It is difficult to assess, therefore, whether their complete absence from the Recueil des antiquitez and the other collections of Bourges’s privileges was intentional or not. Whether Chenu failed to mention these provisions of the 1480s out of ignorance or out of guile, the privilege of 1492 inspired him to comment extensively on the best means of ensuring the integrity of Bourges’s elections and city government. On the reduction of the number of échevins from twelve to four (as he thought), he repeated a common opinion of the early seventeenth century that having too many governors only leads to altercations and disorder, and it is in any case easier to assemble five individuals than twelve.25 Although he failed to point to the novelty of indirect elections in Bourges as prescribed by the letters

23. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 33–­37.

24. For the letters patent of Louis XIII of 13 December 1634, see the Privileges de la Ville de Bovrges (1661), 78–­80. Thaumas de la Thaumassière deduced the existence of the letters patent of 1484 and 1487 but also maintained that they must have been destroyed in the great fire of 1487. See his Histoire de Berry, 1:276. If Thaumas de la Thaumassière had never seen them, Jacques Gougnon (the “chevalier Gougnon”) was able to transcribe a copy of the 1484 letters into his historical notes. See, BNF, Ms. fr. 32995, fols. 231r–­234r. See also Rivaud, Les Villes et le roi, 138–­39. 25. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 126.

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patent of 1492, he generally concurred with their tendency to privilege elite inhabitants over others. Thus, he pointed out that although all of the inhabitants were called to these local assemblies, certain individuals were specially convoked to attend them. Further, Chenu held that every effort should be made to elect to the échevinage only notable, propertied individuals living within the city walls and not the faubourgs, so that they would not be tempted to defraud the public. In general, all electoral campaigning should be completely forbidden: If that were observed (as it should be), one would not see so many brigues [illicit electoral contests], no one would offer money or drinks to gain the votes of base people, laborers and mercenaries . . . , and in this way each person would be called to the mayoralty and the échevinage in order and according to his merit.26 In fact, although the letters patent of 1492 prohibited any gens mechaniques (craftsmen working with their hands) from being elected conseillers, Chenu reasoned that no one should be permitted to vote for the conseillers who was not of sufficient status to serve as one himself and likewise that only those qualified to serve as échevins should have the ability to choose them.27 The practical result of this advice would have been to limit the franchise to men with sufficient means, connections, and reputation to serve as échevins. Through these comments, Chenu articulated a not uncommon vision of urban government for the decades spanning the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In his view, political authority should be carefully limited to an elite group of urban notables, but within this restricted body of relative equals, office should circulate freely, each member taking turn to guide the public weal. If Chenu’s ideal for civic government was hardly unique for his time, the extensive comparative project that informed this vision was much more unusual. Not only did the author of the Recueil des antiquitez marshal examples from other cities to support his arguments about 26. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 128.

27. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 128–­29. The influence of the organization and electoral procedures of Paris is evident in the provisions for Bourges of 1492; however, “gens mechaniques” were excluded from being nominated to the electoral assembly in Bourges long before this provision was officially established in Paris by the Edict of Compiègne of May 1554. See Descimon, “Le Corps de ville et les élections échevinales à Paris,” 510–­11.

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what new regulations should be implemented at home, but he provided an extensive catalogue of the basic privileges and electoral practices of other important cities in France. Although Chenu only rarely commented explicitly on these comparative texts, the reader could not but notice that the preceding decades had produced a considerable amount of conflict regarding access to civic office. This impression was no doubt a result of Chenu’s deliberate choices. The examples of La Rochelle and Tours came first in his catalogue, since these were the cities on which Bourges’s privileges were supposedly based, and in each there had been considerable disagreement over the composition of the corps de ville and the form that elections should take. For La Rochelle, Chenu reproduced two texts of articles agreed upon in 1614 and 1615 to resolve intense hostilities between the inhabitants of the city and the corps de ville. The articles granted the bourgeois the right to elect five procureurs (representatives) who could call assemblies of the inhabitants and represent them within the meetings of the corps de ville.28 For Tours, he provided both the May 1589 letters patent of Henri III revoking the corps de ville as it then existed and returning it to the form provided by Louis XI in 1461 and a 1619 ruling of the Conseil d’État creating four élus (elected representatives) to be chosen by the notable inhabitants and merchants of the town. These élus would have the right to participate in the elections of the mayor and to vote on all matters discussed by the corps de ville.29 Further, Chenu went out of his way to obtain such recent rulings. For example, before providing the extremely punitive edict of 1597 in which Henri IV rescinded many of Amiens’s privileges in punishment for the city’s capitulation to Spanish forces, the author explains that, when he was at Fontainebleau following the royal council in June 1617, he was able to obtain the text from Benjamin le Tenneur, royal secretary and clerk of the Conseil Privé.30 From Chenu’s collection of urban privileges and electoral procedures exercised throughout France, it would have been difficult for readers to avoid the conclusion that these practices had been subject to a good deal of flux and hostility in recent decades. 28. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 224–­35. For the context of these articles, see Robbins, “Social Mechanisms of Urban Rebellion.” 29. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 289–­95, 304–­15. 30. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 343.

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This sense of social tension and institutional upheaval, however, was not the only message that readers could take from this collection of urban privileges. In addition to the edicts, Chenu also provided catalogues of the mayors who had governed several of the cities in question, including La Rochelle, Tours, Paris, Poitiers, and Bordeaux, just as he assembled and provided the first chronological list of the mayors and échevins of Bourges to be published for that city.31 Since none of these lists had previously been available in print, except for the case of Paris, Chenu must have gone out of his way to acquire them. Their most obvious purpose was to reconfirm the idea of the nobility conferred by municipal office, but they also contained more information than was needed simply to register the names of important local families. The list of the mayors of La Rochelle, for example, was meant to be impressive, since it stretched back to 1199, the year in which the town’s corps de ville was first established but considerably before its mayors and échevins obtained the privilege of nobility. The list also confirmed La Rochelle’s electoral practices by listing the two candidates for mayor whom the king had not selected for each year, and by the fifteenth century, it provided other important pieces of historical information affecting the city. Thus, with these mayoral lists, an inherently conservative message regarding the prestige and historical tradition of the civic elites of these cities jostled up against a more dynamic depiction of the social and political flux of municipal governments in recent decades. Given these tensions, how did early modern readers interpret and make use of this kind of work? We are fortunate to be able to begin to answer that question, since the town of Bourges hosted a relatively developed community of erudite scholars who not only produced histories of the city and compendia of its privileges but jotted down extensive marginalia in these published collections. A copy of Chenu’s Recueil des antiquitez found its way into the library of Jacques Gougnon, sieur d’Argenton, chevalier du Saint Esprit et de Saint Lazare de Jérusalem (the “chevalier Gougnon”) (1651–­1730), an erudite scholar and genealogist of Bourges who did not fail to add his characteristically acerbic comments and detailed corrections to his predecessor’s work.32 Further, two copies of the Recueil des privileges de 31. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 130–­40 [mispaginated for 170] (Bourges), 235–­62 (La Rochelle), 319–­26 (Tours), 336–­40 (Paris), 467–­68 (Bordeaux), 486–­501 (Poitiers). 32. Gougnon’s signature appears twice on the title page of a copy of Chenu’s Recueil des anitiquitez

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Bourges published in 1643 also received extensive commentary by their owners, one of whom was Nicolas Catherinot, avocat du roi in the presidial court of Bourges and a prolific author on Bourges’s antiquities in his own right.33 Taken together, these marginalia show that contemporary readers were intensely interested in the familial relations and social characteristics that informed municipal practice and that the catalogues of the mayors and échevins not only of their own city but of others as well drew their most attentive scrutiny. Not unlike modern historians, commentators examined these lists not only for the familial prestige and connections they might reflect, but for the institutional practices they could reveal. When seventeenth-­century urban elites perused texts focused on the history and privileges of their town, they had a special interest in relating the notable individuals mentioned there to their own familial tradition. In the chevalier Gougnon’s copy of the Recueil des antiquitez, numerous marginal comments relate individuals mentioned in the text to the Gougnon family. For example, next to a mention of Pierre Biet, lieutenant-­général (presiding judicial officer) of the sénéchaussée (a mid-­level royal court) beginning in 1584, there is a long genealogical note explaining how the Biet family was related to the Gougnon family through one Catherine Gougnon, daughter of Antoine Gougnon, mayor of Bourges in 1519 and great-­grandfather of Jacques Gougnon, avocat du roi in the presidial court of Bourges.34 Likewise, a comment next to the name of François Ragueau pointed out that he was the paternal uncle

currently held at the Bibliothèque Municipale de Bourges, By 1189. This copy has been digitized and made available for viewing on the site of the Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes, http://www.bvh. univ-­tours.fr/Consult/index.asp?numfiche=999&url=/resrecherche.asp?ordre=titre-­motclef=Chenu-­ bvh=BVH-­epistemon=Epistemon. The handwriting and characteristic red ink of the marginalia make it certain that much of the commentary in this copy is by the chevalier Gougnon. All the discussion of marginalia to follow refers to this copy of Chenu’s work.

33. A copy of the 1643 Recueil des privileges de Bourges contains numerous signatures of Catherinot, and a note by a librarian attached to the front end paper theorizes that the extensive commentary throughout the work was also his. This is certain for a portion of the comments, although other marginalia were clearly added after his death. This copy is located in the BM Bourges, By 5626, and available in digitized form at Les Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes, http://www.bvh.univ-­tours.fr/ Consult/index.asp?numfiche=1007&url=/resrecherche.asp?motclef=Bourges-­Medica=-­ordre=date_ traite-­BNF=-­bvh=BVH-­epistemon=Epistemon-­BMTroyes=-­offset=140. Unless otherwise specified, all discussion of marginalia to follow refers to this work. A second heavily annotated copy of the 1643 Recueil des privileges de Bourges is located at the BNF, Réserve, LK7–­1331. On Catherinot’s place within the networks of erudite scholars in Bourges, see my “Réseaux savants et choix documentaires.” 34. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 80, marginal comment.

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of Anne Ragueau, wife of Estienne Gougnon, both of whom were the parents of the same Jacques Gougnon.35 Given that so many of these comments relate to this Jacques Gougnon, father of the chevalier, and are in a different hand, it seems likely that this volume originally belonged to the avocat du roi and was commented on by him before it passed into the hands of his son.36 As might be expected in a community where the mayor and échevins had been granted the right of nobility, much of the commentators’ attention also revolved around this privilege. Thus, in his copy of the Recueil des privileges de Bourges, Nicolas Catherinot heavily annotated the June 1474 letters patent granting this right, as well as the 1634 confirmation that the échevinage of Bourges had worked so hard to obtain.37 In the chevalier Gougnon’s copy of Chenu’s Recueil des antiquitez, many of the comments on the privileges of other cities also focus on the question of ennoblement. For example, whenever the privilege of nobility was mentioned in the privileges of La Rochelle or Tours, Jacques Gougnon senior signaled the fact by marking “noblesse” in the margin.38 The Gougnons, father and son, also clearly demonstrated their interest in the catalogues of mayors provided by Chenu for other cities in France. Next to the list of the prévôts des marchands of Paris, the chevalier Gougnon noted that a better table could be found in “Chevillart”—­meaning, the list of the Prévosts des marchands, échevins, procureurs du roi, greffiers et receveurs de la ville de Paris compiled by three generations of the Chevillard family and published in 1703.39 The avocat du roi also felt that Chenu’s collection of these mayoral lists could be improved on and thus he copied in by hand the entire catalogue of the mayors of Angoulême based on Jean Sanson’s Les noms et ordre des maires, eschevins et conseillers, de la Maison Commune d’Angoulesme, Dépuis la concession des Privileges de Noblesse (1651).40 This 35. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 70, marginal comment.

36. Other examples include, 78 (Michel) and 80 (Bochetel), marginal comments. For the remainder of this article, I will assume that Jacques Gougnon, avocat du roi, was indeed one of the commentators of Chenu’s Recueil des antiquitez, although this identification must remain speculative. 37. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), 27–­33, 83–­86, marginal comments and underlinings.

38. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 219, 240, 292, 298, 319, marginal comments and underlinings. 39. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 336, marginal comment.

40. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 519 et seq. (ms. pages with the title “Par M. I. Sanson Avocat en Parlement chez Mauelaire. Les noms des maires d’Angoulesme depuis la concession des Priuileges de la Noblesse . . .”).

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addition demonstrates that these mayoral lists were conceived as a fundamental part of the work as a whole, particularly when they concerned towns, such as Angoulême, that had acquired the privilege of nobility for members of the corps de ville. Despite the interest that mayoral lists from other cities could provoke, the commentators’ main interest was clearly focused on the list of the previous mayors and échevins of Bourges. Chenu, as previously mentioned, was the first to do research to assemble such a list and make it available to the reading public, and although the authors of subsequent editions of Bourges’s privileges updated this list, very little progress was made in filling in the numerous gaps for the fifteenth century until Gaspard Thaumas de la Thaumassière put out his Histoire de Berry in 1689.41 However, this did not stop readers from attempting to correct these lists as published and from rendering their published text as up to date as possible. Thus, where the mayors and échevins were still unaccounted for in the years from 1475 to 1481 and from 1483 to 1485 in the 1643 Recueil des privileges de Bourges, a reader (almost certainly Catherinot) added in the names of the mayors for those years, by consulting an armillary of the mayors and échevins of Bourges that Jean Chaumeau had included in his Histoire de Berry published in 1566.42 He does not seem to have been aware that the names of these mayors were completely wrong and that there were in fact no mayors of Bourges in 1484 and 1485! Further, an owner of the text (again, most likely Catherinot) was concerned to bring this list up to date by adding a number of manuscript pages in which the mayors and échevins were written in from 1643 to 1688.43 A second copy of the 1643 Recueil des privileges de Bourges also has such a list added, this time up to 1718.44 41. This assertion is based on careful comparison of all of the versions of the collections of Bourges’s privileges, as well as the two versions of the Histoire de Berry of Jean Chaumeau and Thaumas de la Thaumassière. Chaumeau provided an armillary of all of the mayors, échevins, and municipal officers having served in Bourges’s corps de ville, but he did not provide the years in which these individuals served and divided up the families according to the different categories of office they had held within the corps de ville. See Chaumeau, Histoire de Berry, 187–­214. 42. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), 98, marginal comments. These additional names clearly came from Chaumeau’s work, since they are identical to the individuals whom Chaumeau names as mayors of Bourges at the beginning of his armillary, and Catherinot specifically cited Chaumeau as his source for the mayors of Bourges in his Fastes consulaires de Bourges, 4.

43. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), ms. pages located between pp. 138 and 139 of the text. Catherinot died in 1688. 44. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), BNF, Réserve LK7–­1331, ms. pages located between pp.

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In addition to this concern for completeness, commentators were also interested in what these lists of mayors and échevins had to say about the social composition of the corps de ville over time. The chevalier Gougnon was incensed that Chenu had labeled a number of échevins as merchants. Accusing Chenu of wishing other families ill in response to his own disappointments, he commented that “the sieur Chenu, not having been able to hold city office himself, through vengeance assigned the quality of merchant to many people inappropriately.”45 Gougnon noted both Jean Ragueau in 1528 and François Riglet in 1529 as examples of such misrepresentations. For Riglet, he simply crossed out the misidentification as a merchant, while Ragueau’s case prompted the marginal exclamation that “[t]he said Ragueau was never a merchant”!46 Similarly, one of the commentators of the 1643 Recueil des privileges de Bourges paid very close attention to the professional offices that the mayors and échevins of Bourges had exercised over time. For example, the compendium indicated that Jean de Salat, mayor of Bourges in 1511, was also lieutenant-­général of the sénéchaussée. The commentator carefully noted this fact by underlining Salat’s judicial office and adding in the margin that he also held the quality of maître des requêtes (master of requests).47 In fact, this question of socio-­professional standing was of such importance to this commentator that he underlined or marked in the margin every time the office or other quality of a mayor or échevin was indicated in the published volume. In addition to the professional attributes of the members of the corps de ville, the authors and readers of the collections of privileges published in Bourges were also highly concerned with the noble status that local families had acquired through civic office. Such concerns appeared especially in reference to the Recueil des privileges de Bourges published in 1643, since in addition to a chronological list of the mayors and échevins of Bourges, this collection of privileges also included an armillary of the families ennobled through civic office, organized by the year in which the

138 and 139 of the text.

45. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 131, marginal comment.

46. Chenu, Recueil des antiquitez, 142, marginal comment and crossed-­out text. A mention of three members of the corps de ville having been merchants in 1532 is similarly excised (143, crossed-­out text). 47. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), 104, marginal comment and underlining.

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first member of the family had held the mayoralty, followed by a similar chronological list for the échevins.48 Such an organization made speedy reference difficult, but it placed considerable emphasis on the length of time that each family could lay claim to nobility. This organization, however, had been subject to dispute. As the Recueil des privileges de Bourges explained, the armillary had originally been the work of Jacques Le Tendre, avocat and expert on the arms and alliances of the great families of France, to which Philippe Labbé, a Jesuit and erudite scholar native to the city, had added information on the years that each member of the family concerned had held municipal office.49 This picture of happy cooperation in the interests of the city offered in the compendium, though, was marred by Labbé’s own complaints, recorded elsewhere, about the organization of the armillary. According to Labbé, he had originally intended to contribute a short history of Bourges to the compendium but had pulled his text when the publisher refused to honor his recommendation, seconded by the decision of the mayor and échevins, to publish the armillary in alphabetical order. As he explained in his Histoire du Berry, his history would have already appeared in print, if the person who had received the commission to print the Privileges had preferred to defer to the judgment of the corps de ville rather than to his own and to keep the alphabetical order of the coats of arms of the mayors and échevins, along with other details, that [Labbé] had prescribed for him in [his] notes, rather than to throw all into confusion by a disorder criticized by all those with the most sense.50 Despite this disagreement, commentators lavished particular attention on the armillary. In the copy of the Recueil des privileges de Bourges owned by Nicolas Catherinot, numerous families have their arms drawn in, their motto added, and information about where their arms were displayed in Bourges indicated in the margin. Following the armillary, a manuscript table of contents corrects its main inconvenience by providing

48. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), 141–­211. 49. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), 211–­12.

50. Labbé, Histoire dv Berry, Aii v–­Aiii r. See also Coulomb, “Chanter la ville,” 76–­78.

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an alphabetical list of the families concerned, complete with the page in the published text on which their arms can be found.51 The commentator of the copy of the Recueil des privileges de Bourges in the Bibliothèque nationale took similar care with his text. This reader also drew in numerous arms, corrected the dates of service for many of the mayors and échevins mentioned, and then added manuscript pages in which he supplied the names and arms of the families whose members had first served as mayor or échevin beginning in 1643.52 The question of the nobility and arms of the principal families of Bourges was obviously of great interest to the readers of these compendia of privileges, and this focus may help to explain why commentators in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries chose to annotate a collection of privileges published in 1643 when there were later editions available. The chevalier Gougnon took a different tack. He drafted his own armillary of the mayors and échevins of Bourges, organized alphabetically by family and based, as he claimed, on extensive independent research.53 Such a focus on professional qualities and familial arms might suggest that readers of these books of privileges looked solely to the social status of local families and sought only to chart the continuities between a previous urban notability and their own. Yet, in addition to such interests, commentators also turned to these published works to provide clues to the past practices of municipal government. Immediately before the catalogue of the mayors and échevins of Bourges in the 1643 Recueil des privileges de Bourges, one commentator wrote out a list of questions regarding the holders of municipal office that he hoped to be able to answer through a careful examination of the list itself. Such questions included whether one had to be a native of Bourges to be elected mayor, whether one could be continued in office, whether avocats and gens du roi (royal attorneys and solicitors) could be elected, whether a mayor who had been deposed could still pretend to nobility, and what happened if someone

51. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), manuscript additions following p. 212.

52. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), BNF, Réserve LK7–­1331, 141–­211, marginal comments and additions, and supplementary manuscript pages following p. 212.

53. BNF, Ms. fr. 32995, “Noms et Armes des Maires et Echevins de la Ville de Bourges &c.” Gougnon’s preface and introductory matter are included on fols. 77r–­96r, and a draft of the armillary itself follows, fols. 97r–­160v.

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died in office.54 The same individual then carefully marked evidence in answer to his questions, indicating circumstances when the same individual held the mayoralty more than once, when a mayor died in office and was replaced with another, when gens du roi held the mayoralty, and when an individual who had been elected mayor refused to serve.55 Although his interests were surely not identical to those of a present-­day urban historian, this early modern commentator examined a catalogue of municipal officeholders to obtain some of the same institutional insights. From the vantage point of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, these catalogues of mayors and échevins were at risk of taking on for their readers the same level of obscurity as they initially project today. Only through intensive research, of the kind in which Robert Descimon has excelled, can modern historians reconstruct the social assumptions informing them. To the uninformed eye, they represent a mute detritus of past politics. Yet, a careful analysis of the customary practices and social expectations embedded within municipal institutions can help to articulate their meanings for the contemporaries who drew them up. Indeed, this is one major lesson of the work of Robert Descimon: that seemingly minor alterations in customary practice can provide a key to the underlying social logic of political institutions, just as the evolving ambitions and expectations of numerous families and social groups could alter the balance of authority within municipal government. For local historians and genealogists of the Old Regime, by comparison, the lists of names could in fact summon up an acquaintance with the family relationships and professional strategies that had granted these individuals a place within the governing elite, and this was a great part of their interest. However, as the confusion over Bourges’s early municipal privileges and ignorance of many of its mayors and échevins show, the subjects of Louis XIV often had to do the kinds of research and attempt to think themselves back to the times of Louis XI and Charles VIII in

54. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), 92, marginal comments.

55. Recueil des privileges de Bourges (1643), 101, 102, 108, 109, 116, 118 (mayors holding office more than once), 101, 106 (death in office), 101, 105 (gens du roi), 114 (refusal of office), 119 (removal from office), marginal comments. This is not an exhaustive list. Although it is not certain that Catherinot authored these questions and marginal comments, he was certainly interested in these concerns. For example, in his Dissertations du droict françois, 15–­17, he addressed the issue of whether mayors of Bourges could legitimately be continued in office beyond their first year and provided examples of the practice.

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some of the same ways as we do today. The extensive commentary of several of Bourges’s erudite scholars and judicial officials on the city’s privileges and catalogues of municipal officeholders is certainly unusual, but it suggests how many of their contemporaries throughout France must have approached this kind of material. Although these urban elites of the seventeenth century may have seen their relationship with the earlier individuals encountered in these lists as one of continuity based on genealogical connections and the support of urban privileges that still held relevance, such as the privilege of nobility, they also had to inquire into the customary practices of the corps de ville in previous times and use the resulting catalogues of names to help interpret those practices’ meaning. Is it any wonder, then, that in first reading Jean Chenu and his commentators, I encountered an echo of the historical concerns of Robert Descimon?

Works cited Archival sources BnF = Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Ms. français 32995: Historical Notes of Jacques Gougnon.

Nouvelles aquisitions françaises (NAF) 6208, fols. 171r–­180v: Correspondence between Jean Chenu and Louis and Sévole de Sainte-­Marthe, 1602–­21.

Published primary sources Catherinot, Nicolas. Dissertations du droict françois. . . . N.p., n.d. ———. Les Fastes consulaires de Bourges. . . . [Bourges, 1684.]

Chaumeau, Jean. Histoire de Berry, contenant l’origine, antiquité, gestes, prouësses, priuileges, & libertés des Berrvyers. . . . Lyon, 1566. Chenu, Jean. Archiepiscoporum et episcoporum Galliae chronologica historia, qua ordo eorundem a temporibus apostolorum incoeptus, ad nostra usque per traducem succedentium servatus, ostenditur. Paris, 1621. ———. Cent notables et singulières questions de droict, décidées par arrests mémorables des cours souveraines de France. . . . Paris, 1603.

———. Notables et singvlieres qvestions de droict decidees par arrests memorables des cours souueraines de France, partie d’iceux prononcez en robbes rouges. Contenans les moyens & raisons decisiues. . . . Centvrie seconde. Paris, 1620. ———. Privileges octroyez avx maires et eschevins, bourgeois, & habitans de la ville & septaine de Bourges, par le Roy Philippe Auguste, en l’an 1181. confirmez & augmentez par ses successeurs, & verifiez ès Cours souueraines. Paris, 1603.

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———. Recueil de reglements notables tant generaux que particuliers, donnez entre ecclesiastiques, pour la celebration du seruice diuin: iuges, magistrats, & autres officiers, royaux, & des seigneurs iustificiers inferieurs & subalternes pour l’exercice de leurs offices, rang, seance, & prerogatiues. . . . Paris, 1602.

———. Recveil de reglemens notables tant generavx qve particvliers, donnez entre ecclesiastiques, pour la celebration du seruice diuin: iuges, magistrats, & autres officiers royaux, & des seigneurs iusticiers inferieurs & subalternes pour l’exercice de leurs offices, rang, seance, prerogratiues, institution & destitution d’iceux. . . . Paris, 1603. ———. Recueil des antiquitez et privileges de la ville de Bovrges, et de plvsievrs autres villes capitales du royaume. Paris, 1621. See notes for locations of copies with marginalia.

Labbé, Philippe. Histoire dv Berry Abbregée dans l’Eloge Panegyriqve de la Ville de Bovrges Capitale Dvdit Pais. . . . Paris, 1647. Privileges de la ville de Bovrges, et confirmation d’icevx. Bourges, [1659].

Privileges de la ville de Bovrges et confirmation d’icevx. Avec la liste chronologiqve des prud’hommes maire et eschevins, qvi ont govverné la ville depvis l’an 1429. ivsqves à la presente année 1661. Avec le blason des armes de levrs familles. Bourges, 1661. Recveil des privileges de la ville de Bovrges. [Bourges], 1643. See notes for locations of copies with marginalia. Thaumas de la Thaumassière, Gaspard. Histoire de Berry. 4 vols. Bourges, 1863–­71.

Secondary sources Bernstein, Hilary J. Between Crown and Community: Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-­Century Poitiers. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.

———. “Réseaux savants et choix documentaires de l’histoire locale française: Écrire l’histoire de Bourges au deuxième moitié du xviie siècle.” Histoire urbaine 28 (August 2010): 65–­84.

Coste, Laurent. Les Lys et le chaperon. Les oligarchies municipales en France de la Renaissance à la Révolution (milieu XVIe siècle–­1789). Pessac: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2007.

Coulomb, Clarisse. “Chanter la ville: Les éloges des villes publiés en France des années 1640 aux années 1780.” In Urbanités: Vivre, survivre, se divertir dans les villes (XVe–­XXe siècle). Études en l’honneur de Christine Lemarre, edited by Dominique Le Page, Jérôme Loiseau, and Alain Rauwel, 75–­87. Dijon: Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2012. Descimon, Robert. “Les Assemblées de l’hôtel de ville de Paris (mi-­XVIe–­mi-­XVIIe siècles).” Paris et Île-­de-­France 38 (1987): 39–­54.

———. “‘The Bourgeoisie Seconde’: Social Differentiation in the Parisian Municipal Oligarchy in the Sixteenth Century, 1500–­1610.” French History 17 (2003): 388–­424.

———.“Le Changement social à Paris de la fin de la Ligue aux États généraux (1594–­1615).” In Lendemains de guerre civile en France sous Henri IV, edited by Michel De Waele, 193–­220. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, Éditions du CIERL, 2011.

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156 a Reading Municipal Lists, Interpreting Civic Practice... ———.“Le Corps de ville et les élections échevinales à Paris aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: Codification coutumière et pratiques sociales.” Histoire, économie, société 13 (1994): 507–­30. ———. “Les de Thou au miroir des archives notariales du XVIe siècle: Les chemins de la haute robe.” In Jacques Auguste de Thou: Écritures et condition robine, edited by Frank Lestringant, 13–­35. Cahiers V. L. Saulnier 24. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-­Sorbonne, 2007. ———. “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV (1594–­1609).” In La Ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’état moderne (XIIe-­XVIIIe siècles), edited by Neithard Bulst and Jean-­Philippe Genet, 113–­50. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1988.

———. “Les Élections échevinales à Paris (mi-­XVIe siècle–­1679): Analyse des procédures formelles et informelles.” In Élections et pouvoirs politiques du VIIe au XVIIe siècle, edited by Corinne Péneau, 239–­77. Paris: Bière, 2009. ———.“Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVIIe siècles: Du bon usage du Cabinet des titres.” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 155 (1997): 607–­44. ———. “La Ligue à Paris (1585–­1594): Une Révision.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 37 (1982): 72–­111.

———. “Prise de parti, appartenance sociale et relations familiales dans la Ligue Parisienne (1585–­1594).” In Les Réformes, enracinement socio-­culturel, edited by Bernard Chevalier and Robert Sauzet, 123–­36. Paris: Éditions de la Maisnie, 1985. ———. Qui étaient les Seize? Étude sociale de deux cent vingt-­cinq cadres laïcs de la Ligue radicale parisienne (1585–­1594). Mémoires de la Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l’Île-­de-­France. Paris: Klincksieck, 1983.

———. “Réseaux de famille, réseaux de pouvoir? Les quarteniers de la ville de Paris et le contrôle du corps municipal dans le deuxième quart du XVIe siècle.” In Liens sociaux et actes notariés dans le monde urbain en France et en Europe, edited by François-­Joseph Ruggiu, Scarlett Beauvalet, and Vincent Gourdon, 153–­86. Paris: Presse de l’Université de Paris–­Sorbonne, 2004. ———. “Les Scrutateurs des élections échevinales à Paris (mi-­XVIe/mi-­XVIIe): Des médiateurs de fidélité.” In Paris et ses compagnes sous l’ancien régime: Mélanges offerts à Jean Jacquart, edited by Michel Balard, Jean-­Claude Hervé, and Nicole Lemaître, 195–­209. Paris: Université de Panthéon–­Sorbonne, 1994. ———. “La Vénalité des offices politiques de la ville de Paris (1500–­1681).” Bulletin de la Société d’histoire moderne et contemporaine nos. 3–­4 (1994): 16–­27.

Diefendorf, Barbara B. Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Mouysset, Sylvie. Le Pouvoir dans la bonne ville: Les consuls de Rodez sous l’ancien régime. Rodez and Toulouse: Société des lettres, sciences et arts de l’Aveyron and CNRS, Université de Toulouse-­Mirail, 2000. Raynal, Louis. Histoire du Berry depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu’en 1789. Vol. 3. Bourges, 1844.

Rivaud, David. Les Villes et le roi (v. 1440–­v. 1560): Les municipalités de Bourges, Poitiers et Tours et l’émergence de l’État moderne. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007.

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Robbins, Kevin. “The Social Mechanisms of Urban Rebellion: A Case Study of Leadership in the 1614 Revolt at La Rochelle.” French Historical Studies 19 (1995): 559–­90. Saupin, Guy. Nantes au XVIIe siècle: Vie politique et société urbaine. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1996.

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Chapter 7

Qui étaient les députés? An Unknown Group of Protestant Leaders on the Eve of the First War of Religion Philip J. Benedict Robert Descimon’s Qui étaient les Seize? provided an extraordinarily rich and detailed social analysis of one of the most important groups of lay militants from the era of the French Wars of Religion, the cadres of the urban wing of the Paris League of the period from 1585 to 1594. In homage to that work, I would like to offer here a similar study of a comparable, if much smaller, group of lay militants associated with the other “revolutionary party” of the era, the Protestant party, or, as Catholic historians of the time often called it, “la ligue des Huguenots.” Specifically, my subject is a key group of spokesmen for and leaders of the cause from the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the religious wars: the deputies sent by the provincial synods of the Reformed churches to represent their interests at court. A few other figures who spoke for the cause at assemblies in these years and went on to assume leadership roles at the local or provincial level during the following decades will also be discussed.

This article is a translation and reworking of Philip Benedict and Nicolas Fornerod, “Les Députés des Églises réformées à la cour en 1561–1562,” Revue historique 315 (2013): 289–332. Thanks are due to the Revue historique for permission to reproduce material first published there and to Nicolas Fornerod for his abundant assistance.

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These deputies have been almost entirely overlooked by historians, yet in the year of extraordinary growth and critical decisions for the French Reformed cause that ran from the spring of 1561 to the spring of 1562, they were among the party’s chief agents and decision-­ makers. They were called into being by a decision of the second national synod of the Reformed churches, held in Poitiers in March 1561, that ordered each synodal province to “send a person to reside at court to solicit on behalf of the church, which persons will deliberate jointly so that their requests and other actions concerning religion will be in agreement.”1 Within two months, at least four provinces had named their “solliciteurs.” By August the churches had twenty representatives at court who accompanied Theodore Beza and the other Reformed ministers to Poissy when they addressed the Catholic prelates assembled there.2 The tasks these men carried out were diverse. Collectively, they submitted requests to the king and Queen Mother in the name of the churches, negotiated the terms for the doctrinal discussions at Poissy, named the ministers who spoke there, organized petition campaigns via circular letters, and offered guidance on how to respond to the important royal edicts of July 1561 and January 1562. Individually, they acted to defend the interests of the churches of their region, demanding justice for the victims of Catholic violence and seeking to discredit reports that their own side might have been responsible for disorder. Since these deputies collaborated closely with both leading Protestant grandees and the most eminent ministers close to the court, their exact role in shaping the strategies pursued by the Protestant cause cannot be isolated. At the very least, they were central agents in implementing these strategies. They probably also played an important role in determining them. The presence of these deputies at court was announced to the world on the title page of two editions of Beza’s harangue at Poissy, a 1. All quotations from the acts of the national synods in this essay are based on the transcription made by Bernard Roussel of the most faithful copy of the early synodal decisions, British Library, Ms. Rawlinson D 638(2). The article in question here is numbered 55. I am deeply grateful to Bernard Roussel for sharing this information with me in advance of the publication of his new edition of the acts of the national synods.

2. As shown by the title page of two editions of La Harangue faicte par Monsieur Theodore de Besze, Ministre de la parole de Dieu, accompagné d’autres unze Ministres et de vingt Deputés des Eglises reformees du Royaume de France . . . en l’abbaye des Nonnains de Poissy (underlining mine), cited in Gardy, Bibliographie . . . de Théodore de Bèze, 90–­91.

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speech that Protestant printers hastened to publish to show the world that their ministers were being received at court as equals of the Catholic bishops. Thereafter, the delegates quickly dropped from view. The Tortorel and Perrissin etching that would enduringly shape the visual memory of Poissy omits them. Passing references pop up in works from the Histoire ecclésiastique des Eglises Réformées au Royaume de France (1580) through Lucien Romier’s Catholiques et huguenots à la cour de Charles IX (1924), but only in 1956, with Robert M. Kingdon’s Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France 1555–­1563, would a historian correctly observe the moment of their creation and devote as much as a full paragraph to them. Even Kingdon, while speculating that “much of the rising influence of the Protestant party at the Court in the period including and following the Colloquy of Poissy might conceivably be traced to these deputies,” could find out little about what they did and had to say that their activities were “mysterious.”3 Then they were forgotten again. A recently published article by Olivier Christin acutely observes how the constitution of deputations bearing requests and remonstrances enabled the Protestant party to establish itself as a recognized interlocutor of the Crown amid the assemblage of corporative bodies that was the French monarchy, but it displays no awareness of who the deputies were and how they were appointed, even while mentioning them several times.4 In the course of editing the earliest provincial synods and other documents of the French Reformed churches from the years 1557 to 1561, Nicolas Fornerod and I were able to dispel much of the mystery surrounding these men and discover the names of twenty-­two of them. Even without Descimon’s uncanny skill for locating documents about chosen individuals in the briny deeps of France’s notarial archives, we were able to identify and reconstruct essential biographical details for between sixteen and nineteen of them. After briefly sketching the institutional history of the Reformed deputies, this article will spell out the results of this research and offer a collective portrait of the group.

3. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion, 86. 4. Christin, “Compter, se compter, escompter.”

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A brief institutional history of the deputies5 Although it was already common in the early sixteenth century for large cities to send legal representatives to court when they wished to petition for the reduction of a newly imposed tax or otherwise defend their interests, the deputies of the Reformed churches arose in response to letters patent issued by the Crown itself on 16 March 1560, just as the Conspiracy of Amboise was coming to a boil. Meant to show that the king was willing to listen to petitions from his obedient subjects, the royal decree threatened punishment for those who persisted in the “damnable course” of assembling in armed groups under the pretense of presenting their confession of faith, but gave permission to those who renounced this course and dispersed “to send before us one or several of their number with their requests and remonstrances so that we may consider them and respond as appropriate, promising them on our word as king that they or their deputies will not be questioned on account of their presentation.”6 As the always-­perspicacious Romier remarked, “From a legal and political standpoint, this clause by itself marked a revolution. It implicitly gave the Reformed the right to assemble, or at least to work collectively as a group, and it furnished them with a legal means that they would use to negotiate with the king.”7 Since the act of 16 March was followed within several days by a bloody wave of repression touched off after armed conspirators sought to seize Amboise with the apparent goal of capturing leading royal counselors and perhaps even the king himself, the Reformed churches did not initially trust this invitation to send formal delegations to court. Instead, when groups of the “faithful who seek to live according to the reformation of the gospel” in Normandy and Brittany sought in May 1560 to communicate copies of their confession of faith to the king, they took the route of secretly delivering packets containing the confession of faith to the Parlements of Rouen and Rennes along with a letter urging the judges to pass it along to the king. But after Admiral Coligny openly presented two 5. Full documentation for all of the assertions in this section may be found in Benedict and Fornerod, “Députés des Églises réformées,” 291–­99. References are provided here only for direct quotations and information not found in the prior version. 6. Fontanon, Edicts et ordonnances, 4:263. 7. Romier, Conjuration d’Amboise, 167.

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petitions requesting rights of worship that he said had been given him by groups of the faithful at the Fontainebleau Assembly of Notables in August, and after he escaped punishment for this act despite the demand of several indignant ecclesiastics, the Reformed grew bolder. A letter of the duc de Joyeuse dated 5 September reveals the presence at court of several deputies sent by the Protestants of Nîmes, the first known reference to the dispatching of advocates by an individual church.8 Throughout that autumn, churches or groups of Protestant laymen had spokesmen take the floor at the assemblies held to elect delegates to the upcoming Estates General to urge that the Reformed be granted the right to assemble for worship and to advocate the election of men favorable to the cause. By late in the year, churches in different parts of the country were working in concert. The provincial synod of Guyenne held at Clairac on 19 November 1560 chose two syndics to represent the churches of the region at the upcoming Estates General of Orléans, where they were to present demands and an apology “of the form and style adopted by the other churches of France.”9 When François II died at the very end of the year, John Calvin was sufficiently aware of the importance of the clause in the letters patent of 16 March concerning the right to present requests to urge Antoine de Navarre to do all he could to ensure the preservation of this “freedom.”10 The Protestants’ attempt to advance their cause at the electoral assemblies for the Estates General met only limited success, for in many areas they were prevented from participating. The Reformed nonetheless went ahead with the bold step of sending their own delegates to Orléans, in effect acting as if they were a regular component of the body politic. On 27 January 1561, these men presented a petition complaining about abuses in the electoral assemblies. After the Crown, frustrated by the Estates’ refusal to consider financial matters, dissolved the Orléans gathering and let it be known that a second representative assembly would be convoked to address the budgetary crisis that it faced, some of the Reformed continued to work together to make the most of the opportunity presented by the revival of the Estates General. Instructions

8. Devic and Vaisette, Histoire générale du Languedoc, 12/2:570. 9. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 12. 10. Calvin, Opera, 18:284 (no. 3302).

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were circulated among the churches outlining a strategy both for electing delegates favorable to the cause and for gaining approval of a series of demands that served its interests. Just who initiated this effort and drafted the plan cannot be deduced from the surviving evidence. What is known is that these instructions were personally delivered to the consistory of Le Mans at its meeting of 12 March by one of the most important of the future deputies to court, Gervais Barbier de Francourt.11 At almost exactly the same time, the national synod of the churches decreed that each synodal province should send a deputy to court and drew up a long memorandum for presentation at the upcoming meeting of the Estates. The rapid implementation of this decision is revealed by the four extant sets of acts of provincial synods from the subsequent two months. All four reveal the nomination of one or more deputies or “solicitors.” They do not assign these men exactly the same tasks. They also contain ambiguities that hint at possible errors by copyists. Nonetheless, it emerges clearly that the deputies—­perhaps the same individuals, perhaps different ones—­were expected both to transmit to the Crown grievances concerning misfortunes the churches had suffered and to work to present the confession of faith and requests for public worship to the king, either at court or at the upcoming meeting of the Estates General. The decisions taken by the synods of Berry and Normandy also call upon the churches of those provinces to furnish the deputies with signed procurations or petitions requesting rights of worship.12 By 11 June the system of deputies was up and running, for on that date the first of a number of printed petitions was presented to the king at court “by the deputies of the churches scattered within the kingdom that desire to live according to the purity of the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” as the title page of one printed version states; the journal of the Catholic conseiller au Parlement Nicolas Brulart simply notes that the requête was delivered by Jean Raguier d’Esternay of Champagne “accompanied by other gentlemen.”13 The system of deputies functioned 11. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 193. On this initiative, see also the pioneering article of Valois, “Les États de Pontoise.”

12. For the texts of the decisions see Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 33–­34, 41, 43, 52, 61. 13. La Requeste presentee au Roy par les deputez des Eglises esparses parmi le Royaume de France, qui desirent vivre selon la pureté de l’Evangile de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ. Avec la Confession de leur Foy (n.p., 1561). Two other editions with a slightly different title are known to have been published as

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vigorously for the next nine months, until the massacre of Vassy (1 March 1562), the subsequent Protestant withdrawal from court, and the seizure of Orléans forced the deputies to disperse. During this time, the number of envoys waxed and waned as new representatives replaced old ones and men shuttled back and forth between the capital and the provinces. A special effort appears to have been made to ensure a large presence at the Estates General of Pontoise and the Colloquy of Poissy. Accounts of the latter event variously speak of the presence of twenty and twenty-­two deputies.14 Evidently, the envoys divided themselves between Paris and whatever royal castle the king was occupying at the time. An avis issued collectively on 1 November 1561 was drafted by Theodore Beza and the six deputies then present at Saint-­Germain-­en-­Laye “in the absence of the others who are in Paris.”15 Although the system of deputies could not function during the first civil war, the churches wanted it to endure. The third national synod, which met in Orléans just weeks after the Protestant takeover in 1562, decreed new rules. The principle of equality in decision making that the first national synod had established among the churches was extended to the deputies as well, none of whom was to assert precedence or authority over any other. The deputies were also not to exceed their instructions except under urgent circumstances without consulting back with their province of origin, and all avis they circulated were declared to be non-­ binding, with final powers of decision reserved for the provincial synods.16 When the fourth national synod met in 1563, five months after the Peace of Amboise, the provincial synods were instructed to reactivate the system by sending “solicitors to court to handle their affairs,” who were to “follow the memoranda sent them and  .  .  . not undertake anything of importance without first communicating it to their provinces,” as well as to collaborate with the ministers present at court.17 Although few synodal

well in 1561, one in Paris by an unknown publisher, the other in Lyon by Jean Saugrain. The deputies are mentioned in the title of all three versions, which would of course have served to announce their existence to the world and imply their legitimacy as interlocutors with the crown. Brulart’s journal entry may be found in Mémoires de Condé, 1:39. 14. [Beza], Histoire ecclésiastique, 1:559; La Place, Commentaires, fol. 242v. 15. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 112–­13.

16. BL, Ms. Rawlinson D 638(2), national synod of 1562, article 9, as transcribed by Bernard Roussel. 17. BL, Ms. Rawlinson D 638(2), national synod of 1563, article 37.

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acts survive from the following years, the provinces of Normandy, Île-­de-­ France-­Picardy-­Champagne, Burgundy, Provence, and Saintonge are all known to have dispatched deputies to court in 1563 to 1564; some were permanent envoys, others only undertook specific missions. A process of mutation began soon thereafter that is not easy to follow across the subsequent decades of civil war. It would seem probable that during the 1564 to 1566 royal tour of France, the churches did not want to pay a score of envoys to troop after the court, but preferred to send individual deputies to state their concerns when the king passed nearby.18 In any event, whether because some provinces no longer had a solicitor at court in 1567 or because the deputies were continuing to act too independently, the sixth national synod, held just weeks before the outbreak of the second civil war, felt compelled to order the provincial synods strictly to observe the rules laid down in 1562. Hugues Daussy recently brought to light an important règlement of July 1567 that sought to place the military and political organization of the Protestant cause in the hands of a new set of councils separate from the synods. This too decreed that each province maintain at court “without interruption a nobleman or other faithful person of upright life with the requisite qualities and skill in the management of affairs” to defend the churches’ interests. It is not known whether any part of this plan was ever implemented, however.19 With the outbreak of the second civil war in September 1567, then the third a year later, any Protestant deputies who might have been at court would no longer have been safe. Nor would they have been safe during or after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre. As a result, the first phase in the history of the deputies apparently ended in 1567. When the Protestants began to construct a new set of councils to assure strategic coordination between the churches of different provinces in the aftermath of the massacre, the political assemblies whose structure was hammered out between 1573 and 1575 became the key agents of coordination. These dispatched representatives to court from time to time to convey their demands. The assembly of 1582 even sent a man to represent it on a more permanent basis. The same sort of smaller delegation chosen by the churches at the national rather than provincial level was what

18. I owe this suggestion to Hugues Daussy.

19. Daussy, Le Parti huguenot, 578–­83, esp. 582.

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came to endure under the regime of the Edict of Nantes, after Henri IV granted permission in 1601 for the Reformed to delegate one nobleman and one man with a legal education, chosen “in the general assembly of the churches or the national synod or in some other manner” to reside at court and provide the king with designated interlocutors.20

Missions and activities of the deputies, 1561–­1562 During their months of most intense activity, from June 1561 to March 1562, the twenty or so deputies active at any given moment undertook a wide range of missions. First of all, they spoke collectively on behalf of the church. The already mentioned request of 11 June that is their first known collective declaration asked for freedom of worship. Other requêtes quickly followed. If the title page of the printed version is to be believed—­no contemporary source confirms that it was actually delivered to the Crown—­a second one was delivered just six days later, denying the accusation that ministers in Guyenne and Normandy were preaching that Christians did not have to pay taxes.21 After the 11 June request was transmitted to the Parlement of Paris for its opinion, a third request, again known only through its printed version, challenged the court’s impartiality in matters of heresy.22 On 27 July the deputy of Normandy, Simon de Piennes, seigneur de Moigneville, flanked by several colleagues, addressed the Queen Mother to clarify a prior statement that the deputies understood had upset her. He was only speaking as the Crown’s loyal servant explaining the limits of Christian duty, he said, when he previously declared that in matters concerning the honor and service of God, the apostles taught that obedience was due to God, not man. He had also stated on that earlier occasion that certain members of the faith were willing to sacrifice their lives if the rest would be granted liberty

20. On the system of deputies as it developed in the later decades of the sixteenth century and endured until 1685, see Anquez, Histoire des assemblées politiques, esp. 35, 208; Deyon, Du Loyalisme au refus. 21. La seconde Requeste presentee au Roy le XVII. de juin, M.D.LXI. Par les deputez des Eglises esparses parmi le Royaume de France ([Lyon]: [Saugrain], 1561), reprinted in Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 84–­85.

22. La troisieme Requeste presentee au Roy. Par les deputez des Eglises esparces parmy le Royaume de France ([Lyon]: [Saugrain], 1561), reprinted in Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 86–­87.

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of worship.23 On 17 August, the deputies presented the terms that they judged necessary to ensure their doctrines a fair hearing at Poissy, with one of the two ministers who accompanied them, François de Saint-­Paul, serving as their spokesman before the king, the Queen Mother, and the royal council.24 After introducing themselves at court between June and August with this rapid-­fire series of requests and position statements, the deputies subsequently presented fewer collective petitions. The only other one known prior to the outbreak of the first civil war was presented to the king at the outset of the assembly of notables convoked at Saint-­ Germain-­en-­Laye to deliberate about how to respond to the growing religious division. Claiming now to possess signed requests and procurations from 2,150 or more Reformed churches across the kingdom, the deputies asked this gathering, which would subsequently hammer out the terms of the edict of January for the repeal of all edicts concerning religion promulgated since the accession of François II, for rights of public worship, and for the concession of church buildings for their use.25 The statement of 17 August specifying the procedures they hoped to see adopted for the Colloquy of Poissy was only one indication of the central role played by the deputies in arranging that important event. The other minister present on 17 August, Augustin Marlorat, had already written to Calvin a month previously to tell him that the deputies had been asked to choose the ministers who would speak on the Protestants’ behalf at such a gathering.26 Four days later a letter was dispatched to Geneva’s pastors in the deputies’ name. It merely certified that the message its bearer was to communicate emanated from them, but since it was just one of a number of letters that arrived in Geneva at the same time to announce that the Reformed theologians had been invited to Poissy and to ask Beza to come—­other letters were signed by the church of Paris, Antoine de Navarre, Louis, prince of Condé, and Coligny—­it seems reasonable to assume that the messenger made the same appeal. That all of the letter-­writers coordinated their action is suggested by the fact that

23. Ibid., 91–­93.

24. Beza, Correspondance, 3:132–­33; Calvin, Opera, 18:644–­45; La Supplication et requeste quatrieme presentee au Roy, par les deputez des Eglises de France ([Lyon]: [A. Du Rhône for Jean Saugrain], 1561), reprinted in Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 102–­5. 25. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 156–­58. 26. Calvin, Opera, 18:548.

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the missive from the church of Paris indicated that it had been written at the behest of the deputies.27 In addition to speaking for the churches at court and helping to arrange the Colloquy of Poissy, the deputies also sent out circular letters to the churches coordinating nationwide initiatives and advising local congregations how to react to important royal ordinances. In the wake of the edict of July that appeared to renew and reinforce prior laws prohibiting religious assemblies other than Catholic parish worship, a letter signed by Coligny’s chaplain Jean-­Raymond Merlin “on behalf and in the name of your good brothers and friends the deputies of the churches of this kingdom” informed the churches that they did not need to obey the edict to the letter, for the deputies had been led to believe that the king and his council would allow them to assemble so long as they did so discreetly. In the same letter, Merlin let it be known that the Crown had promised the deputies that theologians of their choice would be allowed to speak at Poissy. Despite the apparent severity of the edict of July, the churches could thus hope that the long-­awaited moment when the king would hear out their arguments would soon arrive.28 When the continued growth of the Protestant movement over the subsequent months rendered the edict of July toothless and convinced the Crown that it would have to summon a new group of notables to Saint-­Germain to draft still another edict of religion, it was the deputies who organized via circular letter the remarkable three-­pronged lobbying campaign that marked the last months of 1561: the churches were urged at once to send delegations to upcoming meetings of their provincial Estates to push for toleration and temples, to collect signed proxies from as many churches and communities as possible for the deputies to take with them to Saint-­Germain, and to press those deputies to the Estates General of Pontoise who had supported the call there for freedom of Reformed worship to come to the assembly as well to reiterate the demand.29 The consistory records of Le Mans reveal that

27. Calvin, Opera, 18:553–­55, 562; Beza, Correspondance, 3:119–­23.

28. Delaborde, Protestants à la cour de Saint-­Germain, 78–­80; Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 94–­97.

29. This episode is described in detail in Benedict and Fornerod, “Les 2150 ‘églises’ réformées,” 536–­ 43, where it is shown that the instructions of the October circular letter were carried out. The circular letter itself is in Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 112–­15.

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it had already received a prior letter from the deputies at court on 18 August.30 While its contents are not recorded, the consistory of Nîmes, the only other church whose consistory minutes survive from this period, instructed the nearby congregations on 12 September “to establish associations [scindicatz] if this has not already been done and furnish them to the deputies at court with a note that the number of churches has grown by more than two-­thirds and continues daily to augment.”31 This would suggest that already by the summer, circular letters were being used to promote two tactics central to Protestant political strategy in this period: forming syndicates to speak collectively for groups of Reformed supporters, and gathering information meant to show how large the movement had become and thus how costly and futile it would be to try to eliminate it. Around the turn of the year 1561/62, still further circular letters were used to warn the churches of the danger of Spanish intervention, to instruct them to let the deputies know how many armed men they could provide the Crown if this came to pass, and to advise them how to react to the edict of January.32 The deputies did not work alone in drafting letters and speaking for the cause at court; they met regularly with leading pastors, coordinated efforts with noble champions of the faith, and sought to keep Calvin in the loop. A letter from Beza to Calvin dated 6 January 1562 reveals how closely all of these partners cooperated. In it, Beza first explains that he rewrote a request on behalf of the churches that had been drafted in his absence because he considered that it was rambling and badly structured. He also indicates that the idea of having the churches report how many armed men they could supply in case of foreign intervention came from Coligny. While he would have liked to have been able to solicit Calvin’s opinion about this, he wrote apologetically, he simply could not—­events were moving too fast.33 Evidently Calvin’s input was sought as a matter of course when circumstances were different. 30. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 203. 31. BnF, Ms. fr. 8666, fol. 33.

32. The existence of the first letter must be inferred from contextual evidence; Benedict and Fornerod, “Les 2150 ‘Églises’ réformées,” 544–­46. The second letter has been frequently published, most recently in Stegmann, Édits des guerres de religion, 15–­21. See also Pithou de Chamgobert, Chronique de Troyes, 1:337–­41; Beza, Correspondance, 4:248–­53; and Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 159–­64. 33. Beza, Correspondance, 4:17.

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Still another important task of the deputies was that of protecting the interests of the brethren of their province. At the September 1561 synod of Peyraud, the synodal province of Dauphiné-­Lyonnais established a particularly elaborate system for channeling complaints from that region to its deputies. Churches that believed themselves aggrieved were invited to “collect the ills done them on grounds of religion by judges or private individuals in the best form possible” and to send the documentation to a member of the church who was also a magistrate. He would in turn determine if the matter merited an appeal to the king. If it did, he would pass the dossier along to the deputy at court. Individuals who had suffered were likewise encouraged to send along the facts of their case together with a power of attorney, so that their interests could be defended at collective expense.34 The system quickly began to function: just a few weeks later, eighteen noblemen from the region of Montélimar met before a notary to draw up such a power of attorney so that the province’s deputy could contest the efforts of a royal official to seize their property for violating the law on religious assemblies.35 Individual churches also dispatched their own delegates to seek redress of grievances, as Annonay’s church did in May 1561 after the Parlement of Toulouse issued an order forbidding it to assemble on pain of death.36 The churches of Provence likewise sent a special deputy to Pontoise while the Estates General were meeting in August in an effort to disqualify the regularly seated delegate of the province, who had been opposing the Protestants’ maneuvers during the assembly. Although this envoy, the Aixois lawyer Isoard Mouton, was not successful in this mission, he would remain at court and be integrated into the group of permanent deputies.37 The deputies could also be used to try to resolve unanticipated legal issues that arose as the Reformed churches grew better organized and emerged into the open. After judges refused to recognize marriages performed before the church, the provincial synod of the Île-­de-­France, Champagne, and Picardy turned to its deputy and asked him to seek a

34. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 106–­8. 35. AD Drôme, 2E 15566, fols. 214–­15.

36. Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. fr. 197a, fol. 111; Arnaud, Histoire des Protestants du Vivarais, 1:22.

37. Bibliothèque du Sénat (Paris), Ms. 379, fol. 206 and passim; Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 112.

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royal declaration certifying their validity.38 Damage control was still another facet of their work. As agitation spread across the southwest in the fall of 1561, the king’s “very humble and obedient subjects and servants, those of the Reformed churches of Guyenne,” dispatched a special deputy to court to explain why their enemies slandered them when they called them seditious.39 When the churches of Bas-­Languedoc suspended the minister Sans Tartas for having orchestrated iconoclastic raids in several villages near Sauve, they sent an account of the affair and of the punishment meted out to the deputy at court so that he could present the incident in the best light.40 For their part, the deputies at court regularly appealed to the churches in their home provinces to remain calm, for they were only too aware of the damage that reports of disorderly behavior did to the cause’s reputation at the center of power. The deputies of the Orléanais, Guyenne, and Rouergue are all known to have written letters urging calm to the churches of their provinces. A circular letter of January 1562 signed by Beza on behalf of the deputies issued a general appeal to the faithful to demonstrate that Christ has taught them to be “patient and compliant [debonnaire].”41 A final task of the deputies was to serve as intermediaries between the churches and the great court aristocrats who served as governors or special royal commissioners. When the Count of Crussol was sent to the Rhône Valley in early 1562 to pacify Provence and urge the Huguenots of Languedoc to surrender the church buildings they had seized, Nîmes sent two deputies to welcome him and offer him military aid in disarming the Catholic chieftain Flassans and his men.42 Antoine de Montlauzun, who would be chosen in April 1561 to represent the synodal province of Haut-­Languedoc, Quercy, and Rouergue at court, had acted as a virtual double agent after being asked some months previously to act as a go-­between between Montauban, Antoine de Navarre, and Navarre’s lieutenant-­general in Guyenne, Burie. As the tale is recounted in the Protestants’ own Histoire ecclésiastique, this “man of great piety who never

38. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 132.

39. Tamizey de Larroque, Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de l’Agenais, 94–­95. 40. BnF, Ms. fr. 8666, fol. 24; Ménard, Histoire . . . Nismes, 4:302.

41. [Beza], Histoire ecclésiastique, 1:824, 890–­91; 3:222; Beza, Correspondance, 3:296.

42. BnF, Ms. fr. 8666, fol. 67; Ménard, Histoire . . . Nismes, 4:327–­31.

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spared himself for God’s church” was at court after having carried a request there when he was asked by Antoine de Navarre to convey back to the southwest a letter instructing Burie to halt illegal preaching in Montauban and to restore order. Rather than taking the letter straight to Burie, Montlauzun went to the city on the Tarn and showed the instructions to a “council of certain selected individuals,” which convinced him not to deliver the missive to its intended recipient. At the same time he delivered a second letter to the city fathers enjoining them to obey the king and his lieutenants, even while telling them that the court now looked favorably on Protestantism and that they should attend its services. With the letter for Burie undelivered, he hastened back to court carrying a supplication from the church of Montauban urging Navarre not to believe the false reports its enemies circulated about it.43 One can only wonder how much behavior such as this contributed to alienating Antoine de Navarre from the Protestant cause. The best way to grasp the full range of tasks assumed by the deputies is to follow the movements of those about whom we are best informed. Thanks to the survival of the minutes of Le Mans’s consistory, we can do this particularly well for Gervais Barbier, seigneur de Francourt, a lawyer of that city who was chosen as one of the elders of the church when its consistory was established in January 1561, and who several months later was chosen to represent the churches of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine at court. Francourt faithfully attended consistory meetings throughout January and February 1561 but missed that of 4 March before returning on the 12th carrying the document communicating the coordinated strategy for electing delegates to the upcoming Estates General favorable to the Reformed cause. Four days later he left town again to seek out the provincial governor, the Duke of Montpensier, and to let him know that there was no need to send troops to the city; reports of a recent religious riot there had been much exaggerated. His mission was unsuccessful. The church had to stop gathering when the troops came to town. When the church began to meet again in August, Francourt was at court carrying out his duties as deputy. He remained there for two months, accompanying the ministers to Poissy and writing several letters back to Le Mans, the contents of which are not divulged by the consistory records. For its

43. [Beza], Histoire ecclésiastique, 1:919–­20.

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part, the church’s governing body wrote to him asking him to help it obtain a church building for its assemblies. Francourt returned to Le Mans for the 6 November consistory meeting. Here, he read out the circular letter explaining the deputies’ three-­pronged strategy for winning toleration and temples and agreed to write one of the letters specified in it. He also wrote to Beza, whom he had gotten to know at court, urging that the Genevan minister Pierre Merlin be allowed to stay and serve the local church. He took charge of putting together a delegation to petition the lieutenant-­general to authorize the church’s recently initiated public assemblies. When news arrived from Saint-­Christophe that the Count of Sancerre had attacked the faithful there, he rushed off to Château-­du-­Loir to consult with representatives of the other churches of the province about how best to obtain reparations. The strategy they devised must have been good, for two months later the consistory records show that the widows of the victims had won compensation. Finally, in early December, he returned to court, where he seems to have stayed until the aftermath of the massacre of Vassy. During these months, the church wrote him seeking advice from the brethren of Paris about what a member with rights of presentation to a Catholic benefice should do when the benefice fell vacant. After Vassy, Francourt accompanied Beza to a royal audience to demand justice.44 While Francourt spent much of the year 1561/62 at court, Pierre Chabot was as busy within his home province of Languedoc as around Paris. Like Francourt, Chabot was a lawyer and one of the original members of his church’s consistory. He undertook a first mission for the church in March 1561, when he acted as its spokesman at the assembly of the Estates of Languedoc convoked to draw up the province’s cahier de doléances (grievance petition) for the upcoming Estates of Pontoise. Although the chair of the assembly initially refused to recognize him, the clamor of the audience obliged him to yield and Chabot delivered a stirring oration in favor of toleration and the granting of church buildings for Reformed worship. He claimed to possess thirty-­five petitions with 36,000 signatures in support of this. After his motion was defeated, Chabot “was delegated to go to court to plead our cause,” in the words of a Montpellier chronicle of the period. We do not know if he left at once. We do know 44. Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 199, 215, 224, 228, 234, 236, 242, 245–­46, 250–­23, 260, 269, 277, 279, 281; [Beza], Histoire ecclésiastique, 2:3–­4.

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that he was in Nîmes on 14 May for a meeting of the regional church body known as the colloque. The Nîmes consistory register then notes his departure for court on 1 July 1561—­his first departure or his second? By 1 November he was back in Nîmes, where he drew up a petition to the local presidial court requesting a second church building for the Reformed to use for worship, in addition to the one they had taken over by force several months previously. Three weeks later, as “syndic of the Reformed religion and of the inhabitants of Languedoc who wish to serve God in purity according to the doctrine of Jesus Christ,” he was once again in the middle of a tumultuous assembly of the Estates of Languedoc, calling upon the king to consult with the provinces to obtain their advice about whether or not the Reformed should be given church buildings for worship, and arguing that to do so was only reasonable because the number of Protestants had grown so large that private houses no longer could hold their assemblies. Furthermore, he argued, the province as a whole should compensate the Reformed for the numerous harms they had suffered over the course of the past year, in order to prevent “tumults and seditions.” This time he claimed to have no fewer than eighty procurations and syndicats naming him to speak on behalf of the signees. His claim notwithstanding, the majority of the delegates again rejected his proposals, so he again set off for court. When he returned to Nîmes on 1 February 1562, he brought with him a copy of the edict of January.45

Who were the deputies?46 As the activities of Francourt and Chabot show, being a deputy required energy, courage, eloquence, and diplomacy. What kinds of men were called upon to fill this challenging post? A range of sources—­ synod and consistory records, contemporary letters, passing references 45. Ménard, Histoire . . . Nismes, 4:289–­90, 310, 333; 5:Preuves, 285–­88; Devic and Vaissete, Histoire générale du Languedoc, 11:346–­48; Guiraud, Réforme à Montpellier, 2:Preuves, 261; BNF, Ms. fr. 8666, fols. 7ff., 19–­20, 40; Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. fr. 402, fols. 39ff.; AD Haute Garonne, C 2281, as summarized in Inventaire sommaire. Haute Garonne. Série C, 2:59. 46. The sources used to identify the deputies, the problems of identification involved, and the biographical information that it has been possible to accumulate about each are all spelled out in detail in Benedict and Fornerod, “Députés des Églises réformées,” 316–­31 (biographical appendix). Unless otherwise noted, all information in this section is drawn from this appendix. I owe thanks to Hugues Daussy, Natalie Davis, Claire Dolan, and Jacques Maillard for help in identifying these individuals.

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in the Histoire ecclésiastique, and accounts of the colloquy of Poissy that mention the name of some of the deputies present—­reveal the names of twenty-­two individuals who either served as permanent envoys or carried out individual missions for Reformed churches. The list is surely incomplete, for no deputies representing the provinces of Poitou, Saintonge, and Aunis appear, even though these regions housed numerous Protestant churches integrated into the network of synods, and even though La Rochelle’s church is known to have sent an unnamed deputy to court for the colloquy of Poissy. Three of the twenty-­two names—­ “Monsieur de Crisieux” of Dauphiné and the Lyonnais, “le sieur de la Porte” of Guyenne, and “Remond” or “Remont” of the Orléanais—­ cannot be further identified. For three others only a tentative identification can be proposed. “Le sieur de Chaumont pour l’Isle de France” may be Antoine de La Rochefoucaud, seigneur de Chaumont-­sur-­ Loire, who had family connections to the Protestant lieutenant-­general of Champagne, a province that made up part of the Reformed synodal unit of Île-­de-­France, Champagne, and Picardy. “Dumas” or “Dalmas of Provence” could be Jean du Mas, seigneur de l’Isle, a nobleman with lands in Provence who lived in Geneva from 1549 to 1550 and may have been the same person as the Jean du Mas arrested in Valence late in 1561 for submitting a petition for freedom of worship. “Monsieur de La Harderie” of Anjou is probably a member of the noble family of Piédouault, seigneurs of La Harderie. Clearly these three identifications are all speculative. This leaves sixteen individuals who can be identified with relative certainty. These sixteen men were recruited in nearly equal numbers from the ranks of men of the law and of the nobility. Seven deputies were lawyers: Antoine Barnaud of Lyon, Blaireau of Bordeaux, Chabot of Nîmes, Jean Gabet of Vienne, Mouton of Aix, Guillaume Sauzet of Nîmes, and Francourt of Le Mans, who also possessed a seigneury. In contrast, just two were royal officials: René Taron, the king’s advocate in the presidial court of Le Mans, and Gratien de Roussanes, judge in the presidial court of Agen. Furthermore, Roussanes probably was not sitting with his colleagues when he was a deputy, as he is known to have been under indictment at the time for his role in the earliest public manifestations of Reformed activism in Agen. When the Huguenots took over many cities during the first civil war, two more deputies were catapulted into royal office. Gabet became vibailli (co-­chief of the judicial unit known as the

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bailliage) of Vienne, and Barnaud became judge in the sénéchaussée (a legal jurisdiction equivalent to the bailliage) of Lyon. It is also worth noting that two of these men of the law, Francourt and Roussanes, had been legal advisors to the house of Navarre prior to 1562. That so many of the deputies had a legal background seems anything but surprising, given that the Protestant strategy for obtaining recognition following the March 1560 Edict of Amboise relied heavily on speaking and petitioning on behalf of legally constituted syndicats or associations. That royal judges at the bailliage and presidial court level appear less often than lawyers among the deputies also comes as no surprise, even though many such judges played an important role in protecting early Reformed assemblies. Royal officials simply had less freedom of movement and action than ordinary lawyers. They also were most valuable to the cause when they continued to sit with their colleagues and could work to moderate the enforcement of anti-­heresy laws. Alongside these nine men of the law were seven noblemen (not counting Francourt) for whom the identification as a deputy seems secure, not to mention the three for whom the identification is speculative. The seven noblemen other than Francourt identified with a high degree of certainty are Jean du Bois, seigneur de Baulac, of Brittany; François de Barbançon, seigneur de Cany, of Picardy; Jean Raguier, seigneur d’Esternay, of Champagne; Simon de Piennes, seigneur de Moigneville, of Normandy; Claude II d’Arces, seigneur de Réaumont, of Dauphiné; Gaspard Pape, seigneur de Saint-­Auban, also of Dauphiné; and Montlauzun of Quercy. D’Arces constitutes a special case. A former canon of the cathedral chapter of Vienne and prior of Vizille who converted, moved to Geneva in 1559, and trained for the ministry, he was asked by the brethren of Dauphiné to serve as their envoy to court just around the time of his wedding to a noblewoman from Provence. Since he was nearing the end of his pastoral training in Geneva, he refused. Several months later he left the city to head the church in Domène, where he was also the seigneur. By contrast, the noblemen who accepted the call to serve as deputies were generally men with experience in the army, at court, or both. Saint-­Auban and Cany had taken part in the Habsburg-­Valois wars. Cany was also the nephew of François I’s powerful mistress Anne de Pisseleu, Duchess of Étampes, thanks to whose favor he was named gentleman of the king’s chamber and bailli of Senlis. Esternay was a gentleman of the

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king’s board (“chevalier et écuyer tranchant du roi”). Moigneville commanded the château of Granville. Montlauzun was part of the household of Antoine de Navarre. The careers of several deputies suggest that they were selected because they were good orators and negotiators. Moigneville not only spoke on behalf of the deputies in July 1561 and then again when the Protestant ministers arrived at Poissy in September; he enjoyed such a reputation as a rhetorician that the Estates of Normandy chose him to lead the delegation that carried their complaints about high taxation to Henri III in 1579, even though the province by then was overwhelmingly Catholic and the pious king was not likely to receive a known Huguenot with open arms. (Indeed, Henri immediately remembered Moigneville as a member of the new religion who had “controlled many factions in those parts.”)47 Esternay must also have been considered a good speaker and negotiator. He represented the nobility of Champagne at the Estates General of Pontoise in 1561. During the first civil war he was part of the Protestant negotiating teams that met with the Queen Mother at Saint-­Marceau in August 1562, that signed the Treaty of Hampton Court with the English in September, and that worked out the terms of the Peace of Amboise in March 1563. Following the war, he undertook a diplomatic mission for Condé to the court of Württemberg. But the deputy who would carve out the most important career as a negotiator and advisor was Francourt. The Le Mans lawyer had already undertaken a mission in the service of Antoine de Navarre in 1557 that won the freedom of several arrested Protestants. At the outset of the second civil war he was one of the Huguenot envoys dispatched to make the rounds of the Protestant courts of Germany. During the third civil war he joined the council formed around Jeanne d’Albret in La Rochelle and displayed such ability that he became the queen’s chancellor and most trusted advisor. This would be his undoing when he was among the Protestants who went to Paris in 1572 for Henri of Navarre’s wedding and perished in its bloody aftermath. While it cannot be determined just when each one of the deputies first became involved in the Reformed cause, at least seven of them are known to have been leading figures in their church during its initial years, whether as members of the first consistory, as people who allowed Reformed services to

47. Henri III, Lettres, 4:177; Greengrass, Governing Passions, 172–­75.

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be held in their houses, or, as in the case of Moigneville and Saint-­Auban, as nobles who bore arms protecting early public worship services. Two deputies, Cany and Gabet, were arrested on suspicion of having participated in the conspiracy of Amboise. Sauzet was present at a meeting where partisans of the conspiracy sought recruits for it. Mouton carried messages between the church of Paris and the Protestant military chieftain in Provence, Paul de Mauvans. He also led an unsuccessful plot in September 1560 to open the gates of Aix to Mauvans. Even while militating for the churches as deputies, the two Nîmois, Chabot and Sauzet, also began to train for the ministry. They were among the first “proposants” or ministers-­in-­training named by that church. Chabot went on to become pastor of Pons in Saintonge. Sauzet probably would have followed in his footsteps had he not died in the first civil war, for although he declined the consistory’s urging that he embrace the pastorate in March 1562, claiming that he had not had sufficient time to study in light of all the missions he had to undertake for the church, he worked as a catechizing deacon (diacre-­catéchiste) and led morning and evening prayers during the subsequent months of civil war while serving in the company of Captain Bouillargues.48 To assume the high-­profile position of deputy was to take a great risk. Sauzet and Francourt were not the only deputies to meet a violent end during the decade of 1562 to 1572. Montlauzun was also killed in 1562. Cany, Esternay, and Saint-­Auban fell during the second and third civil wars. Barnaud was another victim of the season of Saint Bartholomew in 1572. Only three deputies, Baulac, Moigneville, and Roussanes, can be confidently affirmed to have lived beyond 1572. While many of the deputies paid the ultimate price for their engagement in the cause, they were central figures in the young Protestant party as long as they lived. Other men of similar background and life course who undertook similar missions would play still more enduring leadership roles within the party, even if they too are now largely forgotten. Guillaume Roques, sieur de Clausonne, was one such person. Like Sauzet and Chabot, he was a lawyer from Nîmes. He worked alongside Chabot at the 1561 Estates of Languedoc and attended the Estates General of Pontoise. During the first civil war, he was one of two men 48. Catechizing deacons were ministers-­in-­training given teaching responsibilities beyond those exercised by most French deacons.

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sent from Languedoc to attend the meeting of the Protestant-­controlled provincial Estates of the allied province of Dauphiné (Chabot was the other). In the course of the debate at Montélimar, his intervention proved critical to defeating a proposed peace agreement negotiated between the Huguenot chieftain Des Adrets and the royal governor Nemours. In 1567 he took part in the Michelade, the massacre of the city’s leading Catholic political and ecclesiastical figures that followed the Huguenot takeover at the outbreak of the second civil war. When Nîmes vacillated about what to do after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, Clausonne’s call to ignore the royal order to cease worship and to forbid the king’s lieutenant from entering the city swayed the city to embrace the path of armed resistance. He played an important role in the Protestant political assemblies of the next five years and finally was among the negotiators of the 1577 peace of Beaulieu that led to the establishment of the special biconfessional tribunal in Castres, the so-­called Chambre de l’Edit, of which he became co-­president. At every key moment of decision from 1562 to 1572, Clausonne thus proved to be an influential advocate of armed resistance. His uncompromising militancy in the party’s proclaimed service to the Crown finally led to his being named to lead a royal tribunal established to protect Protestant rights. He died at an unknown date between 1588 and 1594.49 A similar, if less militant, figure who would end up as Clausonne’s colleague in the Chambre de l’Edit was Guichard de Scorbiac of Montauban. A notary’s son trained as a lawyer, Scorbiac was elected consul of his hometown in 1552, 1563, and 1573. He was also an early elder of the Reformed church and undertook several missions in late 1561 and early 1562 to plead with the king’s representatives in the region to treat the city and the church with leniency. (He could have been part of the group to which Montlauzun showed Antoine de Navarre’s instructions to Burie when he came to the city.) During the first civil war, when Montauban came under siege, Scorbiac sided with the city’s military governor and the minority faction within the church that was prepared to consider a negotiated surrender. Despite this, he retained the respect of his fellow townsmen and

49. Ménard, Histoire . . . Nismes, 4:265, 287, 326–­27, 339, 361; 5:219–­21, 244, Preuves, 27, 29–­30, 32–­33, 37–­40, 177; Goulard, Mémoires de l’Estat de France sous Charles neufiesme, 2:fol.21v; Benedict and Fornerod, Organisation et action, 255, 259, 261; Capot, Justice et religion, 387–­88; Haag and Haag, France protestante, 8:524–­25.

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church members and represented Montauban at the Protestant political assemblies of Millau and Nîmes in 1574 that were so important in organizing the military and political recovery of the cause after the blow of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre. When the Protestants set up their own regional appeals court in 1574 because they felt they could not receive justice at the hands of the Parlement of Toulouse, Scorbiac was appointed to the tribunal. He likewise was named to the political council established to work in tandem with the regional military protector, Turenne. The skills he displayed in these capacities brought him to the attention of the leading Protestant noblemen with links to the region and finally to a position as maître des requêtes (one of the key legal advisors who surrounded men of high rank) for Henri of Navarre. From there Scorbiac went on to become Navarre’s chief agent and correspondent in the region; when, for instance, Navarre wanted somebody to have tracts defending his right to the throne printed in Montauban in 1585, he turned to Scorbiac. Thanks to Henri’s patronage, Scorbiac was named not only to the Chambre de l’Édit, but also to the sénéchaussée court and the post of superintendant of finances for the generality of Montauban.50

a ***** xb The historiography of the Wars of Religion has long emphasized the leadership role of the high aristocracy within the Protestant party while also recognizing the input of the most prominent ministers in Geneva. Solving the mystery of what the deputies to court established by the second national synod of the Reformed churches actually did underscores that men from the second tier of the aristocracy and from the world of the law also played a fundamental role in shaping and implementing the political strategies pursued by the “ligue des Huguenots” on both the local and the national level in 1561 to 1562 and beyond. The group of deputies may not be large or well documented enough for a prosopographic analysis to yield clues about just what aspects of these men’s social origins and prior life led them to throw themselves into the Reformed cause with such commitment. Reconstructing the collective portrait of the group nonetheless shows how noblemen and lawyers with speaking ability, legal 50. [Beza], Histoire ecclésiastique, 1:932; 3:73, 127; Conner, Huguenot Heartland, 3–­34, 160, 163, 174–­ 77, 180–­86, 189, 205; Capot, Justice et religion, 389–­90.

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training, military experience, and familiarity in negotiating the corridors of power provided invaluable skills to the young Protestant movement after the royal edict of March 1560 suddenly opened a window of opportunity to advance the cause via remonstrance, petition, and the constitution of syndicats. In advocating for the cause and in meeting regularly with the leading ministers and most powerful aristocrats, the deputies chosen by the synodal network in turn gained critical experience that would enable a select few of them to remain important members of the Huguenot leadership throughout the long, hard march to stable legal toleration that ultimately became the Protestant experience of the Wars of Religion.

Works cited Archival sources AD Drôme = Archives départementales de la Drôme

2E 15566, Étude de Maître Jean Berole, notaire à Montélimar, minutes (1561)

Bibliothèque de Genève

Ms. français 197a, Lettres de diverses églises à celle de Genève, entre 1554 et 1595

Bibliothèque du Sénat (Paris)

Ms. 379, Procès-­verbal du tiers état aux États de Pontoise

BL = British Library

Ms. Rawlinson D 638(2), Actes des premiers synodes nationaux des Églises réformées de France

BnF = Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris)

Ms. français 8666, Registre du consistoire de Nîmes

Printed primary sources Benedict, Philip, and Nicolas Fornerod, ed. L’Organisation et l’action des Églises réformées de France (1557–­1563): Synodes provinciaux et autres documents. Geneva: Droz, 2012.

Beza, Theodore. Correspondance. Edited by Henri Meylan et al. 36 vols. to date. Geneva: Droz, 1960–­. [Beza, Theodore]. Histoire ecclésiastique des Eglises reformees au royaume de France. Edited by Guillaume Baum and Éduard Cunitz. 3 vols. Paris: Fischbacher, 1883–­89. Calvin, John. Joannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia. Edited by Guillaume Baum, Éduard Cunitz, and Éduard Reuss. 59 vols. Brunswick and Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke, 1863–­1900.

Fontanon, Antoine. Les Edicts et ordonnances des rois de France. 4 vols. in 3. Paris, 1611.

Goulard, Simon. Mémoires de l’Estat de France sous Charles neufiesme. 3 vols. in 6. Geneva: Eustache Vignon, 1578.

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182 a Qui étaient les députés? Henri III. Lettres de Henri III, roi de France. Edited by Michel François. 7 vols. to date. Paris: Klincksieck, Champion, and Société de l’histoire de France, 1959–­.

La Place, Pierre de. Commentaires de l’Estat de la Religion et Republique soubs les Rois Henry et Francois seconds, et Charles neufieme. N.p., 1565. Mémoires de Condé, servant d’éclaircissement et de preuves à l’Histoire de M. de Thou. Edited by Denis-­François Secousse. 6 vols. London, 1743.

Pithou de Chamgobert, Nicolas. Chronique de Troyes et de la Champagne durant les guerres de Religion (1524–­1594). Edited by Pierre-­Eugène Leroy. 2 vols. Reims: Presses Universitaires de Reims, 1998–­2000. Stegmann, André, ed. Édits des guerres de religion. Paris: Vrin, 1979.

Tamizey de Larroque, Philippe, ed. Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de l’Agenais. Paris: A. Aubry, 1875.

Secondary sources Anquez, Léonce. Histoire des assemblées politiques des réformés de France. Paris: A. Durand, 1859. Arnaud, Eugène. Histoire des Protestants du Vivarais et du Velay pays de Languedoc de la Réforme à la Révolution. 2 vols. Paris: Grassart, 1888. Benedict, Philip, and Nicolas Fornerod. “Les 2150 ‘Églises’ réformées de France de 1561–­1562.” Revue Historique 311 (2009): 536–­43.

———. “Les Députés des Églises réformées à la cour en 1561–­1562.” Revue Historique 315 (2013): 289–­332.

Capot, Stéphane. Justice et religion en Languedoc au temps de l’Édit de Nantes: La chambre de l’Edit de Castres (1579–­1679). Paris: Ecole des chartes, 1998.

Christin, Olivier. “Compter, se compter, escompter: La formation de la cause protestante, 1561.” In La religion vécue. Les laïcs dans l’Europe moderne, edited by Laurence Croq and David Garrioch, 27–­44. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013.

Conner, Philip. Huguenot Heartland: Montauban and Southern French Calvinism during the Wars of Religion. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Daussy, Hugues. Le Parti huguenot: Chronique d’une désillusion (1557–­1572). Geneva: Droz, 2014.

Delaborde, Jules. Les Protestants à la cour de Saint-­Germain lors du colloque de Poissy. Paris, 1874.

Devic, Claude, and Joseph Vaisette. Histoire générale du Languedoc. 15 vols. Toulouse: Privat, 1872–­1905.

Deyon, Solange. Du Loyalisme au refus: Les protestants français et leur député général entre la Fronde et la Révocation. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Publications de l’Université de Lille III, 1976.

Gardy, Frédéric. Bibliographie des oeuvres théologiques, littéraires, historiques et juridiques de Théodore de Bèze. Geneva: Droz, 1960. Greengrass, Mark. Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576–­ 1585. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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Guiraud, Louise. La Réforme à Montpellier. 2 vols. Montpellier: Mémoires de la Société archéologique de Montpellier, 1918.

Haag, Eugène, and Émile Haag. La France protestante. 10 vols. Paris: Cherbuliez, 1846–­ 1859.

Inventaire sommaire des archives départementales antérieures à 1790. Haute Garonne. Série C. Toulouse: Privat, 1878–­1903.

Kingdon, Robert M. Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France 1555–­1563. Geneva: Droz, 1956.

Ménard, Léon. Histoire civile, ecclésiastique, et littéraire de la ville de Nismes. 7 vols. Paris: Hugues-­Daniel Chaubert and Claude Herissant, 1750–­58. Romier, Lucien. La Conjuration d’Amboise. Paris: Perrin, 1923.

Valois, Noël. “Les États de Pontoise.” Revue de l’Histoire de l’Église de France 29 (1943): 237–­56.

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Chapter 8

Civic Engagement and Public Assistance in Sixteenth-­Century Paris Barbara B. Diefendorf As other essays in this volume show well, Robert Descimon has contributed in a singular fashion to our understanding of the symbiotic ties between social and political history. He has made us acutely aware of the role that events and their contingencies play in the evolution of social relations and institutions. This essay proposes to apply these lessons to the problem of poor relief in early modern Paris by examining the impact of the social and political crises born of the Wars of Religion on the municipally organized and funded system of public assistance current at that time. Recent scholarship (including some of my own) has focused on the “revolutionary role” played by new institutions founded in response to the seventeenth century’s Catholic revival, in particular the charitable confraternities founded in the 1620s and 1630s to aid the sick poor in their homes and the ambitious project of the Hôpital général realized twenty-­five years later to enclose the poor in a workhouse.1 Sixteenth-­ century initiatives, which introduced a mandatory poor tax to supplement the voluntary giving of alms, if mentioned at all, tend to be glossed over 1. Depauw, Spiritualité et pauvreté, 149, for the phrase “revolution in charity.” Other recent works stressing seventeenth-­century developments in Paris include McHugh, Hospital Politics; Dinan, Women and Poor Relief; and Diefendorf, From Penitence to Charity. All translations are the author’s.

a 184 b

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briefly as decaying products of a civic humanism that failed to meet the new century’s growing needs. A break is commonly postulated between the municipally funded poor relief systems of the sixteenth century and the greater reliance on private benevolence that predominated a century later, and yet the reasons for this break remain inadequately understood. Historians have speculated that “the economic and demographic consequences of the French civil wars and religious struggles in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries may well have contributed to this,” but they have not sought to determine just what that contribution was.2 This essay attempts to repair the oversight. Focusing on the neglected period of the religious wars, it qualifies the argument for a break, or discontinuity, between sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century assistance programs by showing that many of the practices usually assumed to be seventeenth-­century innovations—­including efforts to moralize the poor and train them for employment, but also the notion of enclosing them in workhouses—­have important sixteenth-­century precedents.3 The charitable initiatives inspired by the Catholic revival were less “revolutionary” in character than has generally been recognized. If the sixteenth century’s response to urban poverty failed, it was not because of a lack of imagination or effort but rather because the poor tax on which it relied could not meet the unanticipated demand placed on it when war, famine, and plague combined to strain social services beyond the breaking point in the 1590s. This failure was social and political in character, and not just economic. It prompted a hardening of attitudes toward the poor but also offers evidence of a rupture in communal values as Parisian elites withdrew support from communally organized poor relief and turned instead to the sort of private patronage previously associated with the aristocracy. If elites made the Catholic Reformation’s charitable initiatives possible, they also made them necessary by abandoning inherited traditions of civic engagement to align themselves with the aristocratic culture they 2. Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, 119.

3. The idea that the seventeenth century began “the great confinement” has been taken up by most historians of poor relief since Michel Foucault first popularized the notion in his Histoire de la Folie, whether they associate it primarily with the growth of the absolutist state or the religious revival of the Catholic Reformation. See, for example, Gutton, La Société et les pauvres, 289–­349; Imbert, Le Droit hospitalier, esp. 35–­37; and Depauw, Spiritualité et pauvreté, 229–­52. McHugh, Hospital Politics, 83–­109, disputes the role of the state and credits elites with efforts to enclose the poor. These works mention earlier attempts at confinement but quickly discount them as failures, stressing the novelty of the Hôpital Général.

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witnessed at court. Changing attitudes toward poor relief give evidence of a rupture in communal values that clearly recalls the break that Descimon has postulated as a by-­product of the seizure of power in Paris by a revolutionary Holy League in 1588.4 Studying public assistance thus offers a good opportunity to test his thesis that the crisis of the League provoked broader changes in civic values and allegiances.

Public assistance before the Wars of Religion In the first half of the sixteenth century, aid to society’s less favored members was still conceived primarily in religious terms as Christian love, or charité. The practice of assisting the poor had nevertheless acquired important civic dimensions. The ecclesiastical institutions that had traditionally taken a leading role in running hospitals and providing alms were widely perceived to be failing in their responsibilities. At the request of the king and Parlement, city officials appointed a board of lay governors to administer Paris’s ancient charity hospital, the Hôtel Dieu, in 1505.5 Other hospitals were similarly placed under lay direction in the decades that followed.6 The municipality’s biggest involvement with the poor, however, lay with the Grand Bureau des Pauvres, erected in 1544 to provide assistance to poor people in their homes—­what historians often call “outdoor relief.”7 Conceiving of the Christian community as an organic whole, “one bread and one body in Christ,” early modern Parisians had traditionally collected and distributed alms through their parishes.8 The understanding people had of the Christian community, though broad in conception, was thus localized in practice. Resources were scarce, and church wardens directed their alms to longtime local residents impoverished by age, illness,

4. Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?; and Descimon, “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV,” among other of his articles.

5. Registres des délibérations de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris [RDBV], 1:103–­4, 105–­6, 108–­10. Imbert, Le Droit hospitalier, 12–­14, stresses the role of Parlement.

6. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 1:614 (establishment of the Enfants-­ Dieu in 1536), and 2:703 (Lettres patentes of 4 September 1542).

7. Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy,” on the somewhat earlier creation of the Aumône-­ Générale in Lyon, remains invaluable for comparative purposes. On municipally organized charities more broadly, see Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, 100–­125. 8. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 29–­38.

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or misfortune. Informal at first, this almsgiving was gradually systematized. By at least the 1530s, parishes compiled formal lists of needy residents entitled to receive food and money on a regular basis.9 Creating lists of those who qualified for alms inevitably focused new attention on those who had no place on these lists—­on the “vagabonds, ne’er-­do-­wells, and idlers” believed to be “eating the bread of the poor and weak” on account of their begging.10 Laws had existed for the expulsion of beggars since at least the mid-­fourteenth century but appear to have been relatively seldom enforced.11 It was the formalization of the category of “deserving poor” that made policing indigents inseparable from assisting them and required cooperation from a variety of urban institutions. These included the high court of Parlement, the lesser royal jurisdiction of the Prévôté of Paris (often called the Châtelet after the location of its offices), and the municipality or Hôtel de Ville. Parlement’s magistrates had a policy-­making role derived from the court’s mandate to ensure public order in the capital. The lieutenant civil of the Châtelet exercised police and judicial functions in the name of the king for the prévôté. Under his authority, the commissioners (commissaires) and sergeants of the Châtelet shouldered the main responsibility for enforcing policies regarding the poor, though municipal officers were often called on to lend a hand in times of crisis. The highest officers of municipal government, the prévôt des marchands and échevins (equivalent to the mayor and aldermen), were charged with creating jobs for able-­bodied indigents as an extension of their traditional responsibility for ports, ramparts, and public works, while the city’s district officers (quarteniers) and their subordinates, the cinquanteniers and dizainiers, were expected to put their local knowledge to use in policing their districts.12 The principal forum for collaboration was the assemblée de la Police, called by a presiding magistrate of Parlement to meet in the Salle Saint-­Louis of the Palais de Justice when a problem arose. Cooperation took place on an ad hoc basis until November 1544, when François I turned responsibility of the poor over to the Hôtel de

9. Fosseyeux, “Les premiers budgets municipaux d’assistance,” 419–­20.

10. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 1:598–­99 (arrêt of 22 April 1532). More broadly on sixteenth-­century attitudes toward the poor, Gutton, La société et les pauvres, 215–­47. 11. Paultre, De la Répression de la mendicité, 19: Ordonnance of 30 January 1350.

12. See Descimon and Nagle, “Les Quartiers de Paris,” 956–­83, on the distinction between the “quartiers de police” of the Châtelet and the “quartiers de la ville” of the Hôtel de Ville.

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Ville and the Grand Bureau des Pauvres was created.13 Jean-­Pierre Babelon summed up the situation well: the king wanted to “dispossess the Church” but also to hand off to the municipality “expenses insupportable for the royal treasury,” which was already drained by his ongoing wars with Emperor Charles V.14 As Louis XII had done for the Hôtel Dieu, François charged the prévôt des marchands and échevins with naming a board of governors to take charge of the poor. They appointed a board of thirty-­two notables, half of whom served in an advisory capacity. The other sixteen, one from each of the city’s major parishes, took on a heavy set of responsibilities in both their districts and the central office established at the Hôtel de Ville. Within two months, the newly chosen commissioners had laid out a program for public assistance that built on earlier practices but also adapted and extended them in significant ways. The new rules systematized practices within the parishes. Each commissioner supervised a collector of alms (receveur particulier) and an agent charged with distributing funds (répartiteur) in his district but also worked personally with the resident poor. He was expected to visit individuals on the parish roll regularly, to ensure that they continued to qualify for aid, as well as to investigate new applicants, interviewing them in their homes and collecting references from neighbors. He was also to oversee the weekly distribution of aid, making sure that the only people lining up were entitled to assistance and wore the Bureau’s insignia of a cross on a field of yellow and red. The commissioners were required to keep careful records and submit them for review at the twice-­ weekly meetings of the Grand Bureau. For the first time, the assistance offered in each parish was coordinated on a citywide level, and money could be redistributed from richer districts to poorer ones. The commissioners named a treasurer (receveur général), a solicitor and secretary (procureur et greffier), and a judge or bailiff (bailli) to police the poor with his staff of twelve sergeants. Only the judge and his sergeants received wages. The treasurer was to be “a rich and notable citizen [bourgeois]” and, like the commissioners, received “no wage or profit other than the grace of God.”15 13. RDBV, 3:45–­47 (assemblies to discuss royal letters of 7 November 1544). 14. Babelon, Paris au XVIe siècle, 185.

15. BnF, Ms. fr. 5269, fols. 17v–­37v, “La Police des Pauvres à Paris,” as published by Coyecque, “L’Assistance publique à Paris,” 105–­18.

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Even if much of the Bureau’s work was done by unpaid volunteers, enlarging the scale of assistance to the poor required new resources, and one of the Bureau’s most important innovations was to initiate a poor tax to supplement the voluntary alms on which the parishes had previously relied. The Grand Bureau had its commissioners work with a church warden in each parish to establish the amount each resident might be expected to pay. The district receiver was to go door to door each week, accompanied by a church warden or respected citizen, recording both the sums paid and the names of residents who paid less than the tax assigned them.16 The Grand Bureau then scrutinized the rolls and took steps to enforce payment of the assessments. As we shall see, collecting the poor tax was to prove a continuing problem. Bourgeois notables were called on to lend their social weight to the collection process and in time replaced the district receiver in his functions.17 Despite these difficulties, the tax was essential to expanding the level and kinds of assistance available to the resident poor. Most of the aid the Grand Bureau delivered took the form of outdoor relief, but the commissioners also provided job training for poor children, expanded medical services for the poor, and opened a hospice for aged and disabled residents. One of the commissioners’ early actions was to ask Parlement to authorize the foundation of a charity school for “poor little beggar children of Paris,” so that they might learn skills that would allow them to escape their parents’ poverty.18 The Hôpital de la Trinité was founded for this purpose in 1545. In keeping with humanist ideals, the Grand Bureau’s first commissioners saw education and job training as paths out of poverty, offering social benefits to both rich and poor, and worthy of public support on that account. They also saw poverty as a public health issue with implications for both rich and poor and commandeered the services of physicians, surgeons, and master barbers to assist with medical issues. When the Hôtel Dieu became dangerously

16. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 2:711–­13 (letters patent of 7 November 1544 and various proceedings through January 1545).

17. Martin, La Police et reiglement du grand bureau des pauvres, fols. 23–­26, suggests that the change was made because the district collectors had begun taking a fee out of the funds collected.

18. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 2:731–­32 (30 July 1547, “Établissement de l’hôpital de la Trinité & reglemens”). See also Martin, La Police et reiglement du grand bureau des pauvres, 1–­11; also published in Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 1:629–­33.

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overcrowded in times of plague, the commissioners opened field hospitals to handle the overflow.19 They made several attempts to establish a more permanent plague hospital and succeeded at last in building one in the faubourg Saint-­Germain in 1580, only to have it destroyed in 1589 to protect the League-­occupied city from advancing royal armies.20 The bureau’s broad understanding of its mandate is further evident in its creation of the asylum known as the Petites Maisons. Frustrated by the continued and apparently growing presence of beggars in Paris, despite its best efforts, the Grand Bureau received permission from Henri II in 1554 to build a new hospice in the faubourg Saint-­Germain to “enclose and soberly nourish [these persistent beggars] and other incorrigible or invalid and impotent poor people, men and women separately.” Believing that many of the poor had “inveterate vices” because they had been “badly raised, nourished, and instructed in their youth,” the commissioners employed wardens (portiers) to oversee the inmates’ behavior and report those needing correction to the institution’s governor. The commissioners hoped to moralize their inmates, but also to make the hospice a place of last resort. They intended life to be so spartan that even persistent beggars would voluntarily choose either to leave Paris or to go to work.21 A full century before the foundation of the Hôpital Général, the commissioners of the Grand Bureau des Pauvres thus sought to enclose the poor, to make them work for their keep, and to moralize them, while securing a potentially dangerous population and removing them from view. Whatever their initial ambitions, the men who founded the Grand Bureau des Pauvres soon had to adjust their expectations. Some of the problems were predictable. It quickly became clear that housing opportunistic beggars alongside vulnerable invalids was a bad idea, and, as the latter population grew, the stubborn beggars were expelled to make room for them. The Petites Maisons came also to house the mentally deranged, epileptics, and street children afflicted with ringworm (a highly contagious disease before modern medicine) and so continued to play an important 19. See, for example, RDBV, 8:228 (deliberations of 19 May 1580).

20. Fosseyeux, “Les Épidémies de peste à Paris,” 116–­19; RDBV, 9:548 (proceedings of 7 December 1589); Ballon, Paris of Henri IV, 166–­78. The Hôpital Saint Louis was built as a plague hospital after the governors of the Hôtel Dieu gained new revenues from the Crown in 1607. 21. BnF, Ms. fr. 5269, “La Police des Pauvres à Paris,” as published by Coyecque, “L’Assistance publique à Paris,” 115; Martin, La Police et reiglement du grand bureau des pauvres, fols. 15–­17v; Berty and Tisserand, Topographie historique, 257–­63.

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role, but any hope of corralling recalcitrant beggars and removing them from view had to be abandoned.22 The governors of the Trinité also had to scale down their ambitions. The children they removed from the street did not always adjust well to their new surroundings, and some resisted efforts to educate them and provide them with trades. There was also considerable opposition from artisans who feared that the new training programs would dilute their own earning potential. In the end, however, the biggest problems were financial. There were simply too many poor children needing aid for the governors to realize their original goal of bringing all of the city’s young beggars under its roof and keeping them there until they were able to earn a good income and were old enough to marry.23 The archives for the Trinité burned in the 1871 insurrection of the Paris Commune. An inventory made shortly before the fire nevertheless shows that the stipend the Grand Bureau paid for each child covered only a part of the institution’s expenses—­roughly 30 percent in 1553, one of the few years for which this data is available. The institution was heavily dependent on alms and gifts, many of which came from having the children participate in funeral processions and chant psalms for the dead.24 To judge from the sparse figures available, income almost always fell short of expenses. The archives of the Grand Bureau burned in the same fire, making it impossible to reconstruct the bureau’s financial history in any detail. It is nevertheless clear from other sources that the problem of too many poor and too little money afflicted all of its programs and only became worse with time. Contemporaries believed that the very existence of these public assistance programs was bringing more poor beggars into the city and, as early as 1547, critics used this argument to justify increasingly harsh measures against the so-­called “foreign poor.”25 It is true that poor refugees crowded into the city with every crisis, including the one that gave birth to the Grand Bureau des Pauvres. François I and Charles V had taken their wars to the plains of Champagne and Picardy in the fall of

22. Martin, La Police et reiglement du grand bureau des pauvres, fols. 15r–­16r; Berty and Tisserand, Topographie historique, 260–­61.

23. L’Institution des enfans de l’Hospital de la Trinité, 18–­31. See also Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 1:629–­38. 24. Brièle, Inventaire sommaire des Archives hospitalières, 3:261.

25. See, for example, Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 1:640 (edict of 11 July 1547).

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1544, prompting hoards of refugees to seek shelter inside Paris’s walls. The same city assembly that authorized creation of the Grand Bureau resolved to order these refugees to return to their homes.26 The periodic influx of refugees was a common phenomenon in early modern towns. Philip Benedict has likened the towns to accordions, “expanding when harvest failures or warfare led inhabitants from the surrounding countryside to seek refuge or charity behind city walls, shrinking when plagues sent the rich fleeing to the safety of their country estates or prolonged economic difficulties provoked the emigration of skilled artisans.”27 Paris was nevertheless unique in that the refugees came in greater numbers and from greater distances for the security they hoped the capital could offer. These temporary bursts of excess population strained city resources. Although not entitled to a place on the poor rolls, the refugees had to be provided for until the crisis that prompted their flight had abated. The Grand Bureau aided refugees from Picardy for at least four months after France’s disastrous loss at Saint Quentin, for example, before the commissioners’ compassion was exhausted and they ordered remaining refugees to leave. Even then, they collected alms to help destitute women and girls return home.28 Yet the non-­native poor were only part of the problem. According to the Grand Bureau’s commissioners, the number of people on the poor rolls tripled within six years of the bureau’s founding. Suspecting fraud, Parlement ordered the commissioners to do a thorough visitation of the home of every person on the poor rolls. Accompanied by a surgeon, several church wardens, and “five or six of the most notable citizens in each quarter,” the commissioners were to terminate aid to anyone found to be faking or abusing their invalid status, along with anyone who had not resided in the city for at least five years. They were also to expel the non-­native poor and put healthy beggars to work on city projects.29 The frequency with which such orders were repeated in the years that followed attests to the difficulty the Grand Bureau had in managing its unexpectedly heavy and growing burden.30 26. RDBV, 3:45–­46 (deliberations of 5 November 1544). 27. Benedict, “French Cities,” 13.

28. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 2:781–­82 (court orders of 11 December 1557 and 8 January 1558). 29. RDBV, 3:244–­45 and 245n (deliberations of 16 April and arrêt of 18 March 1551).

30. For example, RDBV, 8:368 (order of 23 January 1584) and 8:579 (letter of 2 May 1586).

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The Grand Bureau’s problems did not just lie in the growing demand for aid. The commissioners also had serious difficulty collecting sufficient funds to meet their commitments. The king had authorized a mandatory poor tax on all city residents when the Grand Bureau was created, but collecting this tax was never easy and became only harder as Parisians found the Crown making increasingly steep and frequent demands on their purses in times of war. The French had a long tradition of resisting new taxes, and Paris’s poor tax was no exception.31 The commissioners tried to get around this opposition by asking people to offer a voluntary contribution and only assessing a tax if they offered less than their presumed share. The mechanisms for collecting the tax from those who refused to pay were nevertheless indirect and time-­consuming. When the regular collection process faltered, the Grand Bureau first sent respected citizens house to house to urge people to pay. It next threatened them with fines, doubling the tax of citizens who failed to contribute their share.32 Ultimately, though, the Bureau had no ability to force payment. In cases of stubborn refusal, its officers had no recourse except to turn the names of those defaulting over to the commissioners of the Châtelet and to ask them to proceed by legal means. Only intensive research in the Châtelet’s records might reveal whether legal procedures actually were successfully employed. It is nevertheless clear from the Grand Bureau’s frequently expressed frustration that the poor tax was never paid in full and was remitted even less completely when times were hard—­precisely when the funds were needed most. Collecting the poor tax was not the only problem the Grand Bureau’s commissioners encountered in funding their programs for the poor. The prévôt des marchands and échevins were expected to sponsor work sites for the able-­bodied poor out of the municipal budget, as part of their long-­standing responsibility for public works. But here too, the coffers tended to be empty just when money was needed most. The city opened and ran work sites only during moments of crisis and when pressured to

31. Fosseyeux, “Les premiers budgets municipaux d’assistance,” 420–­21, says the Parisians obtained letters patent on 16 January 1546 prohibiting forced payment of the tax (citing BnF, Ms. fr., n. acq. 3651, fol. 746). The royal edict of 9 August 1547 nevertheless refers to the king’s approving a taille on the Parisians to subsidize the poor, and the Grand Bureau continued collecting the tax, even if some refused to pay. 32. In January 1574, people who refused to pay were to have their tax quadrupled. See RDBV, 7:145 (proceedings of 15 January 1574).

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do so by higher authorities. Although denied alms by the Grand Bureau des Pauvres, the able-­bodied poor, even if native to Paris, could not look to the city for employment on a regular basis. Funding the work sites, moreover, meant additional tax levies for Paris’s citizenry. These projects were paid for out of the city’s fortifications tax, which tended to become the object of special levies at the same time (and for the same reasons) that the poor tax was increased. In December 1565, for example, Parlement responded to a severe scarcity of grain by ordering the city to put able-­bodied indigents to work on the ramparts for the next six months and to pay them from a special levy of the fortifications tax. At the same time, the court ordered the Grand Bureau to double everyone’s poor tax for the next half year to help support the masses that had flocked into the city when failed harvests had pushed them to the edge of starvation.33 This was not the last time the poor tax was doubled, or even tripled, in a time of crisis. Nor was it the last time that the tax coincided with other special levies. The wars of the Holy League placed a particular stress on the Grand Bureau, as they did on all other urban institutions. Descimon has identified this period as marking a turning point in the civic identity and value system of Parisian elites. His argument, which focuses on the social and political repercussions of the League, receives additional support if the economic stress of the period is factored in.

The strains of war, famine, and plague In a treatise on the Grand Bureau des Pauvres published in 1580, Jean Martin, a solicitor in Parlement, blamed the enemies of the Catholic church for increasing the number of poor people in Paris by their sacking and pillaging of surrounding provinces.34 Martin’s point was valid—­the fighting between Protestants and Catholics did send destitute refugees into Paris—­but the real crisis came only after Catholics began fighting among themselves in the Wars of the Holy League. The buildup to the League took place in a period of economic stress. Plague invaded Paris

33. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 2:818 (ordonnance of 22 December 1565). 34. Martin, La Police et reiglement du grand bureau des pauvres, a iii v–­a iv. On the impact of the Wars of Religion on the countryside around Paris, see Jacquart, La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France, 171–­87.

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in 1580 and continued to flare up in the years that followed, with particularly heavy fatalities in 1584.35 No sooner had the danger of contagion receded than the failed harvests of the “catastrophic summer” of 1586 sent famished populations flooding into Paris. The situation was so bad that, in addition to the now-­usual measures for coping with a subsistence crisis, the city ordered public soup kettles set up outside the door to the Bureau des Pauvres and at other key locations and instructed local residents to send the leftovers from their own meals to these kettles.36 Although Paris was removed from the fighting until the summer of 1587, when German mercenaries coming to aid Henri of Navarre passed nearby, the ongoing wars had an economic impact on the city. Jehan de La Fosse, curé of Saint-­Barthélemy’s parish, blamed Henri III for driving up grain prices, already high because of the crop failure, by seizing harvests from several provinces to assure a steady supply for his armies.37 A partisan of the League, La Fosse may not have been entirely impartial in this judgment. His comment does, however, serve as a good reminder that the financial impact of the wars was not limited to areas of fighting. This is also evident in the increasingly steep and frequent demands the kings made for subsidies to pay for the wars. City records show that at the same time it was trying to respond to the 1586 subsistence crisis, the municipality was also attempting to collect a special levy that Henri III demanded in April 1584 to pay off foreign soldiers still without wages from the previous war. Initially set at 120,000 écus, the sum was eventually reduced first to 60,000 and then to 40,000 écus—­good evidence of the difficulty the city had collecting the tax. Meanwhile, Parlement had ordered the municipality to collect three times the usual poor tax and threatened in December 1586 that anyone not paying the tripled tax within twenty-­ four hours would be “taxez par Messieurs de la Police.” Aware that this would prove difficult, the city took the collection process out of the hands

35. RDBV, 8:228 (deliberations of 19 May 1580), 8:296 (order of 24 September 1582), 8:404–­5 (order of 22 August 1584), and 8:510 (orders of 30 September 1585). See also Fosseyeux, “Les Épidémies de peste à Paris,” 116–­20.

36. Jacquart, La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France, 177. Babelon, Paris au XVIe siècle, 469, for the phrase “catastrophic summer.” RDBV, 8:579 (letter from King Henri III of 2 May 1586), and 8:587 (orders of 2 July 1586).

37. La Fosse, Les “Mémoires” d’un curé de Paris, 154. Delamare, Traité de la police, 2:1011, also attributes the scarcity of grain in 1587 to the wars of the League, on account of the armies’ consumption of grain but also the near abandonment of farming in the regions that usually supplied Paris.

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of the usual receivers and confided it to the dizainiers, who were instructed to make a final attempt to collect the sums outstanding before turning the lists over to the commissioners of the Châtelet. The difficulty of raising money for poor relief in the midst of other financial demands is evident also in the city’s plea to Parlement that it be allowed to discontinue running work sites for the able-­bodied poor once the money raised by the special collection had run out, “on account of the great necessity to which it had been reduced.” Apparently, Parlement disregarded this request. The city continued running its public works projects until September 1587, at which time it was more than 4,000 écus in debt for the projects and unable to continue paying even the modest stipend the workers received.38 Meanwhile, the king had imposed a new levy so he could hire troops for his continuing wars. He was also withholding salaries due his officers and interest on bonds (rentes) purchased by the city’s bourgeois. It would be tedious to try to follow these demands for and failures of payment in detail, but it is important to recognize the broader context in which the problem of funding public assistance programs occurred. France had entered a period of financial crisis that affected the rich as well as the poor. The crisis only deepened after the League’s radical leaders, the Seize, drove out the king and began remaking urban institutions in May 1588. Denouncing Henri III as a tyrant after his assassination of the Guises at Blois, the Seize completed their purge of suspected royalists and prepared the city’s defense against the attack that was sure to come. This required money. The League may have announced a new vision of communal liberties, but these liberties would have to be purchased by the very traditional means of forced subsidies. It is indicative of the League’s new centers of power that parish curés and militia captains were invited to take part in the assignment and collection of new tax levies, but the customary procedures for such levies were otherwise respected. Much of this money would go to hire mercenaries to help the Catholic princes wage war, but the city also reopened its public works projects in January 1589.39 By late spring, poor refugees were crowding into Paris from 38. RDBV, 9:5–­18 (proceedings from 25 August through 13 November 1586), 9:23–­24 (letters of 5 and 9 January 1587), and 9:76 (ordinance of 26 September 1587). See also Delamare, Traité de la police, 2:1012 (arrêt of Parlement of 15 July 1587 ordering collection of the tax but also authorizing the borrowing of up to 10,000 écus to feed the poor until the harvest).

39. RDBV, 9:219 (assembly of 31 December 1588), 9:223 (ordinance of 2 January 1589), 9:228 (ordinance of 5 January 1589), 9:235 (orders of 9 January 1589), 9:275 (memorandum of 28 January

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surrounding areas to escape both the troops that the head of the Holy League, Charles, duc de Mayenne, had quartered in the suburbs and the approaching armies of Henri III and Henri of Navarre.40 Henri III’s death on 1 August interrupted the first siege of Paris, but Navarre, now fighting to claim the throne as Henri IV, remained nearby and tried again to take the city in the fall. The presence of his army meant that Paris remained crowded with refugees but also that the city’s food supply and the income residents customarily derived from rural properties were seriously disrupted. The new levies required to provide for the city’s defense fell on an increasingly straitened population. The diminished spending power of bourgeois rentiers and urban elites in turn hurt urban merchants and artisans, just as everyone was hit with rising food prices.41 Conditions worsened through the winter of 1589/90. At the end of March, the city acknowledged the straitened circumstances of “the poor able-­bodied citizens, whom the miseries of the times have reduced to beggary” and offered them work on the fortifications—­labor normally reserved for the chronically destitute. At the same time, city officials called for charitable contributions to support this new class of poor.42 The misery increased yet again when Henri IV, determined to let time and starvation bring Paris to submission, besieged the city again in May 1590. On 2 June the desperate city resolved to expel the “foreign poor,” including peasant families from surrounding villages. Some sources say the expulsion order was too cruel to be executed; others that Henri wisely just let the poor emigrés pass.43 The horrible deprivations the city experienced before the siege was lifted on 30 August need not be related here.44 More important is that the suffering caused by the siege was far from over.

1589), and 9:276 (orders of 28 January 1589).

40. Jacquart, La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France, 179–­80.

41. RDBV, 9:371 (order of 5 June 1589), 9:375 (order of 12 June 1589), and 9:381 (order of 15 June 1589). These subsidies were treated as fortification taxes but were used to hire poor workers. See also RDBV, 9:562 (assembly of 4 January 1590, concerning the dire state in which the Hôtel Dieu found itself. Bourgeois rentiers depended on the same sorts of income that the hospital found itself unable to collect). 42. RDBV, 10:4–­5 (10 April 1590), 10:8 (19 April 1590), and 10:12 (3 May 1590).

43. RDBV, 10:19–­20 (order of 2 June 1590), and 10:19n, citing Pigafetta’s Relation du siège de Paris par Henri IV. 44. L’Estoile, Mémoires-­journaux, 5:22–­52, is the most accessible account of the siege.

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Henri IV’s troops continued to remain nearby, which impeded the resumption of commerce, prevented the entry of foodstuffs, and added to the general sense of insecurity. But people also had reason to fear the League’s armies, which, being only irregularly paid, lived off the land and wreaked havoc in the Paris area. To make matters worse, disease had spread through the malnourished population, which remained swollen with refugees who feared returning to their homes. Residents who might normally have fled to their country houses to escape the contagion also feared to leave the city and remained largely unable to collect income or receive provisions from their rural estates because of the danger.45 By May 1592, the Hôtel Dieu, which drew most of its income from properties outside the city walls, was in such dire straits that it was giving patients only one meal a day and threatened to close down unless more alms could be raised. Knowing that additional alms would prove inadequate, the city agreed to divert half of the tax raised from a recent shipment of wine to the hospital.46 Using income from aides (sales taxes) to supplement alms and the poor tax was to become increasingly necessary in the seventeenth century but, given the other demands on tax revenues, securing such re-­ allocations on an ad hoc basis was never easy. A long-­term solution would require alternative sources of revenue. In time, these struggles—­and the desire for peace that grew out of them—­helped persuade Parisians to stop supporting the League and accept the newly Catholic Henri IV as their king. Henri’s entry into Paris in March 1594 and the departure of the League did not, however, bring a prompt end to the city’s problems. In historian Jean Jacquart’s words, “it was the end of the war, but it was not yet peace for the rural populations of the Paris region,” and until peasants could farm without fear of seeing their crops and livestock destroyed by passing armies, the city’s economy could not recover.47 Before this could happen, a prolonged freeze in April 1595 devastated crops in the field and sent new waves of desperate peasants crowding into Paris—­as many as 10,000 in just three days in May, according to Pierre de L’Estoile.48 Expressing sympathy for the poor, 45. Jacquart, La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France, 182–­83; and RDBV, 10:232–­35 (assembly of 12 March 1592), among other entries referring to mistreatment of Parisians by soldiers. 46. RDBV, 10:249–­53 (assembly of 11 May 1592). 47. Jacquart, La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France, 184.

48. L’Estoile, Mémoires-­journaux, 7:27, 29.

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Henri IV asked the city to do everything possible to provide them with food and work. At the same time, he instructed its officers to aid them with funds that had been raised to fulfill a vow made while Paris was under siege by his army. The city had promised to send a splendid gift to the shrine of Our Lady of Loretto if only it were safely delivered. By diverting these funds to the poor, the king neatly disposed of an awkward reminder of the League.49 The subsistence crisis was sudden and severe. Measures taken in the weeks that followed its onset show that officials feared violence if the starving masses were not quickly provided with aid. The municipality called for an immediate collection of the fortifications tax to fund public works projects to employ the able-­bodied poor. The dizainiers’ instructions nevertheless acknowledge that residents taxed for this purpose were in many cases themselves in financial distress. Instead of ordering immediate action against those who could not pay, they were told just to keep a list of names of “citizens well known to be insolvent and unable pay their taxes.”50 The prévôt des marchands and échevins tried to help its impoverished citizenry by negotiating for tax relief and the payment of long-­ overdue interest on bonds (rentes sur l’hôtel de ville), but with little success. Henri IV declared war on Spain in January 1595 and, now fighting both a civil and a foreign war, needed all the revenue that he could get. Expressing regret, he increased indirect taxes instead of cutting them.51 Meanwhile, the very harsh winter of 1595/96 prolonged the crisis, requiring additional levies for the poor, who could not be driven from the city despite increasingly harsh police measures. To make matters worse, the crowds of malnourished indigents proved fertile ground for contagion. The city made new efforts to expel them on this account in April, but, as Pierre de L’Estoile noted, it was easier to issue this order than to execute it, given the total misery to which many had been reduced.52 City records show that municipal officers, in collaboration with officials from Parlement and the Châtelet, spent much of 1596 trying

49. RDBV, 11:134 (letter from Henri IV of 17 May 1595). On the original vow, RDBV, 10:26–­28 (vow made 1 July 1590). 50. RDBV, 11:135 (orders of 21 May 1595), and 11:137–­38 (orders of 27 May 1595). 51. RDBV, 11:210–­11 (edict of February 1596).

52. RDBV, 11:140 (order of 18 June 1595), 11:213 (order of 8 February 1596), and 11:218 (order of 15 February 1596). See also L’Estoile, Mémoires-­journaux, 7:48, 54, 55, 58.

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desperately to deal with the cumulative impact of the continuing subsistence crisis and the invasion of plague. By summer, representatives of the three jurisdictions were assembling in the Salle Saint-­L ouis twice weekly to discuss measures for policing the poor. They tried to keep them at bay by quartering them in work camps outside city walls, while reinforcing the guard at the gates to prevent their reentry.53 Multiple tax levies were ordered, but despite doubling and then quadrupling the sums charged to residents who failed to pay, the dizainiers responsible for their collection gathered only a fraction of the amount needed to feed the masses in the camps and in the city itself. Only emergency loans kept the camps and hospitals running through the spring. By mid-­ June, the prospect of a decent harvest made it possible to cut back on feeding the able-­bodied poor in the camps, but the contagion had not yet peaked and new attention had to be given to controlling it.54 Its increase through the summer required still more attempts to raise money and more efforts to police the poor so as to maintain an increasingly fragile public order. According to L’Estoile, this particular contagion hit the city’s wealthy neighborhoods harder than it did the traditionally poor, dirty, and crowded ones. It seems, then, that it was more a fear of the poor than their actual role as a vector of the illness that prompted the increased police measures.55 In August, Parlement ordered that the non-­native poor being expelled from the city should have their heads shaved so they could be recognized and punished if they returned. A rash of burglaries in the empty homes of residents who had retreated to their country estates prompted a harsher ruling. In October, the court ruled that able-­bodied indigents not native to the city were to be “hanged and strangled without any other form of proceedings” if they failed to leave within twenty-­four hours.56 There is no evidence that the 53. RDBV, 11:288 (29 July 1596), as well as 11:226 and 229 (orders of 4 and 8 March 1596).

54. RDBV, 11:247 (order of 24 April 1596), 1:259 (orders of 6 and 7 June), 11:262 (order of 15 June 1596), and 11:266 (order of 28 June 1596). See also Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 3:29–­33. 55. L’Estoile, Mémoires-­journaux, 7:67 (entry for July 1596). RDBV, 11:252 (12 May 1596), 11:288 (29 July 1596), 11:289–­92 (2 August 1596), 11:308 (31 August 1596), 11:309 (7 September 1596), 11:320 (26 October 1596), and 11:322 (4 November 1596). See also Fosseyeux, “Les épidémies de peste à Paris,” 120–­22. 56. RDBV, 11:305–­306 (assembly of 27 August 1596), and 11:322n, citing arrêt of 24 October 1596 (AN, X1a 1746, fol. 472r). L’Estoile, Mémoires-­journaux, 7:69, describes the burglaries as another sort of plague, occurring nightly.

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order was carried out; its harshness nevertheless underscores the extent to which the poor had come to be seen as dangerous. Paris’s bourgeois residents witnessed these dangers every time they left their homes to go about their business in the city. But they also witnessed them at closer hand in the demands made on them to assist in policing the poor. They were called on to reinforce the usual guard at the city gates and help keep out indigents who tried to enter. They were co-­ opted to help collect taxes from their recalcitrant neighbors and threatened with fines if they failed to provide this service. They were also called on to go out to the camps to help the quarteniers distribute bread to the unruly crowds there clamoring for food. In May, for example, the quarteniers whose districts abutted the gates of Saint-­V ictor and Buci were ordered to bring nine bourgeois citizens along with their cinquanteniers and dizainiers to help hand out food to the poor encamped there. This burden did not fall on everyone equally; the king had allowed Parlement to recess earlier than usual in the summer on account of plague, and many royal officers had departed to their country estates as soon as they thought it safe to do so.57 This undoubtedly caused hard feelings among those who were left to deal with the city’s problems. But the 1596 crisis also brought to light other simmering tensions left over from the League. Despite Henri IV’s policies of reconciliation and insistence on ignoring the past, it did not prove easy to reintegrate royalist officers who had served the king in exile with those who had remained in Paris in the service of the League. Lingering tensions show up clearly in the quarrel that erupted between échevin Thomas de Rochefort, an attorney in Parlement, and the Châtelet’s lieutenant civil, Jean Séguier, during an assembly of the Salle Saint-­ Louis in February 1596. Séguier had persuaded Parlement to issue an order calling on the quarteniers to turn their tax rolls over to the commissioners of the Châtelet or else suffer imprisonment. Rochefort, citing long tradition, insisted that city officers had sworn to keep their tax rolls secret and also that they needed them for their work. He pointed out that the Châtelet commissioners, who collected a regular tax for cleaning and lighting city streets, had their own tax rolls, if they wished 57. RDBV, 11:238 (order of 26 March 1596), 11:243 (order of 11 April 1596), and multiple entries 249–­67 (April to July 1596); also 11:320n, citing Parlement’s order of 24 October 1596 (AN, X1a 1746, fol. 472v).

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to use them, but had no right to see the city’s private estimations of its residents’ worth.58 Rochefort’s argument that the municipality had always protected its tax lists is valid; the city had always fought hard against any attempt to institute a head tax. When it consented to such levies, it was always with the provision that they were exceptional, one-­time measures. One strategy for ensuring that the subsidies were not made permanent was to destroy the lists once the tax was collected—­which helps explain why we have so few tax records for the city.59 When Rochefort ventured to claim that he was defending the authority of the Bureau de la Ville, however, he was rudely interrupted by the king’s attorney (avocat du roi) in Parlement, Antoine Séguier, a brother of the lieutenant civil. Instead of countering Rochefort’s argument on legal grounds, Séguier simply told him to be quiet, adding that “he was the king’s attorney, and Rochefort was just a little lawyer” who, as an échevin for only three months, did not understand the ruling. Rochefort reported to his colleagues in municipal government that Antoine Séguier had gone on to threaten him, saying that “he owed him obedience, as his inferior,” and menacing him with imprisonment in the Conciergerie. A member of a prominent family rising rapidly in the service of the king, Séguier was clearly attempting to enforce the respect he believed due his superior position in the social hierarchy, but the final part of his outburst shows that there was another issue at play here as well. Accusing Rochefort of not being a “good servant of the king,” Séguier charged him with having remained in Paris during the time of the League’s control. This, for Rochefort, was the final straw, and he resolved to resign his office as échevin on account of the insult. He came, he said, “from as good a family as the Séguiers and was an even more affectionate servant of the king and of the public, having shown himself more constant in the midst of the king’s enemies than had they in their place of security [i.e., in their exile in the royalist city of Tours].”60

58. RDBV, 11:215–­18 (assemblies of 14 and 15 February 1596). On the long history of jurisdictional disputes between the Châtelet and the Hôtel de Ville, see Descimon, “L’échevinage parisien sous Henri IV,” 119, 121–­22. 59. See Descimon, “Paris in 1571,” on the history of direct taxation in the capital.

60. RDBV, 11:215–­16 (assembly of 14 February 1596). On the social ascent of the Séguiers, see Denis Richet, “Une famille de robe.”

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But the conflict was not just a personal one. When the Bureau de la Ville met to discuss Rochefort’s resignation, prévôt des marchands Martin Langlois voiced the opinion that the lieutenant civil’s intention was to “destroy the Bureau’s authority.” Citing another case in which Jean Séguier had overruled the municipality, Langlois claimed to have heard that “the lieutenant civil frequently said that they were no longer in the time of the League, when the city had arrogated to itself authority.” The city had nothing to reproach itself for, said Langlois, either in the recent incident or “during the time of the League, of which one was not supposed to speak.” The meeting ended with the resolution that city officers should go before Parlement the following day to challenge the lieutenant civil’s unprecedented claims to authority over municipal officials.61 The court ruled for the city, but the incident is important less for its outcome than for the persistent tensions it reveals about positions taken during the League, a subject that could not be mentioned but was still on everyone’s mind.62 Antoine Séguier’s claim that he and his brother were better Frenchmen for having left Paris during the League was a slap in the face to Rochefort and other members of city government who, without having been militant Leaguers, considered their choice to remain in Paris to defend their city and their faith worthy of respect. The struggle to deal with the new subsistence crisis must also have recalled to them the suffering they had endured during the siege and made it even more difficult to accept the harsh judgment of men who had escaped these trials. I hesitate to draw broad conclusions from a single incident, but this little drama played out in the Salle Saint-­Louis recalls Descimon’s analysis of the conflict of social values prompted by the League too clearly to be ignored. On one side there is the Séguiers, voicing the new emphasis on social hierarchy characteristic of royal officers who sought to raise themselves above the rest of the bourgeoisie through their affiliation with the Crown. On the other side, Thomas de Rochefort expresses through his indignation and defense of the municipality’s rights the more traditional and egalitarian understanding of the civic community that lost favor with office-­holding elites in the wake of the League.

61. Unpublished minutes of the city council’s discussion show that several key city officers recused themselves and departed because they “belonged to the Séguiers” (AN, H 1884: minutes of meeting of 15 February 1596). 62. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 3:29 (ruling of 19 February 1596).

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The same assembly of the Salle Saint-­Louis voted that in the future all special taxes levied on members of the sovereign courts and other officers of royal justice were to be assessed and collected by their fellow officers and not by the district officers of the Hôtel de Ville. Can this be a coincidence? Did the royal officials who dominated the assembly have reason to think they were unfairly assessed by the district officers and bourgeois citizens who made up the local lists, or were they simply reflecting the same desire for hierarchy and separation expressed by Antoine Séguier in his attack on Thomas de Rochefort? Whatever their motives, the ruling set a precedent. Royal officials were in the future spared visits from municipal officers demanding tax payments; they were responsible to their fellow officials alone.63

Continuity and change Of course, Paris did eventually recover from the financial and subsistence crises brought about by the wars of the League. The city benefitted from the economic policies adopted in pursuit of this recovery and began a prolonged period of economic and demographic growth. The return to prosperity was not, however, shared equally across society. There were still periodic subsistence crises and, with them, periodic waves of indigents crowding into Paris for help. In March 1602, for instance, an assembly of the Salle Saint-­Louis responded to a developing crisis by tripling the tax for the poor.64 The procedures adopted were familiar ones and included the setting up of work camps and multiple orders to expel the non-­native poor, but they also show the impact of the recovery. In 1596, the city struggled to provide the poor with 12 ounces of bread each day; in 1602, it gave them 32 ounces of bread and one sou in cash, a clear sign of better times.65 Despite better times, it proved difficult to collect the new assessment. Receipts were low, and some dizainiers appear to have given 63. RDBV, 11:218 (15 February 1596), 11:220 (29 February 1596), and 11:309–­10 (7 September 1596).

64. RDBV, 12:559 (5 March 1602). See also BnF, Ms. fr. 18605: “Mss. Harlay concernant l’assistance publique,” fol. 16: Order by Parlement on 16 March 1602 for other cities to collect and distribute funds for the poor, so they would not all flock to Paris. 65. RDBV, 12:561 (12 March 1602), and more generally 559–­93 (proceedings for March through June 1602).

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up trying to collect the tax after only six weeks.66 The unwillingness to contribute was, it seems, due more to a perception that the subsidy was unfairly apportioned than to an inability to pay. Although the tax was supposed to be levied on all city residents, several quarteniers complained that a number of “great houses” in their districts were exempted or had owners who refused to pay.67 This apparent inequity would have prompted other householders to refuse. Removing royal magistrates from the district tax lists would have further encouraged the sense of injustice by making their payments invisible to their neighbors, thereby increasing the perception that privileged persons were not doing their part. Attempts to enforce collection also met with resistance. One quartenier complained that people refused even when a commissioner from the Châtelet and four sergeants accompanied him. The commissioner, moreover, was reluctant to force payment “on account of the social status of those who refused.”68 There was nothing new about Parisians balking at paying head taxes, but the resistance encountered in 1602 underscores the fundamental problem of trying to fund poor relief on a contested and ill-­regarded tax.69 Given these problems and perhaps also a lingering distrust of municipal officials on the part of some magistrates in Parlement and the Châtelet, we should not be surprised that when a new attempt was made to deal with the continuing problem of mendicancy in 1611 both the Hôtel de Ville and the Grand Bureau des Pauvres were ignored. The plan, which called for enclosing the resident poor in several rented houses until a new asylum could be built, placed them under the direction of four bourgeois

66. RDBV, 12:579 (17 April 1602), citing arrêt of 29 March 1602.

67. Parlement upheld the principle that everyone must pay the tax in 1582, ruling that even the households of princes, cardinals, and other grandees owed it, and their concierges must pay it in their absence. Félibien and Lobineau, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 3:13 (ruling of 20 June 1582). 68. There was also resistance among the sergeants of the Châtelet, who refused to participate in the collection rounds without additional payment. RDBV, 12:587–­88 (18 May 1602).

69. Similar problems are apparent when additional poor taxes were needed to deal with an outbreak of plague in 1604 and yet another subsistence crisis in 1606. RDBV, 13:304–­5 (10 and 12 June 1604), 13:312 (21 June 1604), 13:381 (29 October 1604), 13:383 (12 November 1604), 13:389 (3 December 1604), and 13:449 (28 May 1605). RDBV, 14:40–­41 (18 January 1606, at which time the collection ordered in 1604 was still not complete), 14:45 (15 February 1606), 14:48 (2 March 1606), 14:54 (16 March 1606), 14:82 (18 May 1606), 14:94 (6 June 1606), 14:94n (which indicates that Parlement was also slow about collecting the triple poor tax that had been ordered to meet the crisis), and 14:101 (11 July 1606). See also BnF, Ms. fr. 18605, Mss. Harlay, fols. 17–­18: “Arresté faict en la police generalle tenue en la chambre de St. Louis le 9 décembre 1605 touchant les pauvres.”

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gouverneurs des pauvres enfermés (governors for the enclosed poor) chosen jointly by the first president of Parlement and the lieutenant civil of the Châtelet. It also increased the Châtelet’s responsibility for driving out the non-­native poor, but it was the creation of a new institution on the same model as the Petites Maisons but with an independent administrative hierarchy that troubled the governors of the Grand Bureau, who protested without success their loss of authority. They also suffered financially. The king, approving the new institution in August 1612, gave 36,000 livres to help launch the foundation; he also gave it two-­thirds of the revenue from the tax on wine recently allocated to the Grand Bureau to help ease its financial problems.70 Clearly, the tide was turning away from the municipally organized and funded poor relief programs that characterized the sixteenth century to the greater reliance on private benevolence and royal tax concessions that would mark the seventeenth century’s public assistance programs.71 The transition was not an easy one, and exploring it would take us well beyond the scope of this essay. I will say only that this new attempt to rid Paris of its poor by enclosing them in hospices failed for the same reasons as (but even more quickly than) previous attempts to resolve the problems posed by the poor. Its revenues simply could not keep up with the number of indigents it was called on to serve. A little-­known association, the Company of Mercy (Compagnie de la Miséricorde), formed with the aim of giving “a new birth to charity,” did its best to promote private donations to the new Pauvres Enfermés. With Queen Mother Marie de Medici as its titular head and a membership reportedly composed of “the elite of this great city of Paris,” the Company of Mercy appears as a kind of prototype of the charitable confraternities that would play an important role as the century progressed. Its members visited the sick in the Hôtel Dieu and poor prisoners in their jails; they also sponsored monthly fund-­raising gatherings at various hospices for the enclosed poor.72 The

70. “Mandement contre le vagabondage des mendians valides de Paris et statuts pour les pauvres invalides,” 27 August 1612, in Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, 16:28–­31; Félibien, Histoire de la ville de Paris, Preuves, 3:65 (“Acquest d’une maison au faubourg Saint Marcel pour renfermer les pauvres”). Archives de l’Assistance publique, Archives de l’Hôpital général, liasse 1, pièce 4 (19 September 1612). Mémoire concernant les pauvres qu’on appelle enfermés. 71. See Depauw, Spiritualité et pauvreté, esp. 255–­71, on the “high tide” of private charitable donations in the later seventeenth century. 72. Advis sur l’assemblee de la Misericorde (n.p., 1629) [BnF, R 27199], 4–­6, 16–­17.

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Company did not succeed in rescuing the Pauvres Enfermés financially but does show a new willingness on the part of devout elites to give time and energy to working with the poor, as well as assisting them with alms. The turn to private charity can also be typified by the bequests made by one of the Company’s most prominent members, Antoine Séguier, when he died in 1624. Previously encountered as the king’s attorney in Parlement when he quarreled with Thomas de Rochefort in 1596, Antoine Séguier went on to become a presiding magistrate of the high court and ambassador to Venice. Rising through increasingly prestigious positions, he became tremendously wealthy and ever more closely associated with the Crown. After witnessing the failure of the 1611 attempt to enclose all of Paris’s resident poor, Séguier seems to have decided that only a more limited but better funded institution might succeed. In 1622, he founded the Hôpital de Notre-­Dame de la Miséricorde, where a hundred orphan girls might be raised, educated, and prepared for jobs and marriage. He left an additional 250,000 écus to the newly founded orphanage in his will and only 1000 écus to the Grand Bureau des Pauvres.73 As this essay has tried to show, if Antoine Séguier and other urban elites sought new solutions to the problem of urban poverty in the seventeenth century, it is not because too little effort had gone into earlier attempts to resolve the problem but rather because urban poverty was expanding at a rate that the Grand Bureau des Pauvres could not hope to handle, crippled as it was by reliance on a much-­resented tax collected door to door each week. New sources of funding were desperately needed. Henri IV and Louis XIII gave some help when they allocated a portion of the revenue from the tax on wine to this purpose.74 It would, however, take both greater tax concessions and the new ethic of private charity born of the Catholic Reformation to make headway against the rising tide of urban poverty as the seventeenth century progressed. Even then, the story is largely one of half measures, as ambitions continued to be reined in by fiscal limitations. In this regard, as in others, there were greater continuities between the two centuries than has often been recognized. As this essay 73. BnF, Ms. fr. 18607, Mss. Harlay concernant l’assistance publique, fol. 164: Testament de feu Messire Anthoine Seguier, vivant chevallier, Conseiller du Roy en ses conseils d’Estat & Privé, et second President en sa cour de Parlement à Paris; and fol. 172: “Institution, ordre, et reglement de l’Hospital Notre-­Dame de la Miséricorde.”

74. RDBV, 14:177–­79 (edict of May 1607), 19:59–­60 (proceedings of 15 April 1625), 19:236 (proceedings of 16 June 1626).

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has shown, the programs themselves were not new. The idea of enclosing the native-­born poor in asylums where they could be moralized and disciplined, but also removed from view, preceded the creation of the Hôpital Général by more than a century. Harsh measures to expel the non-­native poor had an even longer history. It is, moreover, important to recognize that the seventeenth century’s greatest creations—­the parish Compagnies de charité and the Hôpital Général—­supplemented rather than replaced both the outdoor relief offered by the Grand Bureau des Pauvres and the various hospices, such as the Petites Maisons and Trinité, that preceded their creation. The Ladies of Charity founded by Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul, for example, delivered food and medicine to the “respectable poor” who, having fallen into poverty through illness or accident, were too proud to line up publicly for the Grand Bureau des Pauvres’ weekly distribution of aid. Charitable confraternities for men founded several decades later also supplemented the aid available through the Grand Bureau, bringing in new charitable donations and working with the resident poor in their parishes.75 Even the Hôpital Général worked to supplement and not to replace the assistance the Grand Bureau offered to the resident poor in their homes (although it is true that the poor interned in the Hôpital Général soon outnumbered by a large margin those aided in their parishes).76 Proponents of these new initiatives stressed their novelty so as to profit from the new energies born of the Catholic Reformation by inspiring greater benevolence among wealthy elites. But the desire to articulate a break with the past was also politically motivated and a product of evolving social values. The magistrates who might have restructured the Grand Bureau des Pauvres, placing it on a sound financial basis so as to meet the new century’s challenges, instead cut its funding and handed many of its responsibilities over to a new Bureau des Pauvres Enfermés more directly accountable to royal officials. It is hard not to see the ghosts of the League behind this decision and to conclude, with

75. Diefendorf, “Gender of Charity in Seventeenth-­Century Paris.”

76. Depauw, Spiritualité et pauvreté, 250, 327, estimates the population of the Hôpital Général at 5000 in 1663; three times the number aided in their parishes in 1669. The continuing responsibilities of the Grand Bureau are defined in Histoire de l’Hospital General de Paris (Paris, 1676), in BnF, Ms. fr. 21804, CCLX Hôpitaux, fol. 343; and in the Règlements et ordonnances concernant l’exercice des charges des commissaires du Grand Bureau des Pauvres de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1663) in BnF, Ms. fr. 21802, CCLVIII: Pauvres et mendiants, 3–­14.

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Robert Descimon, that the League’s trauma had irreparably undermined the communitarian ethic of the Renaissance city.

Works cited Archival sources AN = Archives nationales

H 1884: Délibérations du Bureau de la Ville de Paris.

BnF = Bibliothèque nationale de France

Ms. fr. 5269, fols. 17v–­37v: “La Police des Pauvres à Paris.”

Mss. fr. 18605–­18607: “Mss. Harlay concernant l’assistance publique.”

Mss. fr. 21802–­21804: Collection Delamare sur l’administration de la police.

Published primary sources Advis sur l’assemblee de la Misericorde. N.p., 1629. [BnF, R 27199].

Brièle, Léon, ed. Inventaire sommaire des Archives hospitalières antérieures à 1790. 4 vols. Paris: Grandremy and Henon, 1886. Delamare, Nicolas. Traité de la police. 4 vols. Paris: Michel Brunet, 1705–­38.

La Fosse, Jehan de. Les “Mémoires” d’un curé de Paris (1557–­1590) au temps des Guerres de religion. Edited by Marc Venard. Geneva: Droz, 2004.

L’Estoile, Pierre de. Mémoires-­journaux. Edited by Jouast. 12 vols. 1875–­76. Reprint, Paris: Taillandier, 1982.

L’Institution des enfans de l’Hospital de la Trinité. Avec la forme du Gouvernement & ordonnance de leur vivre. Paris: La Veuve de François Muguet, 1715.

Martin, Jean. La Police et reiglement du grand bureau des pauvres de la ville et faulxbourgs de Paris. Paris, 1580. “Mémoire concernant les pauvres qu’on appelle enfermés, 1612.” In Archives curieuses de l’histoire de la France, edited by L. Cimber [pseud. of Louis Lafaist] and Félix Danjou. 30 vols. 1st series, 15:241–­70. Paris and Beauvais, 1834–­41.

Registres des délibérations de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris. Edited by François Bonnardot, Alexandre Tuetey, Paul Guérin, and Léon Le Grand. 20 vols. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1883–­1984.

Règlements et ordonnances concernant l’exercice des charges des commissaires du Grand Bureau des Pauvres de la ville de Paris. Paris, 1663.

Secondary sources Babelon, Jean-­Pierre. Paris au XVIe siècle. Nouvelle histoire de Paris. Paris: Hachette, 1986.

Ballon, Hilary. The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

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210 a Civic Engagement and Public Assistance in Sixteenth-Century Paris Benedict, Philip. “French Cities from the Sixteenth Century to the Revolution: An Overview.” In Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, edited by Philip Benedict, 7–­68. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Berty, Adolphe, and Lazare-­Maurice Tisserand. Topographie historique du vieux Paris: Région du Bourg Saint-­Germain. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1876.

Coyecque, Ernest. “L’Assistance publique à Paris au milieu du XVIè siècle.” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île-­de-­France 15 (1888): 105–­18.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy.” In her Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 17–­64 and 275–­90. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975.

Depauw, Jacques. Spiritualité et pauvreté à Paris au XVIIe siècle. Paris: La Boutique de l’Histoire, 1999.

Descimon, Robert. “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV (1594–­1609): Autonomie urbaine, conflits politiques et exclusives sociales.” In La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’état moderne (XIIe–­XVIIIe siècle), edited by Neithard Bulst and Jean-­ Philippe Genet, 113–­50. Paris: C.N.R.S., 1988. ———. “Paris in 1571.” In Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, edited by Philip Benedict, 69–­104. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

———. Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et réalités de la Ligue parisienne (1585–­1594). Paris: Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l’Île-­de-­ France; Librairie Klincksieck, 1983.

———, and Jean Nagle. “Les Quartiers de Paris du Moyen Âge au XVIIIe siècle.” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 34 (1979): 956–­83. Diefendorf, Barbara B. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-­Century Paris. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

———. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

———. “The Gender of Charity in Seventeenth-­Century Paris.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 25–­27, 2013.

Dinan, Susan E. Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-­Century France: The Early History of the Daughters of Charity. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. Félibien, Michel, and Guy-­Alexis Lobineau. Histoire de la ville de Paris. 5 vols. Paris, 1725.

Fosseyeux, Marcel. “Les Épidémies de peste à Paris.” Bulletin de la Société française d’histoire de la médicine 12 (February 1913): 115–­41. ———. “Les premiers budgets municipaux d’assistance. La taxe des pauvres au XVIe siècle.” Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 20 (1934): 407–­32. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la Folie. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1961.

Gutton, Jean-­Pierre. La Société et les pauvres en Europe, XVIe-­XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1974.

Histoire de l’Hospital General de Paris. Paris: François Muguet, 1676.

Imbert, Jean. Le Droit hospitalier de l’ancien régime. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993.

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Isambert, François-­André. Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises depuis l’an 420, jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789. 29 vols. Paris: Belin-­Leprieur, 1821–­1829. Jacquart, Jean. La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France, 1550–­1670. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, Librairie Armand Colin, 1974.

Jütte, Robert. Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

McHugh, Tim. Hospital Politics in Seventeenth-­Century France: The Crown, Urban Elites, and the Poor. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007.

Paultre, Christian. De la Répression de la mendicité et du vagabondage en France sous l’ancien régime. Paris, 1906. Reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1975.

Richet, Denis. “Une Famille de robe: Les Séguier avant le chancelier.” In his De la Réforme à la Révolution: Études sur la France moderne, 155–­306. Paris: Éditions Aubier, 1991.

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Chapter 9

Unfinished Business An Edition of the “Manuscript History of the League” Mark Greengrass, with Marco Penzi and Mark Critchlow Other chapters in this volume have explored Robert Descimon’s distinctive contribution to the writing of early modern French history. His determination to engage single-­mindedly in the exploration of the unwieldy and unyielding records of the notarial archives in Paris has been an inspiration to others, including that small school of historians specializing in early modern France from across the Channel in the British Isles. It is that resource which, when interpreted with his scrupulous erudition, has enabled him to capture, through his extraordinary attention to detail, the actuality of people’s lives. Through it he has been able to reconstruct their notions of family, lineage, and locality, and to present the social habits and institutional context that structured their fortunes and aspirations. All this has been inspired by his desire to interpret afresh the traditional, triumphalist political narratives of the hexagon in this period: the suffocating story of the reimposition of Bourbon authority, the sacralisation of the French monarchy, and the emergence of the absolutist state. Robert Descimon’s career-­long engagement in the history of the Catholic League embodies his attempt to find an alternative way of understanding the latter, which an older historiography interpreted as a watershed, a foundational moment for ancien régime France.

a 212 b

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Another important and enduring feature of his work has been his generous willingness to share his findings with others and to collaborate with all those who want to explore these alternative pathways, whether they involve the Parisian notarial archives or not. This chapter is an example of such collaboration, around a project that is ongoing. It involves the study and publication of the unique history of the Catholic League, composed in the 1620s by someone who was closely involved in its affairs.1 Described as this “remarkable text” by Robert Descimon in 1983, it became an invaluable framework of reference for his prosopographical study of ligueurs.2 American pioneers (Ascoli, Salmon, and Benedict) had previously signaled its significance.3 It has subsequently been mined for its invaluable detail on (for instance) printing during the League and the state of mind of Henri III’s assassin, Jacques Clément.4 However, the document has never been published in its entirety. That state of affairs is symptomatic of a wider problem confronting any historian of early modern France. The source-­texts on which one is often obliged to depend are only available in nineteenth-­century publications that bear no relation to what would be regarded as scholarly editions by today’s standards. Their reliability is generally difficult, if not impossible, to assess. The issue was highlighted by Robert Descimon in his edition of four speeches of the famous reforming sixteenth-­century chancellor of France Michel de l’Hospital.5 Such texts might be expected, in the ordinary course of events, to be readily available. In reality, however, three of them are known through what was, until recently, the standard edition of de l’Hospital’s works, published in 1824 to 1825 by Pierre Duféy.6 Hasty, lacking in critical acumen, and reflecting the political issues of his day, Duféy did not acknowledge the sources for the texts that he published. Sometimes (as in the case of the speech presented before the Parlement on 7 September 1560) what he chose to put into the mouth (or pen) of the chancellor 1. BnF, Ms. fr. 23295–­96.

2. Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?, 99, 214.

3. Salmon noted that the inaccessibility of this source had contributed to historians’ limited understanding of the Seize (“Paris Sixteen,” 542–­43). Ascoli, in his unpublished 1971 University of California dissertation (“Sixteen”), drew on it extensively. Benedict acclaimed it as “one of the best sources available on the League in the provinces”; Rouen, 179. 4. Pallier, Recherches, 74; 77, 89; Chevallier, Les Régicides, 49 (and appendix). 5. Descimon, Discours. See also now Petris, La Plume. 6. Duféy, Œuvres.

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borders on fiction, so far removed is it from what appears in the official record.7 In the case of the famous speech before the Estates General of Orléans, two contemporary published pamphlets as well as a manuscript version give variant readings to the text published by Duféy (based on a source that the editor did not identify) and assign a different date from which he gives it.8 For the speech pronounced by the chancellor before the Parlement of Rouen on 17 August 1563 at the moment of the declaration of Charles IX’s majority, Duféy seems to have preferred a version published almost a century after the event to other, earlier (and probably more reliable) accounts.9 Duféy completely overlooked the fourth discourse, presented to the Assembly of Notables at Moulins in January 1566, even though it had been published at the time as a contemporary pamphlet. Descimon’s edition underlines the more general point about the degree to which modern scholarship on early modern French history is so often dependent upon texts whose reliability and completeness is open to question. Duféy published on the eve of the establishment of the École des chartes (1829), the institution whose mission was to establish an order in the thousands of libraries and archival deposits nationalized by the revolutionary French state between 1789 and 1793. What order that should be depended, of course, on the political flavor of the moment in the nineteenth century, and it was subject to continuing renegotiation and reconstruction even as the principal national archival classifications progressively emerged.10 In a similar fashion, although standards for the editing of texts gradually emerged from the discipline and practice of the École des chartes, decisions about what to edit were left in the hands of committed individuals—­some, but by no means all, trained Chartistes—­ local academies (sociétés savantes) and the committees of a small group of national bodies. Among the most important of the latter for the early modern period was the Société de l’histoire de France (SHF), founded in 1833 on the initiative of François Guizot. Its explicit objective was the publication of the national documentary record of prerevolutionary

7. Descimon, Discours, 46; Duféy, Œuvres, 1:347–­66.

8. Descimon, Discours, 70; Duféy, Œuvres, 1:375–­411. 9. Descimon, Discours, 98.

10. Moore, Restoring Order.

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France. Implicitly its role was to complement the illustrious Académie des inscriptions et belles-­lettres, which concentrated on the editing and publication of medieval texts and charters. Guizot was also the initiator of the official (in the sense that it was funded by the Ministry of Public Instruction) Collection de documents inédits de l’histoire de France in 1835. Its steering committee, which oversaw the publication of a whole series of volumes that came in due course to define that traditional ancien régime French historiography at the national level, became (in 1881) the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (CTHS), which both initiated and placed its imprimatur upon a whole series of editorial endeavours, especially in the years prior to the First World War. The manuscript history of the League provides a good example of how decisions were taken about what to edit and publish on the eve of the First World War. The two volumes of the principal manuscript in question (BnF, Ms. fr. 23295/6) was acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale in the nineteenth century.11 It is a substantial text—­half a million words long covering over 1,100 pages. There it joined another, much smaller volume, which had been in their collections since before the Revolution (BnF, Ms. fr. 10270), the original, in the hand of its author or an amanuensis, of what would be pages 279 to 556 of the copy (shorn of all the alterations).12 On the cover of this manuscript, someone has written in a later hand, “a collection of L’Estoile,” hazarding the guess that it in some way had belonged to the noted Parisian diarist and collector Pierre de L’Estoile. The significance of this corpus was first signalled by the doyen of nineteenth-­century editors of medieval and ancien-­régime texts Arthur de Boislisle, second secretary of the SHF from 1885 until his death in 1908 and an influential member of the advisory council of the École des chartes. In an address to the society in 1897, he urged its members to explore the hitherto untapped archival riches of important materials: “You see, Gentlemen, that the supposed dearth of interesting materials does not

11. They originally formed a continuous manuscript that was subsequently parchment-­bound in two volumes, the first with 574 numbered pages, the second with 541 (with ten blank sheets at the end). After the copy of the history was made, and at a later date, a second hand overwrote much of the original, making frequent but inconsequential corrections, perhaps intending to prepare the text for publication.

12. The manuscript in question is composed of 152 folios, with every second folio numbered. It opens at folio 75, is all in one manuscript hand, and includes numerous erasures, alterations, corrections, and overpastings.

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exist for us,” and he proceeded to illustrate the point with some examples, pointing to these manuscripts about the League among others.13 One of the individuals in the audience was the then-­serving assistant secretary of the society Noël Valois.14 Valois’s editorial contribution in the years before the First World War rivaled that of Boislisle from the preceding generation. During his twelve years at the Archives nationales (1881–­93), Valois had brought to fruition his monumental inventory of about 16,000 decisions of the Council of State under Henri IV. He resigned his post at the archives in 1893 in order to concentrate on other historical enterprises—­a series of studies of France during the fourteenth-­century papal schism (focusing on the relationship between the archives in Avignon and those in Rome) and a study of religious conflict in sixteenth-­century France (at his death he bequeathed an almost completed study of the confrontations of the reign of Charles IX).15 Noël Valois’s son Charles followed in his father’s footsteps at the École des chartes. He was admitted in 1903 as the highest-­placed entrant among a class of about twenty-­five students.16 His proposed thesis was on the manuscript History of the League, which had in the meantime acquired a contemporary resonance through the intense struggles between church and state and the Dreyfus Affair. In the conservative Catholic world of the École des chartes of that period, Valois was certainly aware of the parallels between the anti-­Dreyfusard monarchists and Catholics (vilified as enemies of the Republic) and the defeated Leaguers in early seventeenth-­century France, and of the implied comparison between Pope Gregory XIV and Pius X. At one point, he alluded to the strongly held convictions of Leaguers as “less crude and mean than many other sectarians of various parties and periods, including those of the modern past.”17 He failed, however, to submit the thesis in time to graduate along with the rest of the class in 1907, thereby excluding him from the order 13. Boislisle, [Discours]: “Vous voyez, Messieurs, que la prétendue pénurie de textes intéressants n’existent pas pour nous.”

14. He was assistant secretary from 1885 to 1908, when he became Boislisle’s successor as secretary, through to his own death in 1915.

15. Valois’s work on late fourteenth-­century France culminated with La France et le grand schisme d’Occident; for the unfinished and unpublished study of Charles IX’s reign, see Langlois, “Notice,” 307–­8. 16. “Liste de la promotion annuelle.”

17. Valois, “Une Discussion politique,” 223.

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of merit in the promotions of that year. He was obliged to wait a further twelve months to be named archiviste-­paléographe, which meant that, perhaps somewhat uncomfortably, he graduated from the École while his father was its president. That same year, however, Charles Valois proposed his edition of the manuscript history to the SHF. He envisaged a two-­ volume work, to include an introduction examining the provenance of the manuscript, the sources on which it drew, and a discussion of its probable author. The main body of the edition would consist of a combination of in extenso passages alongside summaries of the rest.18 The first volume, conforming broadly to that prospectus, appeared on the eve of the First World War in 1914.19 In reality, however, with the extensive excisions (the content of the omissions, marked by simple ellipses, is not always indicated) to the text, the edition contained less than 8 percent of the overall manuscript in question. By breaking off at the assassinations of the Guise brothers at the end of 1588, Valois left 112 pages of the first volume of the manuscript to incorporate into the second volume of the edition. Reviewers welcomed its appearance but looked forward to its successor.20 It never materialized. Following the death of his father the next year and the life-­changing experiences of the First World War, Charles Valois neglected the urgings from others to complete and publish his father’s study of Charles IX’s reign and abandoned his efforts to bring his own editorial project to fruition, devoting himself instead to the study of ecology and forestation. The edition of this manuscript history of the League was therefore unfinished business in 1914, as it remains a century later. Why does that matter? What is still to be learned from such a document, given that (as Robert Descimon has demonstrated) there is so much more to be done by reconstructing the life and career choices of Leaguers from other sources? There are two answers to that question, and both of them lie at the heart of the more recent and collaborative effort to fill the gap left by Valois. One is that this source remains the single richest account from a Parisian Leaguer with some involvement in its affairs during the time of its ascendancy, an account that reveals the complexity, variety, 18. Valois, “Un Dialogue politique,” 128–­29. 19. Valois, Histoire de la Ligue.

20. Paul Fournier in Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes (1915): 167–­71; Maurice Rousset in Revue d’histoire de l’Eglise de France 6 (1920): 505–­6.

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and ambiguity of opinions within the movement. The other is that it is a history by someone with modest critical and literary pretensions that is, nevertheless, driven by an ambition to convey to posterity—­and an implied reader plays an active role in the construction of the text—­a more positive picture of the League than the “black legend” that was emerging from early Bourbon historiography.21 Its composition therefore reveals a good deal about the sublimation of the fundamental views of Leaguers, and the undertow that sublimation created to the emergence of dévot opinion. Those twin objectives are what inspired Robert Descimon (with the secondary collaboration of Mark Greengrass, the active engagement of Marco Penzi, and financial support from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales [EHESS]) to undertake the integral transcription of the source in question. That transcription has formed the basis for a doctoral study in the United Kingdom by Mark Critchlow. The “unfinished business” now includes further investigations of who the author actually was and the realization of an edition which will reveal more completely his mentalité. The remainder of this chapter indicates some preliminary conclusions of that inquiry. * * * *b a* x Charles Valois put together some of the circumstantial evidence which points toward the author of this manuscript. The published Bibliothèque nationale catalogue had suggested Pierre de L’Estoile, but it was not difficult to eliminate him from the equation (neither his views nor the other evidence of his papers and affairs corresponds in any way with it).22 Louis Maimbourg—­the seventeenth-­century Jesuit historian of the League—­ was another unlikely suggestion that could be ruled out on grounds of chronology.23 Valois noted that two names (“Rozée” and “Héron”) ap21. Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?, 19. “Posterity” weighed heavily upon the author’s mind. He wanted to tell the history of the League “leaving those who follow after us the liberty to make judgments about it” (BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 2. Cf. statements on pp. 35 and 442. The “reader” is explicitly evoked at numerous stages in the manuscript (Ms. fr. 23295, pp. 308, 353, 444, 466, 487, 532; Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 159, 172, 174, 274, 280, 503). 22. Omont, Catalogue général, ix.

23. A back flyleaf comment on Ms. fr. 23295, in a hand identifiable as that of Jacques-­Joseph Champollion-­Figeac, one-­time administrator of the Bibliothèque nationale, reads “Oratoire no. 99 ¦ Tome 1er ¦ Premier travail pour ou bien par Maimbourg.” Maimbourg, however, regarded the League as ultimately a dangerous enemy to the Bourbon monarchy, views which were not those of this man-

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peared on the endpaper of Ms. fr. 23295. The examination of the letter formation led him to conclude that “Héron” was the scribe who had overwritten a lot of the manuscript, apparently with a view to preparing it for publication. The other name (“Rozée”) was presumably, therefore, the first copyist of the manuscript. At this point the provenance of the manuscript becomes significant. Internal evidence from the two manuscripts indicates that they had once formed part of the library collections of the Paris Oratory (Congregatio Oratorii Iesu et Mariæ). The congregation, inspired by that of Philip (Filippo) Neri in Rome three generations earlier, was jointly orchestrated by Pierre de Bérulle and the marquise de Maignelay, sister of Pierre de Gondi, bishop of Paris, who bankrolled its early activities.24 Authorized by letters patent from Louis XIII in 1611 and by Pope Paul V two years later, it aimed to provide a spiritual environment in which members of the congregation could withdraw from the world in order to meditate on the human aspects of Jesus’ life as a means of opening themselves to the plenitude of God’s majesty and power. The link between the manuscript history of the League and the Oratory was by no means coincidental. The spiritual and physical filiation between some members of the League and the Oratory can be observed in sufficiently numerous instances for it to require explanation.25 Jean-­François Senault, the Douai-­trained priest whose sermons later beguiled Queen Anne of Austria among many others, was attracted to the Oratory in 1616 by Bérulle and went on to become the order’s fourth superior-­general. His brother Pierre was appointed secretary to Keeper of the Seals Michel de Marillac (and a secrétaire du roi, thanks to his good offices) and married the cousin of the latter’s second wife. Jean-­ François and Pierre were the sons of Pierre Senault, a secrétaire du roi, commis to the scribes of the Parlement of Paris, and secretary to the Parisian provisional municipal action group, the Sixteen, and to the Duke of Mayenne. It is possible that the manuscript found its way to the library through his hands. However, it might also have been accessioned by Sébastien Raynssant, its librarian and son of Odouart Raynssant, another member of the Sixteen. Pierre Thiersault was another early Oratorian whose surname uscript’s author. Its early section (the first 350 pages) had certainly been composed by 3 August 1621, by which date Maimbourg was only eleven years of age. 24. Dagens, Bérulle; Descimon, “Oratoriens du XVIIe siècle,” 68.

25. These connections were mostly indicated by Valois in his introduction to the 1914 edition.

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recalls another Paris activist from those crucial years from 1589 to 1593. Other family descendants who found their way to the Oratory included those of Nicolas Ameline and the brothers Charles and Antoine Hotman. The case of Daniel Hotman (1558–­1634) is particularly instructive, not least because for some time he was Charles Valois’s candidate for the authorship of the manuscript history.26 Daniel was the son of François Hotman, the latter being the famous Protestant jurist and author of Franco-­Gallia. He was also the brother of Jean Hotman de Villiers, the noted Protestant irenicist. But the Hotman were among a phalanx of families of that generation with divided religious allegiances. As a young man, Daniel rejected the religious politics of his father and went to join his uncles in Paris, and particularly Charles Hotman, the receveur of the bishop of Paris and supposedly the founder of the Sixteen. Daniel’s talents and connections were put to good use by the provisional government as their secretary and German interpreter with the mercenary landsknechts hired by the League. When not occupied with that, he spent his time defending the properties of his uncles from Protestant incursions. After the wars of the League, he became (in 1599) secretary to the young Duke of Guise and, a decade later, his almoner, living in the Guise townhouse in Paris and corresponding with his uncle’s first cousin, Jacques Hotman, seigneur d’Auron, who had followed in the footsteps of a family ancestor to become treasurer of the Guise archbishops of Reims. In due course, and by a somewhat circuitous route (which involved the Oratory’s congregations in Rome and Notre-­Dame-­de-­Grace at Cotignac in Provence) he too joined the Oratory in Paris, by which time he had made his peace with the Protestant branch of the family, albeit using his personal and testamentary authority as an instrument of confessional persuasion. Through Jacques Hotman’s wife, Marguerite Ayrault, the widow of a procureur at the Parlement (whom he married on 3 May 1607, securing a good dowry of 20,000 livres), he became the nephew of the avocat in the Parlement, Pierre Rozée. He therefore became a relative by marriage of the family whose name appears on the flyleaf of this curious text.27 To complete the picture from the point of view of this manuscript, “Héron” was undoubtedly the priest who entered the Oratory Denis

26. It is brilliantly analyzed in Descimon, “Réconciliation.” 27. Descimon, “Réconciliation,” 545.

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Héron (ca. 1629–­1713). The younger son of a Parisian apothecary of the same name, Denis Héron came from a family of Parisian apothecaries who had seen and suffered the League and would in due course show pronounced devout Port Royal leanings. The “Rozée” in question was almost certainly another Oratorian priest, Alexandre Rozée, Héron’s contemporary there from 1650.28 But Alexandre was not the only member of that family to become an Oratorian. So, too, did his uncle Jean Rozée. What explains these more than coincidental links between former Leaguers and the Oratory? The latter invited them not to recant their firmly held convictions but to reiterate them in another mode. The author of the manuscript history was unapologetic in his views of Protestantism. It was a satanic force aimed at the forces of truth: “For this is something which the learned have taken note of. Satan transformed himself into an angel of light and dragged up out of the depths of the abyss this blasted and bloody [Protestant] confederation which, having sworn an oath against God and his church, has lit a conflagration in all corners of this realm and in its midst. Ever since that moment, it has been by new Edicts of Pacification that the affairs of those of the Reformed Religion have been re-­established.”29 The oath of union that he had made along with many other Parisians in January 1589 to the League to defend the Catholic faith, even to “the last drop of our blood,” could not be gainsaid.30 But the experience of the League and its apparent failure had been that ordinary people of faith and integrity were sold out, let down by their betters. The latter profited from events at their expense, and the history documents an undertone of genuine anger and grievance when the author looked back at what had happened. He was writing, from internal evidence, in the 1620s, and possibly over quite a length of time.31 By then, such views were no longer consonant 28. Alexandre was the son of Guillaume Rozée avocat, by his first marriage to Madeleine Bouteroue. Inventaire des biens du feu Guillaume Rozée, 18 December 1656–­30 January 1657. AN, Minutier Central, CX 132. 29. BnF, Ms. fr. 23295, p. 91: “Car c’est une chose que les plus sages ont observée, que depuis que Satan se transformant en ange de lumiere eust tiré du puis de l’abisme cette maudite et sanglante ligue laquelle, ayant coniuré contre dieu et son eglise, a mis le feu aux quatre coins de ce Royaume et au milieu, les affaires de ceux de la Religion reformée ne se sont iamais retablies que par de nouveaux Edits de pacification.” 30. BnF, Ms. fr. 23295, p. 505.

31. The section from 1574 to May 1588 was certainly composed before August 1621. That between July 1587 and May 1588 was written between January 1620 and August 1621. The rest of the history

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with what royalist Catholics wanted to hear. True, the campaign under Louis XIII to neutralize politico-­military Protestantism was underway. Yet these views, expressed in such uncompromising terms and with the underlying bitterness, were not seductive. Pierre de Bérulle, by contrast, offered an example of how to sublimate that bitter intransigence into something that could be a latent force for change. However, being the complex theologian and thinker that he was, he should not be taken as representative of anyone but himself. The Oratory provided a model for Bérulle’s “political theology.”32 Like the author of the history, Bérulle was fundamentally convinced that Protestantism was a satanic force for evil and rebellion. In the discourse on the “Excellence and singularity of the holy mystery of the Incarnation,” the classic statement of Bérulle’s Incarnation Christology, published in 1623, it almost bursts off the page. Protestants, he wrote, are “audacious spirits who, with strong passions and for feeble reasons, so freely break with their heresy the unity of spirits in the faith, and by their rebellion the unity of hearts in obedience.”33 But then, in the next sentence, the sentiments are quickly occluded: “But let us set aside such thoughts to return to our discourse and our mysteries.”34 The “mysteries” in question were the spirituality of Teresa of Ávila and the conviction that God works in mysterious ways in the world. Inspired by the example of Christ, devout individuals would be moved to accomplish a profound reformation in which unity would be once more restored, and hierarchy and authority reign. “Be not conformed unto the world,” St. Paul had told the Romans (Rom. 12:3). For Bérulle, devout nonconformity was at the heart of how we, as human beings (and the church in particular), could be a vehicle for God’s mysterious ways upon earth. God’s purposes would be realized by stealth rather than storm—­discreetly converting the world not by outward confrontation but by latent influence. Bérulle’s message was also the lesson that this historian of the League wanted his readers to learn. Historians could not know, and should not try to deduce, the motives of individuals in the past—­to do so was to

was composed at any date after 1616, and possibly in the later 1620s.

32. The emblematic importance of Pierre de Bérulle was emphasized in Robert Descimon’s introduction to Morgain, Théologie politique. 33. Bérulle, Discours, 27: “des esprits audacieux, par de faibles raisons, romprent si librement l’unité des esprits en la foi par hérésies, et l’unité des cœurs en l’obéissance par rébellion.”

34. Bérulle, Discours, 27: “Mais laissons ces pensées pour rentrer en nos discours et en nos mystères.”

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open the door to polemic: “it would be hardly to the point,” he writes, “to describe the various objectives and private hopes of the military leaders [of the period] since one can only speculate about them.”35 But God has inscrutable purposes that, in due course, and by means which we cannot at the time readily perceive, will become manifest.36 Looked at from the perspective of this member of the Sixteen, the League had been a political failure, let down by its own military leadership. But Henri IV had been forced to reconvert and so, from that very failure, God had wrought his purposes. That interiorist logic maintained its force, especially in the 1660s and 1670s, in ultra-­Catholic circles. It was a lesson that Catholic integrists—­those whose integrity (one of the qualities to earn this author’s approval, along with “douceur,” “continence,” and “innocence”) had won out over their politique opponents—­could draw to heart. Further details about the Rozée family link it more closely with this manuscript history. The Rozée were a complex Parisian lineage, mostly of lawyers, who mostly married into the lesser ranks of the Parisian municipal élites. In that respect, Pierre Rozée himself was an exception since he married a daughter of Nicolas de Vertus, a prominent inhabitant of Château-­Thierry with property there. Their daughters were found husbands in the ranks of (mostly modest) royal offices. Robert Descimon’s prowess in the notarial archives has reconstructed the family tree (see pp. 224–­26).37 35. BnF, Ms. fr 23295, p. 2: “autant peu seroit-­il à propos de vouloir escrire les divers desseins et esperances interieures de ceux qui, comme chefs, ont fait la guerre. . . . puisqu’on ne peut parler que par soupçon . . . ; aussy cete conjecture des intentions d’autruy n’est pas chose séante à un historien, qui ne doit pas escrire les desseins des hommes, s’ils ne sont manifestez ou confessez, mais rapporter . . . les intentions declarées et les actions qui ont paru. . . .” 36. BnF, Ms. fr. 23295, p. 152: “Dieu dispose par un ordre qui nous est inconnu les moyens par lesquels il veut puis après executer Sa Sainte Volonté.” Cf. Ms. fr. 23296, p. 432.

37. Sources: AN, MC, VIII 81, fol. 728 (23 mars 1556 NS), the succession of Étiennette Versoris, who was the sister of the well-­known memorialist and the aunt of the avocat Pierre Versoris, the head of the council of the Duke of Guise. The will of the curé May Rozée (Bontemps and Cothereau, 25 March 1574) is missing. MC, LXXIII 94, fol. 203 (18 March 1587) contains various deeds concerning Pierre Rozée and Anne Roland. MC, XLIX 189 (12 April 1604) provides the postmortem inventory of Anne Roland, Guillaume Rozée’s widow. MC, XLIX 189 (23 October 1606) contains the postmortem inventory of Jean Rozée, procureur au parlement. MC, LXXIII 81, fol. 306 (29 June 1575) gives the marriage contract between Marthe Rozée and Jacques Goguyer. MC, VIII 608 (17 February 1624) is a copy of the will of Madeleine Rozée, René Ayrault’s widow. MC, XLIX 195, fol. 248 (3 May 1607) establishes the marriage contract between Madeleine Ayrault and Jacques Hotman. MC, XLIX 193, fol. 462 (13 September 1605) is the marriage contract between Claude Jacquet and Anne Rozée. MC, CX (1 and 12 December 1653) reveals the property division between Guillaume Rozée and Marie Dupuy. MC, C 230 (22 February 1653) is the will of Anne Rozée, Claude Jacquet’s widow, with codicils of 12 April 1655 and 25 November 1655, according to which she designated her

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Guillaume Rozée médecin m. Etiennette Versoris 7 descendants May † 1574 curé de la Madeleine en la Cité Guillaume † 1582 avocat référendaire en la Chancellerie Marguerite † 1580 Jean † (?) avocat Pierre † 1554 avocat référendaire en la Chancellerie Geneviève † (?) Nicole † (?)

Nicolas † (?) avocat

m. (?) Lu Descom

Marthe † (?)

m. 1 (?) J More procure Chambre d m. 2 (29 Jun Jacques G secrétair

Marie † (?)

m. (?) Jean méde

6 descendants

m. (?) Yves Habert avocat référendaire en la Chancellerie descendants

PIERRE † ca. 1629 sieur d’Estampes avocat

m. 15 Marie de

m. (2 Aug 1536) Anne Lesueur See Table 9.2 m. (?) Jean Sevestre avocat descendants m. (?) Florent Becquet avocat descendants

Jean † 1606 procureur au parlement

Madeleine † 1624

m. (1 (29 Aug Marguerite

m. ( (29 April Madeleine

m. (?) Ren procure parlem

Table 9.1: Genealogy of Pierre Rozée, author of the Manuscript History of the League.

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Nicolas † (?) avocat

m. (?) Lucrèce Descombes

Marthe † (?)

Marie † (?)

ERRE a. 1629 d’Estampes vocat

m. 1 (?) Julien de Morennes procureur en la Chambre des comptes m. 2 (?) (29 June 1575) Jacques Goguier secrétaire du roi descendants from (1) and (2) m. (?) Jean Leconte médecin descendants m. 1582 Marie de Vertus Guillaume † 1659 (?) avocat

Alexandre Oratorian

Madeleine nun

m. (1)? Madeleine Bouteroue

m. (2) ? Catherine Dupuy Catherine Marie

Jean 1606 ureur au rlement

adeleine 1624

b 225

m. (1) (29 Aug 1585) Marguerite Malingré Jean † pre 1671 Oratorian m. (2) (29 April 1588) Madeleine Fardeau Anne † 1655 m. (?) René Ayrault procureur au parlement Madeleine † 1608

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Pierre écuyer gendarme Jean prêtre

Claude avocat référendaire en la Chancellerie m. (20 Sept. 1665) Élisabeth Charles de m. (13 Sep 1605) Fontenay, avocat Claude Jacquet avocat référendaire en la Chancellerie m. (3 May 1607) Jacques Hotman trésorier de l’extraordinaire des guerres en Bourgogne

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Table 9.2: Descendants of Pierre Rozée and Catherine Lesueur. Pierre † 1554 avocat référendaire en la Chancellerie m. (2 Aug. 1536) Anne Lesueur Jean † 1600 avocat

m. (13 May 1569) Charlotte de Sainctyon

Pierre avocat

Jacqueline † 1632 m. (26 Nov 1608)

Marguerite † 1586(?)

Jacques Poussemothe écuyer, sieur de Tierceville contrôleur général des finances en Picardie

m. (?) Mathieu Bardon avocat descendants

Guillaume monk (?) in the Saint-Lazare priory Note: AN, MC, C 107 (23 July 1554), postmortem inventory of Pierre Rozée, instigated at the request of his widow Catherine Lesueur, the daughter of Guillaume Lesueur, général des Monnaies, and Radegonde Budé. MC, XLIX 182 (16 February 1600), postmortem inventory of Jean Rozée, widow of Charlotte de Sainctyon. MC, VI (scorched) their marriage contract (13 May 1569). MC, VIII 550 (11 March 1591), postmortem inventory of Mathieu Bardon, who in the interim had remarried Françoise Creton in 1578. From his first marriage, he had three children: Catherine, who married Nicolas Roland, général des Monnaies and a celebrated ligueur (3 July 1583, notaries Denetz et Lecamus, missing); Vincent; and Mathieu (all of age and free of guardianship). Two underage offspring (Charles et Marguerite Bardon) were still minors. MC, C 140 (20 January 1611) registers a transaction concerning the succession of Jean Rozée and Catherine de Sainctyon. MC, C, répertoire 1 (26 November 1608) mentions the marriage contract between Jacques de Poussemothe and Jacqueline Rozée. MC, C, répertoire 1 (8 May 1628) references the postmortem inventory of Jacques Poussemouthe, following the demand of Jacqueline Rozée. MC, C, répertoire 1 (30 January 1632) furnishes the inventory of the wealth of Jacqueline Rozée following the demand of Claude Jacques.

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As the accompanying genealogical tables indicate, Alexandre Rozée—­the probable copyist whose name appears on the flyleaf—­was the progeny of the Paris avocat Guillaume Rozée by his first wife, Madeleine Bouteroue. That made him the grandson of the avocat Pierre Rozée, an active collaborator in the affairs of the Sixteen. In 1592, Pierre stood for election to the municipal government in Paris at a critical moment in the affairs of the League. Although he was unsuccessful at that attempt (only polling one vote), it hardly mattered since the Duke of Mayenne quashed the election within hours of its having taken place.38 On 16 March 1594, within a month of the city’s negotiated capitulation to Henri IV, he very publicly accused the majority of the Parlement of Paris of being heretics and their closet supporters before the military governor for the League, Charles de Cossé, Count of Brissac: On this day, an advocate of the Court [of Parlement] named Rosée, a great troublemaker and one of the Sixteen, went before the Governor, seeking his permission to summon people [to arms], despite the ruling from the Parlement against [such assemblies], telling him that it was in order to defend their Catholic religion which otherwise was in jeopardy. When Brissac refused, saying that he could not countermand a decision of the Parlement because they would be against it, [Rozée] had the effrontery to say to him that the majority of them were Heretics and the fomenters of Heretics and the Heretical, as had always been clear from their decisions. In favoring them, as he did, he [the Governor] put the [Catholic] Religion in danger, for whose brother Jean, Oratorian priest, as her sole heir and executor and made a gift to her cousin Alexandre Rozée, also an Oratorian priest. MC, CX 137 (13 March 1659) contains the details of the succession of Guillaume Rozée, former avocat in the Parlement. While alive he lived in the rue du Plâtre in the parish of St.-­Séverin. His widow was Catherine Dupuy, who was nominated guardian of their underage children, the surrogate guardian being Charles de Poussemothe, écuyer, sr. de Lieusanville. MC, CIX 247 (4 February 1671) contains the details of a transaction between Catherine Dupuy and her children. MC, CIX 248 (13 May 1671) is the sale by the heirs of Guillaume Rozée of the property given to their father by Jean Rozée (the Oratorian) and Anne Rozée. Other acts include the marriage contract between Élisabeth Rozée and Charles de Fontenay (20 September 1665, notaries Manchon and de Troyes), the property division of the succession of Guillaume Rozée (5 July 1666, notaries Leboucher and Lemoyne), and the property division of the succession to the house in the rue du Plâtre (14 December 1665, notaries Rallu and Manchon), Manchon apparently being the notary for Charles de Fontenay, who was a widower from a first marriage. See MC, XI 287 (12 May 1681) for the latter’s postmortem inventory. 38. Guérin, Registres des délibérations, 232.

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defense they were all prepared to die. M. de Brissac, showing great restraint, replied that such matters as this were beyond his comprehension, that the Parlement had done nothing which had not been well done, and that he would not oppose them.39 It was perhaps symptomatic of Pierre Rozée’s role as an actively engaged bystander that the one moment when his outspokenness is recorded is when it was too late to be of much consequence, his own overall insignificance saving him from reprisals then, or weeks later when Henri IV entered the city. In 1983, Robert Descimon hypothesized (“sous toute réserve”) that Pierre Rozée would turn out to be the anonymous historian in question.40 Short of finding a specimen of his handwriting to match up to the autograph’s original portion (Ms. fr. 10270), definitive proof remains lacking.41 But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that he was the author of the majority of the text.42 Written mostly in the third person to emphasize a historical distance from the events that it describes, the manuscript bears all the hallmarks of the historico-­juristic culture of the legal fraternity of the Parlement, to which the author (referred to a few times in its pages discreetly as “the attorney Rozée”) evidently belonged.43 Frequenting the parquet of the Parlement, he recalled discussions about decisions

39. L’Estoile, Mémoires-­Journaux, 6:176–­77: “Ce jour, un Advocat de la Cour nommé Rosée, grand faciendaire, et qui estoit de la Seize, alla trouver M. le Gouverneur, auquel il demanda permission de s’assembler, non obstant les défenses de la Cour; lui dit que c’estoit pour la manutention de leur Religion Catholique, laquelle autrement ne se pouvoit conserver. Et sur le refus que lui en fist M. de Brissac, lui disant qu’il ne pouvoit passer par-­dessus les arrests de Messieurs du Parlement, pource qu’ils estoient contraires, fust si effronté de lui dire que la pluspart d’eux estoient Hérétiques et fauteurs d’Hérétiques et de l’Hérétique, comme ils avoient toujours monstré par leurs arrests, et qu’en les favorisant comme il faisoit, il mettoit en hazard la Religion, pour la défense de laquelle ils vouloient tous mourir. Lors M. de Brissac, se montrant fort retenu, lui respondit que ces affaires-­là passoient son esprit, que la Cour n’avoit rien fait, qui ne fust bien fait, et qu’on n’en feroit autre chose.” 40. Descimon, Qui étaient les Seize?, 214.

41. Finding such proof may well prove next to impossible. The Rozée family was a large one and, as the postmortem inventory of the possessions of Guillaume Rozée in 1656–­1657 proves (AN, MC, CX 132, 18 December 1656–­30 January 1657) there was at least another Pierre Rozée in the family (the document records the presence of “Pierre Rozée écuyer, sieur dud lieu [sic], gendarme de la compagnie du roi”). 42. It is, however, possible—­even likely—­that the final page of the work, which abandons the history at the beginning of the conference at Suresnes in order to allude, in truncated fashion, to the king’s abjuration and entry into Paris, was the work of the copyist rather than the author.

43. See Houllemare, Les Politiques de la parole. For references to “un parisien nommé Rozée avocat,” “un avocat nommé Rozée,” etc., see BnF, Ms. fr. 23295, p. 198; Ms. fr. 23296, p. 407.

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made in the rival Navarrist Parlement at Tours.44 He listened to the League Parlement’s first president Barnabé Brisson giving his judgments in court (“this learned man always said something worthwhile”) and noted down a comment by a peer in court after reading François de La Noüe’s justification for the Huguenots’ taking up arms.45 And who else but Rozée would have thought to recall that Catherine de Médicis in 1585, during her trip to meet the duc de Guise after the prise d’armes of the League, lodged for a night at Étampes in the house of a Parisian named Rozée?46 Conceived as a “‘history” (and the text includes reflections on what that meant to the author) rather than a “diary” (journal) or “memorial” (mémoire), it is inevitably more discreet about what the author heard and saw on a day-­by-­day basis. But, drawing on notebooks (to which the text makes occasional reference) and his own memory of events, he was able to evoke the atmosphere of moments when “the streets of Paris get really warm for the ligueurs” with the precision of an eyewitness.47 We get just enough detail to reconstruct something of his locale in the city. His quartier was that of St.-­Séverin, home to eleven of Robert Descimon’s Sixteen. His family connections with the parish church were well established,48 as were his route to the law courts, across the Pont St.-­Michel past the booksellers, or perhaps via the quieter but longer route down the rue de Boutebrie (inhabited by manuscript illuminators and engravers), and his neighbors in the quartier.49 He recalled, in a way that only an eyewitness could, anecdotes to contradict the “impertinent accounts” of a royalist politique historiography of which he disapproved.50 44. BnF, Ms. fr. 23295, pp. 440, 520.

45. BnF, Ms. fr. 23295, p. 123 (and Valois, Histoire, xv): “Ce savant homme disoit toujours quelque chose de bon”; ibid., p. 358: “J’étois présent quand un grand de ce royaume, après avoir vu cette déclaration en une grande compagnie, dit. . . .”

46. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 407: “. . . elle ala loger au village déstampes en la maison d’un parisien nommé Rozée advocat, distant de la ville [Château-­Thierry] de huit ou neuf cens pas. . . .” 47. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 109 [sic for 209]–­210: “quand le pavé de Paris estoit bien châut pour les ligueurs.”

48. Guillaume I Rozée was its churchwarden (marguillier) in 1562, just as Jean Rozée would be in 1592, Guillaume II Rozée in 1628, and Claude Jacquet in 1634. The Rozée had a family tomb there, where they would all be buried, along with their close family relatives, like Claude Jacquet.

49. It is only from this source that we know of the house arrest and subsequent imprisonment of M. Donon, contrôleur des bâtiments, a near neighbor who refused to pay the extraordinary impositions imposed by the League; BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 70–­71. 50. See, however, (an exception) when he remembers that rumors circulating in Paris in the summer of 1589 confirmed what his bête noire, the Protestant memorialist Simon Goulart, had said;

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These personal testimonies are never more clearly in evidence than in references to the terrible months of the siege in the summer of 1590: “Reading about this misery can only be deplorable to those who, recalling it without emotion, are not entirely devoid of humanity,” he wrote, before adding, “This siege has been talked and written about variously, and especially by those who knew the least about it. I thought it my duty, as an ocular witness, to let our posterity know the truth about it.”51 He remembered the false rumors that circulated. He recalled the apparition widely seen in the sky on the day following the fall of St.-­Denis in July 1590.52 He recounted the various fears that politiques were about to deliver the city to Navarre. He rejected the unfounded suspicions in which Pierre Senault, clerk of the Council of the Sixteen, was held during the siege. Senault was one of Rozée’s neighbors in the St.-­Séverin quarter:53 Among those of the Sixteen, the clerk of the council Senault fell under the spotlight. In the view of the politiques, he had been compromised by transactions of the League and the assistance of the Spanish (for he carried a red flag when the hue and cry was raised). Even in the midst of the general misery [of the siege] his house was full of food. But this was nothing more than a suspicion that they could not prove. Some of his neighbours told them that a poor lady, the wet nurse to one of Senault’s children, left his house every day in order to beg for her supper, not having the

BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 38.

51. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 270: “. . . la lecture de cete misere ne peut estre que deplorable a ceux qui la lisant sans passion ne seront entierement despouillés d’humanité; mais on a parlé de ce siege en tant d’endroits et ceux qui le sçavoient le moin[s] en ont écrit si diversement, que j’ay pensé estre de mon devoir, comme témoin oculaire, d’en dire à ceux qui viendront après nous, ce qui est de la vérité.” 52. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 253–­54.

53. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 280–­81: “Entre les Seize, Senault greffier du conseil estoit fort remarqué, et l’opinion des politiques, estoit que les affaires de la ligue et l’assistance des Espagnols (car aux allarmes il portoit une escharpe rouge) l’avoient fort incommodé; mesme qu’au milieu de la misère commune les vivres abondoient en sa maison; mais ils demeuroient en ce simple soupçon, et ne l’en pouvoient convaincre, quelques uns de ces voisins s’aviserent, que tous les iours une pauvre femme qui nourissoit un des enfants de Senault, hors le logis alloit tous les iours quérir son disner n’ayant moyen de vivre d’ailleurs; et creurent que cete nourriture se sentoit de la bonne chere qu’on faisoit dans cete maison; sur cela ayant espié un jour que cete nourice sortoit, ils voulurent voir ce que cete nourice portoit dans une serviete, s’asseurant qu’ils trouveroient de bons restes de viande, mais ils n’y trouverent qu’un morceau de pain d’avoyne et une poignée de pourpier, qui estoit alors l’ordinaire d’une bonne maison; par l’ouverture de cete serviete, ces envieux demeurerent fort confus, car ils croiroient bien trouver d’autres choses et la nourice s’en alla fort contente.”

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wherewithal otherwise to eat. They suspected that she benefitted from the good fare that was to be had in his house. Seeing her step outside the door one day they asked to see what the nurse was carrying in her napkin, reckoning that they would find the remains of juicy morsels of some meat, but there was only a scrap of oat bread and a bit of pigweed, which was standard fare at that time in a household of standing. They were much confounded by their suspicions, for they hoped to find lots of other things, and the nurse went on her way highly satisfied. At the end of the siege, Rozée inserted into his account another such personal anecdote about a “great Leaguer,” Jacques Bazin, a commissioner at the Châtelet and inhabitant of the rue St.-­André-­des-­Arts in Rozée’s quartier.54 He would be the notorious conveyer of the famous “red list” of politiques to be proscribed from that quarter of the city, a list that Bazin himself no doubt helped to draw up.55 Rozée recalled the conversation that took place between Bazin and his colleague as commissioner at the Châtelet, Pierre Lenormant. Lenormant was from an older generation, which had lived through the civil wars, and drew the prudential consequences that that experience had taught.56 That had perhaps forged his politique attitudes, those to which Bazin took exception.57 54. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 281: “. . . sur la fin du siege quelques uns des commissaires du chastelet, apres le siege . . . se trouverent en leur chambre commune; entre lesqu’els estoit le commissaire le Normand grand politique, et le commissaire bazin grand ligueur. . . .”

55. As L’Estoile would testify (“Et était le commissaire Basin qui l’avait fait . . .”; L’Estoile, Mémoires-­ Journaux, 5:132 [25 Nov. 1591]), Jacques Bazin (var. Basin), expelled from Paris in 1594 and condemned to death in absentia (11 March 1595) for his part in the League, would never return to his native city; see Descimon and Ruiz Ibánez, Les Ligueurs de l’exil, 221, 261. Cf. Qui étaient les Seize?, 106, notice No. 10. On proscription in the politics and historiography of the League, see Penzi, “Listes de proscriptions.”

56. In 2008, Robert Descimon deposited a substantial body of notes taken from the legal acts recorded in the minutier central with the online collaborative “Projet Familles Parisiennes” (http:// www.famillesparisiennes.org/). Primarily a tool for those actively working in this repository and only consultable fully by those who contribute to it, those notes contain several acts relating to Pierre Lenormant and his family.

57. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 281: “. . . n’ayant pas des grands affaires chacun se mit à parler des affaires du temps selon sa passion; et par ce que Bazin preschoit la patience qui est un grand soulagement aux affligés, et l’esperance d’un prompt secours, le Norman luy dit que la patience estoit facile à un homme qui avoit de bonnes provisions de vivres en sa maison, et duquel l’espérance n’estoit pas plus longue que d’aller trouver un bon disner qui l’attendoit, au lieu que luy estoit reduit a faire mauvaise chere en son logis; Bazin se sentant picqué luy dit qu’il pareroit dix escus que celuy de le Normand seroit meilleur en sa maison. La gageuse fut acceptée par le Normand, les deniers consignes de part et d’autre et deux de la compagnie députés pour aller aux deux maisons, voire ce qui estoit préparé pour le disné qui

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. . . not having great matters [to discuss] they each got to talking about current affairs according to their passion. Bazin held that it was the time for patience, a great comfort to the afflicted, and hope for speedy help [from abroad]. Le Normand replied that patience was easy to preach when a man had a stock of good provisions in his house and when the hope [for help] did not have to last longer than the next good meal which awaited him. For others like himself it was scarce rations at his lodgings. Riled by the remark, Bazin said that he wagered ten crowns that Le Normand was the better fed, and Le Normand accepted the bet. The money was entrusted to others here and there, and two of them were deputed to the two houses to see what had been prepared for the forthcoming supper. At the house of Le Normand they found a piece of beef and some mutton cooking in the pot, whereas at Bazin’s house there was only a piece of horse-­meat. Le Normand’s ten crowns were confiscated and used to feed everyone involved, and it was not a sumptuous meal because a lot of money did not buy a great deal at that moment. If Rozée has reported the incident correctly, it was a political quarrel between a Leaguer and a politique. Entangled in it, however, were perhaps generational and corporate differences as well as tensions between the need to uphold the commensality commensurate to the standards of a good household, despite the siege, and the contradictory need to show one’s adhesion to the common cause. One senses the reality of the multiple civic solidarities of the Paris League but also the social tensions that would bring about its eventual defeat. * * * *b a* x There is much still to discover, and to discuss, about the material in the manuscript before the eventual edition can be published. The alterations and corrections to the original manuscript in that part that we still posestoit fort proche; les députés estant revenus et apres avoir examiné ce qu’ils avoient veus rapporterent qu’au logis du commissaire le Normand, ils avoient trouvé dedans le pot une piece de bœuf et un morceau de mouton, et au logis de Bazin, un morceau de chair de cheval seulement. Sur ce rapport les dix escus du commissaire le Normand furent confisqués, et employés au disné de la compagnie, qui ne fut pas fort somptueux, car lors on ne faisoit guere bonne chere pour beaucoup d’argent.”

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sess need much closer analysis; those passages that have been overpasted need forensic treatment under ultraviolet light to try and discern what was altered. Rozée’s use of his written sources is particularly difficult to assess. He was well read and had access to published contemporary letters, edicts, declarations, and pamphlets. Identifying those sources, however, is a lengthy and delicate affair. He rarely identified those from whom he borrowed extensively, only identifying his sources when he disagreed violently with what they had to say. That was particularly the case with respect to what he regarded as a Protestant and Catholic royalist-­politique consensus of memorialists and contemporary historians, among whom he singled out the popular history of Henri IV by the contemporary (and highly successful) Paris attorney Julien Peleus (“with his pen dipped in bad ink”), Simon Goulart (“a miserable pastor”), Jean de Serres (briefly referred to in a marginal comment), Jean Taffin (accorded a passing mention), and Jacques-­Auguste de Thou (the latter never named, but often referred to implicitly).58 His opprobrium was reserved especially for Catholic writers who, for what seemed to him like prudential reasons, were prepared to obliterate their own past loyalties and calumniate the adherents of the League “in writings of those who made people think that they are Catholics.”59 Rozée’s portrayal of the organization and leadership of the Sixteen also needs further scrutiny. That is because he is frustratingly discreet about the details of its organization, while being more forthcoming about the moral qualities that he ascribes to the majority of its leaders. That said, only forty-­eight of the names of those who appear in Robert Descimon’s prosopographical analysis of the Sixteen were mentioned by Rozée, and among those whom he singles out only a small number are given any depth of treatment.60 Rozée’s emphasis is on the constructive and crucial role of 58. Peleus, Histoire. Cf. BnF, Ms. fr. 23295, pp. 407, 526; Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 48, 364. On Cayet, see Ms. fr. 23295, pp. 62, 267; Ms. fr. 23296, p. 48. On Serres, Ms. fr. 23295, pp. 279, 248. On Taffin, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 49. On Goulart, Ms. fr. 23296, pp. 337–­39, 380: “un miserable ministre, qui a escrit le premier les memoires de la ligue, escrivant contre verité ce qui se passa lors. . . .” 59. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 1: “on s’est estonné de les oüir dans les escrits de ceux qui ont voulu faire croire qu’ils sont catholiques.”

60. The forty-­eight names have been identified as follows (the numbers in brackets indicate how many pages of the history refer to the individual in question. Prominent Leaguers are underlined and the names of those whose qualities impressed Rozée are picked out in bold type): Ameline, Nicolas (3) Dufresnoy, Pierre (1) Messier, Jehan (2) Anroux, Barthélemy (1) Emonnot, Jehan (1) Midorge, Jehan (1)

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the Sixteen during the months of the siege in 1590. It was at the beginning of that analysis that he announced, “It is relevant to know who were those known as the Sixteen, for many people have been mistaken about them.”61 With some skill, Rozée embedded what he wanted to convey to posterity about the social origins and respectability of the Sixteen in the text of a contemporary imagined discourse between Henri IV, a senior magistrate (Blancmesnil), and a member of the Paris League on the eve of the siege. Blancmesnil is used as the spokesman for those who regarded the Sixteen as “rascals of small means and credit,” whereas the Leaguer (who becomes the vehicle for Rozée’s views) is the one who tells the king the truth: the Sixteen were “‘composed of a certain number of clerics, judges . . . ,” and the politique Bourbon partisans within the city have misled him by underestimating the Sixteen and their capacity to organize, unite, and defend their city. Rozée’s positive assessment of the respectability, social standing, civic loyalty, and organizational credibility of the League has become the new historical orthodoxy, thanks to the work of Robert Descimon, to the extent that it makes it more difficult now to appreciate how Pierre Rozée felt when he was writing his manuscript history. The work was an act of duty and devotion because he knew he was working against the grain of a powerful, emerging contemporary consensus. Rozée’s history was, above all, an act of rehabilitation. He sought to recalibrate the horizons of the recent past from those who had given the politiques a moral top dressing (of prudence, modesty, and respectability) and to recover the honest values of loyalty, integrity, and zeal. Rozée uses the word “zeal” for those who wore their heart on their sleeves. It was what had brought the Leaguers together in the first place; its attenuation Anroux, Nicolas (4) Baston, Jacques (1) Bazin, Jacques (1) Bordeaux, Guillaume de (1) Bourdereul, Joseph (2) Bray, Estienne de (1) Brigard, François (4) Compans, Jehan de (5) Coqueley, Lazare (1) Costeblanche, François (4) Crucé, Oudin (7) Delabruyère, Mathias (7) Dorléans, Loys (3) Drouart, Jehan (1)

61. BnF, Ms. fr. 23296, p. 228.

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Feuillet, Pierre (1) Granrue, Jehan de (1) Hacte, Roland (2) Hotman, Antoine (3) Hotman, Charles (1) Leclerc, Jehan (16) Legoix, Robert (1) Lemaître, Pierre (5) Lenormant, Nicolas (1) Louchart, Jehan (1) Luillier, Jehan (1) Machault, J.-­Baptiste de (1) Marteau, Michel (12) Masparraulte, Pierre de (1)

Morin, François (1) Nivelle, Nicolas (3) Nully, Estienne de (7) Oudineau, François (2) Passart, Michel (1) Pigneron, Mathurin (2) Raynssant, Odouart (1) Roland, Martin (1) Roland, Nicolas (4) Rozée, Pierre (1) Senault, Pierre (9) Taconnet, Nicolas (1) Tronson, Nicolas (1) Turquet, Jacques (1)

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brought about their downfall. By the time Rozée sat down to write his history of the League, the only place where someone could talk unashamedly about “zeal” was within the pages of a manuscript that no one would publish.

Works cited Archival sources AN = Archives nationales (Paris)

Minutier Central [MC], Études VIII, XI, XLIX, LXXIII, C, CIX, CX.

BnF = Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris)

Manuscrits français 23295–­96, Histoire anonyme de la Ligue.

Printed sources Ascoli, Peter. “The Sixteen and the Paris League, 1585–­1591.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1971.

Benedict, Philip. Rouen during the Wars of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Bérulle, Pierre de. Discours de l’état et les grandeurs de Jésus. Paris, 1623.

Boislisle, Arthur de. [Discours]. Annuaire-­Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1897): 108.

Chevallier, Pierre. Les Régicides: Clément, Ravaillac, Damiens. Paris: Fayard, 1989.

Dagens, Jean. Bérulle et les origines de la restauration catholique (1575–­1611). Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1952. Descimon, Robert, ed. Discours pour la majorité de Charles IX. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1993.

———. “Les Oratoriens du XVIIe siècle dans la lutte contre les calvinistes.” In L’Oratoire du Louvre et les protestants parisiens, edited by Philippe Braunstein, 68–­73. Paris: Decitre, 2013. ———. Qui étaient les Seize? Mémoires de la fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l’Île-­de-­France 23. Paris: Librairie Klincksieck, 1983.

———. “La Réconciliation des Hotman protestants et catholiques (des années 1580 aux années 1630).” In De Michel de l’Hospital à l’édit de Nantes: Politique et religion face aux Églises, edited by Thierry Wanegffelen, 531–­62. Clermont-­Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise-­Pascal, 2002. ———, and Ruiz Ibánez, José Xavier. Les Ligueurs de l’exil: Le refuge catholique français après 1594. Paris: Champ Vallon, 2005. Duféy, Pierre. Œuvres inédites de Michel de l’Hospital. 5 vols. Paris, 1824–­25.

Guérin, Paul, ed. Registres des délibérations du bureau de la ville de Paris (1590–­94). Vol 10. Paris, 1902.

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236 a Unfinished Business Houllemare, Marie. Les Politiques de la parole. Geneva: Droz, 2012.

Langlois, Charles-­V ictor. “Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Noël Valois.” Annuaire-­ Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1917): 294–­330. L’Estoile, Pierre de. Mémoires-­Journaux. Edited by G. Brunet et al. 12 vols. Paris, 1875–­ 96.

[Liste de la promotion annuelle à l’École nationale des chartes.] Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 64 (1903): 753. Moore, Lara Jennifer. Restoring Order: The École des chartes and the Organisation of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820–­1870. New York: Litwin, 2008.

Morgain, Stéphane-­Marie. La Théologie politique de Pierre de Bérulle (1598–­1629). Paris: Publisud, 1997.

Omont, Henri, et al., eds. Catalogue général des manuscrits français: Ancien supplément français. Paris, 1896.

Pallier, Denis. Recherches sur l’imprimerie pendant la Ligue (1585–­1594). Geneva: Droz, 1975. Peleus, Julian. Histoire des faicts de la vie de Henry le Grand. Paris: 1616.

Penzi, Marco. “Les Listes de proscriptions au temps de la Ligue. Un enjeu politique contemporain et un enjeu historiographique.” Mélanges de la casa de Velazquez 44, no. 2 (2014): 105–­18. Petris, Loris. La Plume et la tribune. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 2002–­13.

Salmon, J. H. M. “The Paris Sixteen, 1584–­1594: The social analysis of a revolutionary movement.” Journal of Modern History 44 (1972): 540–­76.

Valois Charles. “Un Dialogue historique du temps de la Ligue.” Annuaire-­Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France (1908): 189–­222. ———. “Une Discussion politique au XVIe siècle.” Annuaire-­Bulletin de la société de l’histoire de France (1910): 222–­37. ———, ed. Histoire de la Ligue: Œuvre inédite d’un contemporain. Paris, 1914. Valois, Noël. La France et le grand schisme d’Occident. 4 vols. Paris, 1901.

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Chapter 10

Gallicans Not Magistrates The Dupuy Cabinet in the Age of Richelieu Robert A. Schneider Jacques-­Auguste de Thou was a man of many facets. Although remembered primarily as a historian—­he is the author of History of His Times, probably the most important work of French history of the period—­ he was also an accomplished Latin poet, a distinguished magistrate of the Parlement of Paris, the keeper of the royal library, a diplomat, and a prominent spokesman for the politique position during the Wars of Religion. And if he happened to read Desseins de professions nobles et publiques, published in 1605, he would have learned that its author, Antoine de Laval, a royal official and Gallican savant who wrote on a wide range of topics, considered him an exemplar of the virtuous use of leisure.1 This last aspect is more meaningful than it might seem. An interest in “otium” was in fact a time-­honored theme among moralists, from Seneca to Montaigne and beyond—­how to turn leisure into an edifying and useful experience, and especially how to avoid sloth and boredom while enjoying a privilege that was, after all, the birthright of noblemen. One chapter of Laval’s sprawling book Du loysir et comme on le peut employer honnestement (On leisure and how it can be used virtuously), addressed this question, not by revisiting the views of ancient writers on the subject, such as Cicero and Seneca, or Christian moralists, as is usually the way in 1. On Laval, see Faure, Antoine de Laval; and Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, 273–­79, 466–­69.

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these sorts of texts, but by vaunting the example of a handful of contemporaries. Along with de Thou, Laval cites two other distinguished magistrates, Nicolas Rapin and Guy du Faur de Pibrac, who were also poets, and Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, a diplomat in service to the Hapsburgs, known too as a man of letters. Indeed, Laval emphasizes the literary activities of his exemplars, for it is their commitment and contributions to “letters”—­whether French or Latin—­that distinguishes them from those other noblemen whose proclivities ran to gambling, hunting, “games,” and the like, activities Laval scorned as unworthy of emulation. De Thou, like the others, stands out as a model of the learned gentleman who, while usually devoted to “serious matters,” also dedicated himself to Latin poetry, thus “ornamenting” his distinguished career as a prominent magistrate with the avocation of an exemplary “beaux esprits.” Laval confesses that de Thou’s achievement in the realm of letters was so daunting that it convinced him to abandon his own paltry literary efforts. His goal here, however, is not self-­referential, but rather to define members of the magistracy, the so-­called Fourth Estate, as opposed to the traditional nobility, by its appreciation of otium as a useful and edifying experience and as a counterpoint to the professional commitments that otherwise claim their time.2 This aspect of de Thou can serve as a point of departure for this essay, which will, in part, explore the historian as exemplary of new trends among the cultivated French elite in the seventeenth century. The real inspiration, however, comes from Robert Descimon’s article “Jacques de Thou (1553–­1617): Une rupture intellectuelle, politique, et sociale,” which appeared in the journal Revue de l’histoire des religions in 2009. Along with other essays, this article serves to deepen an inquiry that has been central to his remarkable career: the genealogy, fortunes, contours, and commitments of the Parisian “bourgeoisie” and the emergence, in part from its midst and in the crucible of the religious conflict of the sixteenth century, of the Fourth Estate and ultimately of the noblesse de robe. His prodigious work on this particular subject—­which has enormous implications for understanding the nature of an ancien régime society—­has been as pathbreaking as it has been inventive, distinguishing him as one of Europe’s leading historians of his generation. This is indeed one of the reasons for

2. Laval, Desseins, 349–­35; Krause, Idle Pursuit, 59–­62.

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this book—­his friendship and our gratitude for his boundless generosity, both personal and intellectual, over the years, being another. In this article, Descimon argues that the great Gallican historian constructed—­or perhaps reconstructed—­a new persona or identity in the course of his career. This development can be seen as a series of “ruptures.” First was a rupture with familial and career traditions that had joined his forebears’ fortunes with the Parisian oligarchy whose power base was the Hôtel de Ville. The second was a break with the savant judicial “science” that had achieved such prestige in the sixteenth century. The final one was realized by way of a critique of dogmatic theology, and all its confessionalist implications, in favor of a Gallicanism that invested its providentialism not in a global vision of all of Christianity but rather in the more “local,” divinely ordained destiny of France and its king. What did these ruptures lead to or create? Descimon provides several suggestions as an answer. Socially, de Thou’s break with his family’s Parisian roots paved the way for his participation in the creation of a new high nobility—­a true nobility of the robe, with its own values and sense of place in the nation’s hierarchy. His intellectual break with the legal traditions of his professional forebears meant identification with the emerging Republic of Letters, the European-­wide fraternity of savants. “He was incontestably a precursor,” writes Descimon, “inscribed in an intellectual configuration he himself helped to create, that of a republic of letters, which presupposed a distancing from the humanist movement of the sixteenth century.”3 Finally, there were cultural implications to de Thou’s “refashioning.”4 Here, Descimon alludes to his colleague Christian Jouhaud’s influential book, Les pouvoirs de la littérature, casting, it would seem, de Thou among those gens de lettres who created the literary field that Jouhaud, Alain Viala, and their students have been so fruitfully excavating these last years.5 I would like to follow up on Descimon’s interpretation of de Thou’s development by looking less at the great historian himself than at his 3. Descimon, “Jacques de Thou,” 486. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s.

4. For an approach to de Thou which focuses on this aspect of his career, see De Smet, Thuanus. More generally on de Thou and his History, see Kinser, Works of Jacques-­Auguste de Thou; Grafton, The Footnote, chap. 5; and Coron, “Ut prosnit aliis.”

5. Jouhaud, Pouvoirs de la littérature; Viala, Naissance de l’écrivain; Schapira, Professionnel des lettres; Bombart, Guez de Balzac; Blocker, Instituer un “art.” See also the remarkable works of Hélène Merlin-­ Kajman.

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immediate descendants and followers, his nephews Pierre and Jacques Dupuy, and some of the associates who made up their milieu. Ultimately, I will return to de Thou and argue that his legacy was more fragile than usually assumed—­that the contradictions that defined what his most recent biographer calls his “torn self ” as both magistrate and “writer” were not entirely conveyed to his descendants, thus suggesting a rather complex line of development of the noblesse de robe from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. *** b a x Most historians of early modern France are familiar with the so-­called Dupuy cabinet. Inheritors and custodians of their uncle’s vast collection of books and manuscripts, the Dupuys presided over a learned community that, in terms of its profile and importance on the Parisian cultural scene, was rivaled only by the renowned Rambouillet salon, which, of course, embodied a very different set of values and intellectual orientations. Their cabinet was the capital of the emerging Republic of Letters, with visitors, correspondents, and associates from throughout Europe. It was at once a meeting place for humanists and savants of all stripes, a library, and a place of research. Marc Fumaroli has described it as something of a think-­tank of Gallicanism—­a sort of CNRS of the time6—­and indeed, the Dupuy brothers were on the front line of the Gallican defense against the dévot and ultramontane challenge to the liberties of the Gallican church. More than any other cohort, they were the bearers of the centuries-­long tradition that insisted that the church in France, while certainly under the ultimate aegis of the papacy, maintained privileges and powers that Rome had no right to deny. But along with its identity as a Gallican stronghold, the Dupuy cabinet also served as an intellectual and social haven for men—­and men it was—­of a remarkably wide range of interests: men of science such as the astronomer Ismaël Boulliau, pure savants such as François Guyet, erudite skeptics such as François La Mothe le Vayer, Gallican prelates such as Bishop Charles de Montchal of Toulouse, amateur intellectuals such as the noble warrior Phillipe Fortin de la Hoguette, high parle6. Centre national de la recherche scientifique, the major organ for the support of advanced education and scholarly research in France.

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mentary officials such as Mathieu de Molé, and foreign savants such as Thomas Hobbes and Hugo Grotius. Even men of letters such as Jean-­ Louis Guez de Balzac and Jean Chapelain, whose primary allegiance was with the literary salon culture, maintained ties with the erudite milieu of the cabinet.7 Could it be that the Dupuys and their associates were continuing on the path that, according to Descimon, was set by their uncle? One way to pursue this question is to interrogate further his claim that de Thou contributed to the emerging literary field of the early seventeenth century. To cast de Thou as an exemplar of this cultural turn would certainly posit a rupture between his own course and the intellectual and linguistic traditions of the magistracy to which his family had long been associated, for the Parlementary Palace was seen by many as the bastion of “Galimatias” (which might be translated as “rubbish” or “balderdash”), a term that was used by the new generation of gens de lettres to mock the discursive practices of pedants and old-­school humanists. Even some insiders were increasingly aware that the parlementaires were falling behind the times. Guillaume du Vair, who was himself deeply identified with the royal magistracy, scolded his erudite colleagues for showy erudition, excessive reliance on citations, and their general failure to achieve a style of address that could actually appeal to those outside their learned precincts. His criticism of one of his celebrated predecessors in the court, Barnabé Brisson, illustrates his critique: “He preferred to appear more learned than eloquent. His discourses were so full of citations, authorities, and digressions that one could scarcely follow the thread of his speech.”8 This, then, points to the fault line running right across the cultural landscape of early seventeenth century, a cleavage that was remarked upon even at the time. Pierre Bardin, a member of the French Academy, whose 1632 publication, Le Lycée, ranks with Nicolas Faret’s L’honnête homme, ou l’art de plaire à la cour, published two years earlier, as a fundamental text in the emerging code of honnêteté, saw the division in rather categorical terms. He writes,

7. There is a large literature on the Dupuy cabinet, but no work that is definitive. Pintard, Libertinage érudit, is still fundamental—­an exhaustible source for the whole period. More recent is the deeply researched thesis, Delatour, “Frères Dupuy.” 8. Du Vair, De l’Éloquence française, 391.

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Two kinds of writers now dominate all the presses. One is inventive in exercising the imagination; the other displays all the riches of memory. The first are poets and the writers of novels . . . who have at least succeeded to a degree that their writings have found a place in the “cabinets” of ladies. The others are those who in order to gain the approval of knowledgeable men study languages, the opinions of the first authorities, relating to the greatest difficulties in the sciences, on the illumination of obscure passages in old books.9 Where do the Dupuys, de Thou’s anointed successors, belong in the context of this cultural divide? There are, it must be said, good reasons to place them precisely in the camp opposed to the new literary fashion—­steadfast upholders of the erudite humanism, which the disciples of François de Malherbe and the habitués of the Rambouillet salon could only look upon as insufferable pedantry. And, in fact, during the celebrated quarrel over the Lettres de Monsieur de Balzac, first published in 1624, all evidence points to the Dupuy cabinet as a redoubt for critics of the new literary style that Balzac’s letters exemplified. The brothers busied themselves behind the scenes in supporting Balzac’s critics. Concerned as always with protecting their reputation, they operated through surrogates. In 1627 Jacques Dupuy wrote to Nicolas-­Claude Fabri de Peiresc to encourage him to furnish Père Goulu, who was first to take on Balzac, with materials that might help him in his counterattack.10 La Mothe le Vayer, an intimate of the cabinet, conceived his Considerations sur l’éloquence française as a critique of the new literary fashion (indeed, his text was written in response to Claude Favre de Vaugelas’s Remarques sur la langue française [1647], then circulating in manuscript). The supposed eloquence in the writings of his contemporary rivals struck him as nothing but “spiders’ webs full of subtlety and artifice but which are only good for catching flies.” Eloquence is not merely a matter of glibness but the “explication of the thoughts of a wise man,” he writes.11 Ismaël Boulliau, another habitué of the cabinet, had even sharper words for the new gener9. Bardin, “Au Lecteur,” in Lycée, n.p.

10. On the Dupuys’ participation quarrel over Balzac, see Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, 545–­51; and Bombart, Guez de Balzac, 310n28. 11. La Mothe le Vayer, Considérations, 124, 120.

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ation of writers. The talent of these men, he writes, “consists of the ability to turn a phrase, make up a rondeau . . . or some other trifle, which can be done in three weeks or a month and then paraded around the ruelles of the coquettes of Paris, who grant their approval to these men according to their whims.”12 Given this evidence, it seems something of a stretch to place the Dupuys within the bounds of the literary field. These were the friends and disciples of the likes of Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon, Claude Saumaise and Daniel Heinsius, humanists committed to uncompromising erudition, scholars steeped in ancient languages and ancient texts. But one feature of the Dupuys’ discursive practices should give us pause: their own writings were virtually exclusively in French. Indeed, in a short biography of Pierre Dupuy, written in 1651 after his death, Nicolas Rigault, an intimate of the cabinet, made very clear that Pierre’s choice of the vernacular placed him among his contemporaries who understood that linguistic reform was the order of the day. According to Rigault, Pierre acknowledged that this was something of a concession—­“a betrayal of their own spirit” on the part of those who “insist on treating modern and French subjects in the style of antiquity and in the language of Rome.” He went further, however, asserting that “for both preachers and lawyers to corrupt their discourses in sprinkling their sentences with Latin and Greek words” was a “detestable habit.” This was not, he insisted, the practice of “the great orators of antiquity”; sometimes the Romans allowed themselves to use Greek words, but only in their letters, and the Greeks never felt compelled to borrow from other languages. Pierre Dupuy’s embrace of the French language was based on his conviction that, in the proper hands, it was capable of all the virtues of true eloquence. “His principal aim,” writes Rigault, “was in effect to formulate what he thought in a manner both striking and perfectly clear,” following the practice of the “sages”—­only in French. “In his opinion it was not the least honor of this time to have given birth to several exceptional men who have cultivated the elegance, wit and grace [of French].” If Pierre Dupuy did not necessarily count himself one among them, he still saw the advantage, as a public man, to expressing himself in the language of his “concitoyens.” “He judged it suitable so as to be understood

12. Quoted in Delatour, “Frères Dupuy,” 332.

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more easily and quickly by our fellow citizens, to conceive and fashion his works in our language,” judging Latin “ineffective . . . to directly reach the ears of the least accustomed.” Rigault concludes, “And in this he relied on the common sense of all the people.”13 Thus, if Pierre Dupuy’s writings do not quite embody the “literary” qualities of, say, Balzac or François de Sales or Descartes in the Discourse on Method—­that is, a style that is at once clear, beguiling, personal, and accessible—­he still made an effort to accommodate the literary tastes, linguistic expectations, and intellectual limitations of a broader readership than the deeply erudite. Some of his works apparently circulated widely, even though they remained in manuscript until after his death. This was true with his three “Gallican” histories—­of the condemnation of the Templiers, the conflict between King Philippe le Bel and Pope Boniface VIII, and the Great Schism—­which, while erudite, were written in a French largely in keeping with the emerging linguistic tendencies of the day. In his extraordinary polemic drafted in the wake of the execution of his beloved cousin François-­Auguste de Thou in 1642 for involvement in the Cinq Mars conspiracy against Richelieu, Pierre’s authorial presence is on full display, exhibiting a willingness to indulge in the rhetorical license not normally associated with erudite precincts like the Dupuy cabinet. Pierre Dupuy could hardly be counted among the beaux esprits—­the writers who appealed mainly to the wellborn men and women who gravitated toward the milieu of the salon—­but neither did he remain entirely wedded to the learned traditions of the last century. And in this sense, he pushed beyond the linguistic constraints of his uncle, for Jacques-­Auguste de Thou wrote not only his History but also his verses in Latin, a choice that ensured his readership would be limited to the community of European savants.14 For all their erudition, the Dupuys’ choice of the vernacular was significant—­ and a departure. There is, however, a much surer approach to seeing the Dupuy cabinet as perpetuating the process of rupture that Descimon has identified for their uncle. One element in his analysis regards de Thou’s separation

13. All quotes from Fumaroli, “Aux Origines érudites.”

14. “He wrote not for everyone but only for the learned and the powerful, French or other.” Descimon also notes in this same passage that this adherence to Latin distinguished him from his contemporary Guillaume Du Vair, who “targeted a wide readership, well beyond learned circles”; Descimon, “Jacques Auguste de Thou,” 489.

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not only from the political base of the Parisian Hôtel de Ville but also, perhaps more profoundly, from the urban bourgeoisie, whom he associated with the greatest excesses of the League. “In de Thou’s political program, there was nothing worse,” Descimon writes, “for he saw there the origins of the massacres perpetrated against the Protestants and the revolt against royal authority.” A consequence of his experience with the League was thus a rejection of the whole urban social milieu with all its communal practices and traditions that gave rise to it.15 If social distance or separation is the operative dynamic here, then the Dupuys certainly followed the same script. And in this, they were hardly alone. They were part of a movement among a cross section of elites, a movement marked by social and psychological withdrawal and retreat that went beyond the proclivity for leisure and otium that was their traditional privilege. In order to sustain this claim, it is necessary to step back from the Dupuys and survey the literary and intellectual landscape in the first part of the seventeenth century—­a Parisian cityscape in which their cabinet was only one among many intellectual or literary associations. When we turn to Paris in the generations immediately following the Wars of Religion, we find a pronounced movement on the part of elites and gens de lettres alike into essentially private forms of association and sociability that transformed the cityscape and defined the cultural history of the period. These were informal not institutional, private as opposed to public, voluntary rather than kin-­based, and nonproductive or nonutilitarian in the sense that they were defined in terms of leisure, entertainment, literary pastimes, conversation, and in general the genteel, civilized activities associated with the Ciceronian phrase “otium cum dignitate.” The private academy and the salon are perhaps the best-­known sorts of these, but it is really the number of such groups that should be emphasized at this point. By one count there were over thirty identifiable associations of writers and savants (some including aristocrats) active between 1610 and 1648 in Paris alone. Some formed around a particularly charismatic or forceful writer such as François de Malherbe, Théophile de Viau, or Marie de Gournay. Many, perhaps most, were dedicated to literature and helped create the literary field that is one of the defining

15. Ibid., 487–­88.

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features of the period. The circle of men of letters who met in Valentin Conrart’s townhouse starting in the mid-­1620s—­and who in 1629 would be “discovered” by Richelieu and co-­opted in order to form the core of the Académie française—­is one of the best known of these conventicles. The Rambouillet salon certainly served as a literary forum of sorts, conferring status on writers-­on-­the-­make like Balzac, Chapelain, Vincent Voiture, and Georges de Scudéry, and providing them with an eager public of the wellborn and discerning as well. But the Hôtel de Rambouillet was not the only of its kind: there were at least three other salons active in the same period. Other groups were more erudite—­which is also to say, less literary—­in orientation. There was Marin Mersenne’s academy, Théophraste Renaudot’s Bureau d’Adresses, and another private academy presided over by Nicolas Bourbon, a well-­known scholar of Latin and Greek. Among these associations of learned gentlemen, the Dupuy cabinet was surely the largest and most important. Finally, several groups flourished within the entourages of princes or great aristocrats such as Henri II de Montmorency, Jean-­François Paul de Gondi, the future cardinal de Retz, François de Faudoas, comte de Belin, and the king’s brother, the duc d’Orléans. In short, never before, and probably not again until the Enlightenment, was Parisian intellectual and cultural sociability so rich and varied.16 There is much to be said about these groups and the culture they embodied. Certainly there were important differences among them, such as differences in size and social composition, in intellectual orientation, or in how they function within this constellation of associations. But they share several features. Most fundamentally, they embodied the ethos of otium cum dignitate—­the value of withdrawal or retreat into a privileged realm of learning, refined conversation, or other forms of self-­edification. They conformed to the edifying model vaunted by Antoine de Laval, noted at the outset. And while this ethos was venerable—­celebrated across the ages since antiquity—­there are good reasons to conclude that it became a pronounced feature of elite culture in the generations following the Wars of Religion. These reasons must be cited briefly. 16. de Boer, “Men’s Literary Circles in Paris, 1610–­1660,” 730–­80; Brown, Scientific Organization in Seventeenth-­Century France­; Antoine Adam, Histoire de la littérature française­; Gibson, Women in Seventeenth-­Century France­; Mazauric, Savoir et philosophie à Paris; Mesnard, Précis de littérature française­; Lougee, Paradis des Femmes­; Viala, Naissance de l’écrivain; Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism; Schneider, “Friends of Friends.”

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For one thing, the experience of the Wars of Religion with its various excesses, both physical and rhetorical, prompted many to withdraw from the public scene, especially as it now struck men who considered themselves endowed with the virtue of prudence as unworthy of their commitments and dangerous as well. Here, Descimon’s argument regarding the League takeover of Paris as a precipitant of de Thou’s break with the urban bourgeoisie is certainly pertinent. For another thing—­and surely because of the same pressures—­the preferred mode of rhetorical expression underwent a transformation in the latter part of the sixteenth century from the traditional oratorical model to one that prized more private forms of exchange, such as letter writing, conversation, or princely counsel.17 Another factor, also related to the first two, was the rise of neo-­Stoicism, which, while it aimed ultimately to fashion a man of action, counseled withdrawal and retreat as necessary stages in the education of a virtuous gentleman. Justus Lipsius, the major exponent of neo-­Stoicism, writing in the midst of the bitter sectarian conflict in the Low Countries, addressed the quandary of what a virtuous man should do in the face of such disastrous circumstances. His Two Books of Constancy ends with a rhapsodic endorsement of the garden as both a metaphorical and a real place of retreat. As a contemporary English translation put it, So soone as I put my foote within that place, I bid all vile and servile cares abandon me, and lifting up my head as upright as I may, I contemne the delights of the prophane people, & the great vanitie of humane affaires. Yea I seem to shake off all things in mee that is humaine, and to be rapt up on high upon the fiery chariot of wisdome. Referring to rival confessional identities, he concludes, “Doest thou thinke when I am there that I take any care what the Frenchmen or Spaniards are in practising?”18 Finally, the rise of absolutism, with its tendency to vitiate or co-­opt forms of meaningful public engagement, contributed to a process already set in motion by the religious wars, fostering a further withdrawal into private forms of association and commitment.19 17. Still valuable on this point, although somewhat surpassed by recent scholarship, is the work of Croll, Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm. See, more recently, Shoemaker, Powerful Connections. 18. Lipsius, Two Bookes of Constancie, 136.

19. On these various themes and developments, see, for example, Koehane, Philosophy and the State

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I propose that we think of associational life in the era as detached in two respects. First, by their very nature, the gatherings that proliferated then were distinguished from the formal, corporate institutions that constituted the institutional landscape of official life. Despite the fact that some of their members had positions in these institutions—­as clergymen, officials, or magistrates—­the groups themselves flourished outside such established venues as the university, the bar, the church, or the royal court. They lacked any formal status, or identity; they had no official existence, no public presence in the ceremonial display that still marked city life. And this informal status was related to the discursive practices they fostered. Indeed, it was a fundamental principle shared by a whole range of gens de lettres and savants to eschew the professional jargon—­whether scholastic, legal, or even courtly—­that characterized these venues, with their specialized linguistic codes and cultures. They were also exclusive, but with an informal selection process—­often dictated by the discernment of a salonnière or the collective judgment of habitués—­not determined by status, title, or other formally recognized or pre-­established criteria. As well, they were defined by a certain implicit restriction—­not only elitism and exclusivity, but also the observance of discretion, self-­censorship, even secrecy.20 And this leads to a second feature, which will help us work our way back to Descimon’s understanding of de Thou’s self-­fashioning. The sociability that characterized these groups was not only infused with the ethos of otium but also with a self-­conscious distancing from the mass of society, especially the lower classes, often described in a trope that was a veritable cliché of the time as the “many-­headed beast.” Gabriel Naudé, who was an intimate of the Dupuy cabinet, evoked the image with a virulence quite common among contemporary savants and gens de lettres: “a beast with many heads, vagabonds, wayward, crazy, thoughtless, rudderless, mindless, without judgment,” he writes in Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état (1639). Later in this text he qualifies the assessment: “I say that [the populace] is inferior to beasts, worse than beasts, and hun-

in France; Battista, “Morale privée et utilitarisme politique”; Merlin-­Kajman, Public et littérature en France. I am also pursuing these themes in my book manuscript, “Dignified Retreat: Writers and Intellectuals in the Age of Richelieu.” 20. On this, see my article, “Self-­Censorship and Men of Letters.”

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dred times more stupid than beasts.”21 “I beg of you,” writes La Mothe le Vayer, in the introduction to one of his dialogues, “to reflect a little, not only on all the errors, idiocies, and impertinences of the vulgar . . . but also the tyranny of our age, the customs that they have established and the invincible obstinacy with which they are so blindly followed.” “An honest man who loves truth,” he concludes, can only distance himself from the common sort that makes up society. The sentiment is echoed by Fortin de la Hoguette, a soldier and magistrate who maintained a close relationship with the Dupuys. “It is sufficient for the wise man to withdraw into himself and away from the crowd,” he writes in a text addressed to his sons, “and to preserve the freedom of judgment within himself of things as they really are.”22 And in the book he finally managed to write on Epicurean philosophy, Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri, Pierre Gassendi, who was closely identified with the cabinet, writes, “If I can speak of myself, I consider it a very great benefit never to have involved myself in political quarrels of the city and never to have sought to please the people or to flatter them. Why would I do so, for I know the people do not appreciate what I value, and what they value I know nothing about?”23 My suggestion is this: that, as Descimon tells us, de Thou put distance between himself and the “bourgeois” Paris of the League; he then passed the baton to the Dupuys—­who just kept on going, so to speak, institutionalizing this separation from the larger society in the insulated, privileged, and highly selective milieu of the cabinet. Let us recall what this term evoked. “Cabinet” was a common designation meaning several things: a private room, a place for decision-­making, a closet for the storage and display of precious objects. It conveyed a sense of privacy, enclosure, solitude. In the preface to his Mémorial, the dialogues purporting to represent the Dupuy habitués as they met, La Mothe le Vayer notes that Paris is graced with a number of “cabinets,” but then singles out one—­ the Dupuys’—­as superior to all others. He calls it a “réduit”—­a recess or retreat—­for learned men to meet in a peaceful, privileged milieu. But they were hardly unique in this respect. The groups and associations I have just

21. Naudé, Considérations politiques, 139.

22. La Mothe le Vayer, Quatre dialogues, 14. 23. Quoted in Taussig, Pierre Gassendi, 253.

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briefly described were similarly insulated, characterized by self-­conscious withdrawal from city life.24 While to call attention to elitist attitudes in a hierarchical society of orders that was the ancien régime might seem otiose, it can be argued that in the generations following the Wars of Religion this attitude was infused with a greater degree of self-­consciousness. To evoke an admittedly overused term—­but one which, I believe, is appropriate here—­“self-­ fashioning” (or what the Germans would call “Bildung”) became part and parcel of elite formation—­at least for those elites who strove to distinguish themselves beyond the markers of family, birth, office, or title that traditionally identified the privileged. This is where such contemporary terms as “honnêteté” and “esprit fort” are relevant. Although the latter was certainly less commonly deployed—­and usually as an ascription for selective savants—­they both convey an aspirational impulse toward greater refinement of mind, culture, or behavior that became a hallmark of a new elite. They embodied the “je ne sais quoi” that Richard Scholar has lavishly documented as an implicit trope in the early modern period.25 And, as ideals developed on the frontier between the world of letters and the socially privileged, they were cultural, as opposed to professional, in orientation. This echoes Descimon’s summary of de Thou’s own cultural development as embodying “a soul of an elite detached from the preoccupations of a vain people, but also from the professional practices proper to the magistracy.” Like the Dupuys, “The victory of de Thou and those close to him is undeniable, but it was cultural, not political.”26 But this qualification (“not political”) ought not obscure the considerable political role the Dupuys played in the vexed, and even dangerous, politico-­religious terrain of France in the period of the Counter-­ Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War. In fact, they played two roles: as royal agents and researchers, active in aid of Richelieu’s attempts to secure France’s territorial claims, and as learned advocates for the cause of Gallicanism. This in turn underscores an important feature of their profile in contemporary culture. Despite the Dupuys’ close ties to the magistracy, they did not become magistrates themselves and, indeed, 24. [La Mothe le Vayer], Mémorial, 9–­10. Despite the publication date, internal evidence shows that this text represents gatherings that took place in either the late 1630s or early 1640s. 25. Scholar, Je-­Ne-­Sais-­Quoi.

26. Descimon, “Jacques de Thou,” 488, 494.

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kept their distance from this professional milieu. As Fumaroli notes, “They maintained for themselves the title of ‘avocat’ all their lives, but they never practiced, as if they could indulge themselves in the luxury of playing a social role on the model of Cicero, while disdaining to sully themselves with any contact with the bar.”27 And here too the legacy, or example, of de Thou may have been a factor, for the historian-­ magistrate, disappointed in not being selected as first president of the Parlement, sold his office in 1613, a move characterized by De Smet in terms that highlight its dramatic effect: “Abandoning this office, which had been the cornerstone of the de Thou family’s power base, objectively ran counter to the interests of the family. . . . [T]he public perception was that de Thou, now toward the end of his career, openly and emphatically relinquished civic office.”28 A look at the identities of those associated with the Dupuy brothers confirms this sense of distance between the Parlement and the cabinet. And we should note how surprising this is; for the centrality of Gallicanism to the religious and political ethos of the Dupuys would suggest close ties between them and the magistrates—­the traditional defenders of the “liberties of the Gallican church.” But the presence of parlementaires in their circle was in fact quite limited and far outstripped by savants and gentlemen with other professional profiles and associations. To be sure, a formal membership list of the cabinet does not exist. Relying on what is still one of the most authoritative accounts of the Dupuys, René Pintard’s monumental Le libertinage érudit au premier moitié du dix-­septième siècle, however, we can at least appreciate the range of associates. There are about sixty individuals who can be identified, not including the correspondents who maintained contact with the brothers, and who can be said to have constituted a large swath of the Republic of Letters. Of these only a handful can be associated with the parlementary milieu in particular or the magistracy in general. Many associates of the Dupuys, such as La Mothe le Vayer, Naudé, Gassendi, and others, depended upon the patronage of noblemen, churchmen, or high officials; others had positions in the ecclesiastical establishment; a few seemed to benefit from the direct support of the Dupuys themselves. But members of the Parlement

27. Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, 589. 28. De Smet, Thuanus, 271–­72.

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or other royal courts—­the milieu that gave rise to the de Thou–­D upuy dynasty—­were few and far between.29 What are the implications of this detached position which, I have suggested, following Descimon’s interpretation of de Thou, characterized his descendants Pierre and Jacques Dupuy even more? Christian Jouhaud has argued that the status of literature in this period was detached from any professional, institutional or, indeed, teleological commitments; and that this position was an advantage in a new political culture, equipping gens de lettres with a discursive latitude to perform a whole range of tasks. As similarly removed, the Dupuys were also endowed with versatility and mobility, allowing them to play multiple roles in a variety of contexts, both political and cultural. They were at once scholars, royal agents, and Gallican promoters. They managed to remain among Richelieu’s most dependable servants while, sub rosa, developing into strident critics of his rule (especially following the execution in 1642 of their cousin François-­ Auguste de Thou).30 Occupying the center of an emerging Republic of Letters that was their renowned cabinet, they obviously realized very quickly the advantage of leveraging this informal cultural power, as opposed to tying their fate to increasingly fraught corporate or professional institutions. Was it from their uncle that they learned that this kind of power could only be gained by mastering the conditions of what Descimon calls “a culture of segregation”? *** b a x If so, it is important to note as well in what way that culture departed from their uncle’s model. The de Thou portrayed in Ingrid A. R. De Smet’s learned study Thuanus: The Making of Jacques-­Auguste de Thou is a man profoundly marked by the pull of his different commitments. He is by breeding, education, and profession a magistrate in the realm’s highest court, the son and grandson of parlementaires, and deeply committed to a religious ideology, Gallicanism, that was wedded to the history, fortunes, 29. Pintard, Libertinage érudit, 95ff. Among the few magistrates who appeared to frequent the sessions of the Dupuys were Jerome Bignon and Mathieu Molé. Fontin de la Hoguette, a military who maintained a long relationship with the cabinet, became a conseiller in the Parlement of Metz. See also Fumaroli, L’Âge de l’éloquence, 589.

30. Giuliano Ferretti believes that the Dupuys supported the magistrates of the Parlement in the first Fronde. See Ferretti, “Introduction,” in Fortin de la Hoguette, Lettres . . . , 45.

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and privileges of the court; but he is also immersed in humanistic literary culture, a writer of highly praised, erudite Latin verses, a close friend of the leading poets of his day, and, of course, an author whose History is a monument of neo-­Latin literature. For Laval, these last were admirable features of a true nobleman whose virtue was not only demonstrated in exemplary public service but also in the edifying way he occupied himself at leisure. In De Smet’s telling, however, these contradictory commitments were psychologically more costly, rendering him a “torn self.” De Thou himself gave voice to the strains and tensions of balancing these commitments; he often bemoaned the noisome duties of the court and society in general, preferring (in his own words) “to give his time to the Muses, to seek out unknown recesses, avoiding the cliffs and storms of the city, and showing disdain for the empty promises of men.”31 But as heartfelt as this sort of expression undoubtedly was, it was hardly unusual coming from a humanist like de Thou. While the experience of the Wars of Religion undoubtedly lent urgency to the desire to retreat from the world, this refrain had long been a common topos in humanist discourse. This then underscores de Thou’s humanism; for the tensions and contradictions he embodied were those contained, however agonizingly experienced and expressed, in humanist culture. Although “torn” between his professional commitment to the magistracy and his love of poetry cultivated in the spirit of otium cum dignitate, his fundamental intellectual proclivities could still bridge them: erudition, the literary potential of neo-­Latin, and the model of the ancients. Like Montaigne’s Essays, his musings offer us a finely tuned portrait of a humanist straining at the limits of an inherited intellectual tradition but still within it. With the Dupuys, however, those limits and the tensions they created are no longer part of their intellectual makeup. The most telling difference between de Thou and the milieu of his nephews is the virtually complete lack of interest in cultivating what we would call literature—­lyric and epic poetry, drama, satire, private letters, and the like. Of course, as I have noted, they did make concessions to a non-­ savant readership by writing in French, not Latin, but this seemed the limit of their accommodation. Except for the Scotsman John Barclay, the author of a neo-­Latin novel that re-­imagined the French Wars of

31. Quoted in De Smet, Thuanus, 64.

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Religion in a pre-­Roman time,32 there were no “writers”—­no beaux esprits—­in their midst.33 Thus, while their uncle helped fashion the literary field of his century, the Dupuys failed to pick up this aspect of his legacy. Literature was left to others. To be sure, like all educated men, they took an interest in literature, but their tastes ran to the likes of Pierre de Ronsard and other poets associated with the Pléiade, whose works were fashioned on ancient models, shot through with mythological allusions, infused with Italian influences, and often deeply esoteric. In the seventeenth century, however, Ronsard had fallen out of favor; his works were no longer reprinted; and with the rise of François de Malherbe and his “doctrine,” the mode turned to what Jean Mesnard calls a “civil literature”: civic, accessible, and instructive, characterized less by erudition and antique models than by bienséance and clarity.34 The “field” of literature was cultivated elsewhere: in the salons and other venues that made up that “mondain” society which self-­consciously eschewed humanistic models, or anything that smacked of the dreaded “pedantry.” In abandoning the literary field to others, then, the Dupuys forsook the major avenue for engaging a mondain elite that had everything to gain from the tutelage of humanists—­that is, as long as these savants were willing to meet noblemen and women halfway, to translate their erudition into accessible discursive terms, ultimately to enter into the sociable world of the salon as well. This is, in fact, what such writers as Balzac and Chapelain were willing to do. But the Dupuys and their cohorts would have none of this. And in this sense as well, only even more than their uncle, their social stance was characterized by detachment—­another rupture that compounded their distance from the milieu of the magistracy. But this is to see the Dupuys’ position in purely negative terms. In another sense, their social orientation was characterized by much broader connections across Europe than even those maintained by their uncle. We now can appreciate that de Thou should rank alongside Scaliger, Lipsius,

32. Barclay, Argenis (Paris, 1621). Seven years later it was translated into English: John Barclay, His Argenis. 33. Here it should be noted that while Chapelain and Balzac maintained ties with the Dupuys, this association did not trump their primary identification with the mondain literary culture they helped to fashion. 34. Katz, Ronsard’s French Critics; Mesnard, “‘Honnête homme’ et ‘Honnête femme.’”

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and Casaubon as the fourth member of the “triumvirate” of the Republic of Letters at the end of the sixteenth century, “an intellectual configuration he himself helped to create,” comments Descimon.35 From William Camden in England to Paolo Sarpi in Venice, Angelio da Barga in Pisa, Johann Wilhelm of Lubeck, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq of the Hapsburg court, and of course Justus Lipsius in Leyden, and others, his ties spanned the Continent. Indeed, in describing the Tumulus (a collection of funeral poetry) on the death of his father, Christophe de Thou, he clearly wanted to emphasize the international range of those érudits who contributed verses in Greek, Latin, and French as reflecting his own cosmopolitan horizons. His father, he writes in his History, “was celebrated by the funeral poems of the most learned men, not just in France but even in Italy and Germany; these [poems] more than the marble tomb [ . . . ] will last eternally together with the memory of an utterly irreproachable man.”36 But in fact, de Thou’s European contacts were less widespread than he makes out; very few of the contributors of the two Tumuli, one for his brother Jean (1580), the other for his father (1583), hailed from beyond France. At least in this period, as De Smet concludes, “de Thou’s intellectual world was peopled mainly by scholars, poets, and politicians from French soil.”37 For his nephews, however, it was quite different; their world was cosmopolitan in ways he could only imagine. Out of the over six thousand surviving letters received by the Dupuys, almost a third are from correspondents outside France, with most originating from Italy, the Low Countries, and England.38 Among them was Peter Paul Rubens, who engaged in a regular correspondence with Pierre Dupuy from 1626 to 1631.39 Moreover, the constant flurry of letters was matched by the cadre of agents who served the cabinet on site, especially in Rome, where a third Dupuy brother, Christophe, was a resident Chartreux monk, but also in such intellectual centers as Padua and Leyden, Oxford, and Cambridge. The flow of visitors to and from Italy was especially intense: Peiresc’s home in Aix served as conduit for traffic in both directions. Tomaso

35. De Smet, Thuanus, 24–­25; Descimon, “Jacques de Thou,” 486. 36. De Smet, Thuanus, 80n27. 37. De Smet, Thuanus, 79.

38. Delatour, “Les Frères Dupuy,” 421ff.

39. Magurn, Letters of Peter Paul Rubens.

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Campanella found refuge at the Dupuys’ once he was sprung from his Roman prison; while Francesco and Maffeo Barberini maintained close ties with the cabinet, both before and after the latter was elevated to the papacy as Urban VIII. Two of the leading Protestant intellectuals of the day, Hugo Grotius and Claude Saumaise, circulated within the Dupuys’ orbit. Beyond these well-­known figures, ambassadors and foreign dignitaries eagerly sought entry into the brothers’ hôtel, for their gatherings, governed by the rule of discretion, were ideal for the exchange of sensitive information. And some ambitious fathers from Denmark, Holland, and Germany strove to place their sons with the Dupuys for what we might imagine as the seventeenth-­century equivalent of a postgraduate internship in Europe’s premier humanist venue. The balance sheet is thus mixed when it comes to assessing the Dupuys’ place in the cultural firmament. Their European contacts were wide, earning for them the reputation as custodians of a Republic of Letters that, perhaps for the first time, appears worthy of this designation. But as much as they energetically engaged with a savant Europe, their local ties were more tentative. Like their uncle after he resigned his parlementary office, they kept their distance from the corporate world of the magistracy; like him too, they preferred the mode of retreat—­of otium cum dignitate—­to engagement with the vexed milieus of both court and city. Eschewing the literary culture associated with beaux esprits and salonnières, however, whose tastes and intellectual orientations they disdained, they failed in maintaining the legacy of their uncle in this crucial domain. Perhaps this can help explain why, as Laurent Croq has shown for the eighteenth century, the noblesse de robe failed to create a cultural presence in the city commensurate with its social status.40 In the Dupuys, could we have an early indication of a “culture of segregation” that, in a sense, took the process too far?

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Barclay, John. John Barclay, His Argenis, translated out of Latine into English. Translated by Sir Robert Le Grys. London, 1628.

40. Croq, “Noblesse de robe, la modernité et le Marais dans le Paris des Lumières.”

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Bardin, Pierre. Le Lycée du Sr. Bardin où en plusieurs promenades il est traité des connoissances des actions et des plaisirs d’un honneste homme. Paris, 1632.

Battista, Anna Maria. “Morale privée et utilitarisme politique en France au 17e siècle.” In Staatsräson: Studien zur Geschichte eines politischen Begriffs, edited by R. Schnurr, 87–­120. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1974.

Blocker, Déborah. Instituer un “art”: Politiques du théâtre dans la France du premier XVIIe siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009. Bombart, Mathilde. Guez de Balzac et la querelle des Lettres. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007.

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Coron, Antoine. “Ut Prosnit aliis: Jacques Auguste de Thou et sa bibliothèque.” In Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, II: Les bibliothèques sous l’ancien régime, edited by Claude Jolly, 101–­25. Paris: Promodis: Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1988. Croll, Morris. Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm: Essays by Morris W. Croll. Edited by J. Max Patrick and Robert O. Evans. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Croq, Laurence. “La Noblesse de robe, la modernité et le Marais dans le Paris des Lumières.” In Epreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la haute robe parisienne (xvii–­xviii siècle), edited by Élie Haddad and Robert Descimon, 257–­75. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010. de Boer, Josephine. “Men’s Literary Circles in Paris, 1610–­1660.” Proceedings of the Modern Literary Association 53, no. 3 (1939): 730–­80. Delatour, Jérôme. “Les Frères Dupuy.” 3 vols. Thesis, École nationale des chartes, 1996.

Descimon, Robert. “Jacques de Thou (1553–­1617): Une rupture intellectuelle, politique, et sociale.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 226 (2009): 485–­95. De Smet, Ingrid A. R. Thuanus: The Making of Jacques-­Auguste de Thou (1553–­1617). Geneva: Droz, 2006.

Du Vair, Guillaume. De l’Éloquence française. Paris, 1595. In Les Oeuvres de Messire Guillaume du Vair. Paris, 1641. Faure, Henry. Antoine de Laval et les écrivains bourbonnais de son temps. Moulins, 1870.

Fortin de la Hoguette, Philippe. Lettres aux Frères Dupuy et à leur entourage. Edited by Guiliano Ferretti. Florence: Léo S. Olschki, 1997.

Fumaroli, Marc. L’Âge de l’éloquence: Rhétorique et “res literaria” de la Renaissance au seuil de l’époque classique. Geneva: Droz, 1980. ———. “Aux Origines érudites du grand goût classique: L’optimus stylus selon Pierre Dupuy.” In Mélanges Jean Lafond, edited by P. Aquilon, J. Chupeau, and F. Weil, 185–­95. Tours: Université de Tours, 1988. Gibson, Wendy. Women in Seventeenth-­Century France. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989.

Grafton, Anthony. The Footnote: A Curious History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Jouhaud, Christian. Les Pouvoirs de la littérature: Histoire d’un paradoxe. Paris: Gallimard, 2000. Katz, Richard A. Ronsard’s French Critics: 1585–­1828. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renais-

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Kinser, Kinser. The Works of Jacques-­Auguste de Thou. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Koehane, Nannerl. Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Krause, Virginia. Idle Pursuits: Literature and Oisiveté in the French Renaissance. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2003. La Mothe le Vayer, François. Considérations sur l’éloquence française. Paris, 1638.

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Lipsius, Justus. Two Bookes of Constancie Written in Latine by Justus Lipsius, Englished by Sir John Stradling. London, 1595 [Translation of Deux Livres De la Constance De Juste Lipsius. Mis en Francois par de Nuysement. Leiden, 1584]. Edited with an introduction by Rudolf Kirk. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1939. Lougee, Carolyn. Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-­Century France. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.

Magurn, Ruth Sauders, ed. and trans. The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955. Mazauric, Simone. Savoir et philosophie à Paris dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997.

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Mesnard, Jean. “ ‘Honnête homme’ et ‘Honnête femme’ dans la culture du XVIIe siècle.” In Présences Féminines: Littérature et société au XVIIe siècle français, edited by Ian Richmond and Constant Venesoen, 15–­46. Seattle: Actes de London, Canada, 1985.

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Naudé, Gabriel. Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état. Edited by Louis Marin. Paris: Editions de Paris, 1988. Pintard, René. Le Libertinage dans la première moitié du dix-­septième siècle. Paris: Boivin et cie, 1943.

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Schapira, Nicolas. Un Professionnel des lettres au XVIIe siècle. Valentin Conrart: Une Histoire Sociale. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2003.

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Scholar, Richard. The Je-­Ne-­Sais-­Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a certain something. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Shoemaker, Peter. Powerful Connections: The Poetics of Patronage in the Age of Louis XIII. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007. Taussig, Sylvie. Pierre Gassendi (1592–­1655): Introduction à la vie savante. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003.

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Chapter 11

Intellectual Trajectories and Relationships of a French Historian Robert Descimon Curriculum vitae: Robert Descimon Born in Paris (20th arrondissement), 21 March 1946. Lycées Montaigne and Louis le Grand, 1957–­1964. Preparatory classes for admission to the grandes écoles at Lycée Louis le Grand, 1964–­1967. École normale supérieure, rue d’Ulm, 1967–­1971. Agrégé in history, 1970. High school teacher, 1972–­1977. Progression through the ranks as research scholar, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1977–­1991. Directeur d’études, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1991–­2014. Retirement, 2014.

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As a discipline, our profession presents difficulties and traps. The biggest danger is a hidden Manichaeism. It seems that historians have difficulty clearing their minds of all laudatory or pejorative associations with the past, all references, even unconscious, to a system of values or to normative concepts of good and evil. Denis Richet

These days in France autobiographical writing has become almost an academic genre, since one of the required parts of the file presented for the Habilitation required to direct research (a diploma introduced in France on the German model in 1984) is a mémoire de synthèse in which the candidate retraces the evolution of his research interests. Some years earlier, Pierre Nora launched a fashion for writing one’s “ego-­history” by inviting a number of leading historians to tell their life story.1 These are not the models for this text,2 which aims simply to retrace some stages of an intellectual trajectory, as well as to offer a collective portrait of those who accompanied me on this journey. It aims, then, primarily to describe the webs of intellectual connection in which my personality as a historian took shape and not to offer reflections on historical methods or the status of the discipline, past or present. These biographical comments are thus descriptive and do not aim to apprehend a broader conception of history on my part; in any case, there isn’t one. While I think my way of doing history is close to that of my American colleagues, I nonetheless remain attached to the critical tradition associated with Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, and other French sociologists.3 My interest in history was precocious. From the time I first began secondary school at the age of eleven, in 1957, I thought that becoming 1. This text cites in notes works characteristic of the French historians whose memory or presence is evoked, except for the most well known of them, such as C. E. Labrousse, Pierre Goubert, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. See Nora, ed., Essais d’égo-­histoire. Denis Richet, who will play an important role here, wrote a text in 1978, when he was fifty, published under the title “Pourquoi j’aime l’histoire?” as an afterword to the book of essays De la Réforme à la Révolution. This work, published posthumously, was masterminded by André Berelowitch and Yann Fauchois. André Berelowitch put together Richet’s complete bibliography (including newspaper articles published under pseudonyms in La Pensée and the Nouvel Observateur). The above quotation is taken from “Pourquoi j’aime l’histoire?” 2. At the risk of falling into the trap pointed out by Bourdieu, “L’Illusion biographique.”

3. I largely share the view expressed by Dewald in Lost Worlds, on the development and limits of social history in France.

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a history teacher would be all I could dream of. Having always benefitted from excellent teaching, I saw this youthful vocation grow stronger with time. Thanks to the advice of a big brother twelve years my senior (Henri Descimon, a biologist and ecologist who had a career as a university professor), I succeeded in gaining entry to the École normale supérieure of the rue d’Ulm in September 1967. The tutor there who coordinated my preparation for the agrégation (the competitive examination on which employment as a high school teacher is based) was Denis Woronoff. I was on my way to achieving my goal. My vocation as a historian of early modern Europe came later. In 1967, I was primarily interested in the history of ancient Greece, and especially that of the Diadochi and Epigones, Alexander’s successors and the founders of Hellenistic kingdoms. But although the Sorbonne offered remarkable teaching in Roman history, the same could not be said for Greek. I wonder today why I didn’t turn instead to Jean-­Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-­Naquet, but I missed that opportunity. Woronoff made us read the latest grandes thèses, among them those of Pierre Goubert, Pierre de Saint-­Jacob, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. There was a lot there to give one ideas. Then the events of 1968 intervened. Like most of my generation, I took part. I became eager to work on the origins of capitalism and turned to Pierre Vilar,4 Ernest Labrousse’s successor in the chair of social and economic history at the Sorbonne. He was a warmhearted scholar whose teaching awakened a critical spirit. He advised me, in keeping with my desires, to take on the subject of the great merchant dyers of the faubourg Saint-­Marcel in the sixteenth century—­the Gobelins, Canayes, and Lepeultres—­ who were in their time entrepreneurs as close as might be found to the industrial capitalists of the modern era’s beginnings. A year later I defended my master’s thesis, “The Gobelins and Canayes: Dye Work Entrepreneurs in Sixteenth-­Century Paris.” To guide me as I worked on this subject, Vilar, who was a specialist in the history of Catalonia and the Iberian world, sent me to consult with Denis Richet. Richet then became my mentor, a beloved master until his premature death on 14 September 1989. A remarkable human being, Richet combined a strong mastery of theory with great scholarly precision. He had an 4. Pierre Vilar, Une Histoire en construction: Approches marxistes et problématiques conjoncturelles (Paris: Hautes Études, Gallimard Le Seuil, 1982).

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incomparable knowledge of sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century Paris. It is thanks to him that I began truly to be a historian. After the preparatory year for the agrégation exam, a supplementary year in the rue d’Ulm for a practicum in research, and a year spent fulfilling my military service obligation, I took Denis Richet’s advice to file a topic for a doctoral thesis (thèse d’État) under the direction of Pierre Goubert, who was a professor at the Université de Paris I (one of the universities born of the breakup of the Sorbonne in the wake of the Edgar Faure law, which reorganized higher education in the wake of the events of 1968). At that time, the École pratique des hautes études, whose Sixth Section was already becoming my intellectual home, did not grant doctoral degrees. My subject, filed on 20 December 1972, was “Cloth Merchants and Merchant Dyers in Paris (mid-­15th to mid-­17th Centuries).”5 As the institutional landscape changed, Denis Richet advised me to prepare a shorter thesis, a thèse de Troisième cycle, before moving on to the thèse d’État. The subject I chose was “The Parisian Échevinage [aldermen] in the Reign of Henri IV.” The result was a thesis that I still hope to publish some day in a form that will be much enriched by comparison with its state in 1977. That same year, the Centre national de la recherche scientifique recruited me as a researcher. I had gained some small idea over the previous years of what university teaching was like at that time because Daniel Roche, a professor at Paris VII and then Paris I, had recruited me to serve as a lecturer (chargé de cours) at Paris VII. So in October 1977, I began a career as a research scholar. This academic career has also been a story of friendship. It was through Denis Richet that I came to know the Sixth Section of the École des hautes études and the approaches and methods current there. I attended his seminar regularly from 1971 to 1977 and then after my entry into the CNRS. I also formed ties during this period with Pierre Jeannin,6 one of the research directors at the Sixth Section who was older than Richet. He had a great depth of learning and had taken up the legacy of Jean Meuvret (another research director that members

5. I collected a great number of files on the subject, which I have given to the Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine of the CNRS. It is now my friends Jacques Bottin, an emeritus director of research at the CNRS, and Isabelle Vérité who cull the fruits of this little legacy. 6. Pierre Jeannin, Marchands du nord: Espaces et trafics à l’époque moderne (Paris: Presse de l’École normale supérieure, 1996).

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of my generation considered one of the greatest masters at that time).7 Until the eve of his death in March 2004, I had long conversations with Pierre Jeannin who taught me to be intransigent about the rules of the profession but schooled me also in a style of jesting criticism that was not at all natural to me. I profited from the freedom that the CNRS gave me to follow a much wider variety of courses, at the École and elsewhere; that of Daniel Roche was the one that counted most at this time. This was the beginning of a very long scholarly “complicity” and friendship with Daniel, with whom I also taught in the mid-­1990s, before his nomination to the Collège de France in 1998. This long-­standing fellowship rests on an intellectual and ethical closeness that has no need for expression between us. . . . I must also mention Jean Jacquart, another professor at Paris I and the historian of the countryside south of Paris in the Île-­ de-­France, with whom a sincere friendship quickly developed, bonded in our study of Paris and its hinterland.8 I owe a lot to Jacquart, but especially the publication of Qui étaient les Seize? (in the Mémoires Paris et Île-­de-­France, a local historical journal), for the work did not interest the publishing house of the EHESS.9 Denis Richet’s seminar nevertheless always remained the principal reference point for my activity. A high-­level research community existed here based on an exceptional practice of iségoria (equality of speech), something extremely difficult to establish in a seminar of the École des hautes études, where the audience is made up of both senior researchers and students of widely varying levels. I have never succeeded in establishing as free a discussion as Denis Richet evoked in his teaching. I did not know the seminar in the late 1960s, when it was frequented by Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, and Roger Chartier—­scholars, particularly the first, who influenced my own practice of history enormously.10 Denis, an uncompromising professional, devoted most sessions to presentations of

7. Jean Meuvret, Études d’histoire économique (Paris: A. Colin, 1971), and the legendary Le Problème des subsistances à l’époque Louis XIV, 2 vols. (The Hague: Mouton, 1977). Jean Meuvret’s manuscript for the book was ready in 1952. Volumes 2 and 3 of this great work were published in 1987 and 1988 respectively, at a time when this sort of economic history was no longer in fashion. 8. Jean Jacquart, La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France 1550–­1670 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, A. Colin, 1974). 9. See the commentary of Jonathan Dewald in the Sixteenth Century Journal 40 (Spring 2009), 61–­65.

10. Certeau’s La Fable mystique is the most worn-­out book in my library. His L’Écriture de l’histoire is scarcely in better state.

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his own research, which initiated the audience in the rigorous examination of methods and of raw materials culled from the archives. Thus, for example, we explored the articles of the cahiers de doléances of the Third Estate of Paris for the Estates General of 1610.11 The quantification of grievances and of the themes appearing in the pamphlet literature concerning the Estates of 1614/15 may seem today a rather unreliable approach, but the quantitative study of discourse led in the work of Christian Jouhaud to a fine analysis of the social and discursive functions of the Mazarinades.12 The impressive development of Christian Jouhaud’s work can only be explained in terms of its maturation under the influence of Denis Richet’s teaching. Richet’s seminar was, in effect, a nursery of collaborative research projects. Michel Demonet, a mathematician turned historian at the EHESS, assisted with these. Our long-­standing collaboration still forms a bond between us. Denis Richet began two main research projects. The first focused on the special tax of 1571, a “free gift” demanded by Charles IX of his “good city” of Paris that gave rise to an extraordinary tax roll that lists nearly 17,000 entries (Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. fr. 11692). Denis copied this all into school notebooks that are a true relic of the seminar—­a still-­active relic because we continue to use them today.13 The second, which was in fact my idea, was a study of the district representatives to meetings at the Hôtel de Ville (in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were known as “bourgeois mandés”). Each of the sixteen districts (quartiers) was normally represented by two bourgeois delegates chosen in a procedure that combined election with drawing by lot. The electoral assemblies, those that named the prévôt des marchands and échevins, thus included thirty-­two bourgeois mandés. The chronological limits of the study went from the end of the 1520s, when the first usable minutes were recorded in the Registres de délibérations du Bureau de la Ville 11. Chartier and Richet, eds., Représentation et vouloir politiques.

12. Jouhaud, Mazarinades. Denis Richet’s preface is, in the 2009 edition, preceded by a retrospective comment by Christian Jouhaud entitled “Vingt ans après” (Twenty Years After), a reference to Denis’s love for Alexandre Dumas. Jouhaud writes that his greatest joy in rereading Denis Richet’s preface was “to feel once again his generosity, keenness, and smile catch the eye of every reader.”

13. Pierre Goubert, “Préface,” in Richet, De la Réforme à la Révolution, p. ii, confuses (intentionally?) the note cards on which Denis Richet analyzed notarial acts left by sixteenth-­century Parisians with the copy of the tax list for the “free gift” of 1571, doubtless to underscore the great value of making use of these lists, about which Roland Mousnier had expressed serious reservations. The manuscript is now on the Gallica server.

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de Paris, up to the end of the Fronde, a concluding point then logically extended to 1679, when the districts were redrawn. The body of data is considerable, including nearly 10,000 bourgeois who had to be identified when they were not already known. This work has not been completed but is sufficiently advanced that the data can be put online within a few years, if it is not possible to get the studies based on this project published as they deserve. Such vast projects take too long, it is true, but it is doubtless only at this price that ambitious research projects can truly claim to be scholarly. Denis also began other projects, thanks especially to Béatrice Véniel, his research assistant, who was a remarkable paleographer and a historian with a great many original ideas.14 Research on the chapels founded by notables in Parisian churches—­a detailed study of their origins but also their reattributions in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries—­provided material for memorable seminar sessions toward the end of Denis’s career. The history written by Denis and his disciples was always related to problems constructed in the Annales tradition. He taught us to work with great exactness and never to be discouraged by the austerity of the research. He also taught us a passion for the archives, which he considered a vast reservoir of empirical discoveries. He particularly favored Paris’s notarial archives. In his eyes, as in mine, research and the discovery of new documents led to a constant modification of the hypotheses of the research, that is to say, to the construction of new research agendas. The archives are a tough intellectual school heedlessly neglected by those who believe that no empirical discovery can change the basis of their interpretation of human history. Putting new ideas into circulation would of course remain sterile if not placed into the broader perspective of problems that transcend time by both their current resonance and their tacit persistence. For Denis (who was fascinated by the Ayatollah’s Iran), the Holy League (1585–­1594) was a haunting political problem, and he placed the question of the social appropriation of religious cultures at the heart of his investigations of it. It is clear that he situated his ideas in a long-­term perspective (from the Reformation to the French Revolution), a comparison perhaps conceived more in terms of structures and processes than in terms of origins, a teleology always threatened by

14. Véniel, Une Histoire de peaux et de laines.

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anachronism and contrivance and, as such, very foreign to Denis’s philosophy of history. There were many commonalities between his approach and that taken by Natalie Zemon Davis, whom he admired and whose visits to the EHESS were awaited as intellectual feasts. The triple inspiration of his seminar is easy to summarize, for it had several dimensions: 1) a political dimension, linked to L’Esprit des institutions, a masterful little book that Denis rarely brought up in his teaching.15 A shared interest in the League and the Fronde drew us to the barricades of May 1588 and August 1648, for which two related articles appeared in the Annales, unfortunately only after Denis Richet’s death.16 The real heir to this political dimension of the seminar is Christian Jouhaud, who, transposing it to the study of literary works, has shown how intrinsically linked they are to the absolutist politics of the seventeenth-­century monarchy.17 2) a social dimension: the seminar served for me as the workshop for Qui étaient les Seize?, a work initially conceived as a review of Élie Barnavi’s Le parti de Dieu.18 Social history nevertheless remains the shared heritage common to all of Denis Richet’s students. 3) a religious dimension: Denis Richet’s teaching was greatly extended by Denis Crouzet, now a professor at the Université de Paris IV–­Sorbonne, who, while Richet was still living, produced a powerful analysis of the Wars of Religion that offered a strong and original alternative to the ideas commonly shared in the seminar from the EHESS.19 Denis Crouzet’s magisterial work was also 15. Richet, La France moderne.

16. Richet organized a round table on the barricades for a group on Parisian history that he led in the mid-­1980s. See Richet, “Les Barricades à Paris le 12 mai 1588,” and Descimon, “Les Barricades de la Fronde parisienne.” 17. Jouhaud, Les Pouvoirs de la littérature. 18. Barnavi, Le Parti de Dieu.

19. Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu. The foreword, by Denis Richet, pp. 15–­19, was written just weeks before his death.

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inspired by his reading of Alphonse Dupront and by the lessons of Pierre Chaunu, another very great master of the 1980s whose courses I attended regularly and to whom I must also declare my debt. Little teaching deserved as much as Denis Richet’s to be called a “seminar.” The works of Crouzet and Jouhaud attest to this, but it was also in Denis’s seminar that Jean-­Marie Constant began to test the validity of the notion of the “noblesse seconde,” or second-­tier nobility.20 Ellery Schalk, who was a dear friend and is much missed, always attended the seminar when he was in Paris and used it to try out his theory about changes in the social perception of nobility between the end of the fifteenth and middle of the seventeenth century.21 Madeleine Foisil, a faithful student of Roland Mousnier and Pierre Chaunu, first presented her work on the Journal d’Héroard, by the doctor of young Louis XIII, in Denis’s seminar.22 There was a great openness to the spirit of the seminar. It did not exclude controversy; the disagreements between Barnavi and myself, for example, were grounded in fundamental questions but nevertheless led to a collaboration for which Denis Richet wrote the preface.23 I am skipping over a lot and forgetting things. . . . I must, for example, mention that Richet’s great interest in the French Revolution did not wane and that he was sought out by young specialists in the revolutionary period, such as the Israeli Ouzi Elyada,24 a student of Myriam Yardeni, or the French Yann Fauchois,25 a doctoral student of François Furet today in charge of acquisitions at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, or by specialists in the eighteenth century such as Claude Grimmer,26 who undertook her thesis under the direction of André Burguière, a fellow director of research whose friendship I enjoy as a legacy from Denis. 20. Constant, “Un Groupe socio-­politique stratégique.”

21. Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree. See also Grell and Ramière de Fortanier, eds., Le Second Ordre. 22. Foisil, ed., Journal de Jean Héroard.

23. Barnavi and Descimon, La Sainte Ligue, le juge et la potence, with a preface by Denis Richet, who, it must be admitted, expressed several reservations about the book. 24. Elyada, ed., Lettres bougrement patriotiques. Ouzi Elyada (Itsikowicz) defended his thesis in 1985 under the direction of François Furet. 25. Fauchois, Religion et France révolutionnaire.

26. Claude Grimmer, Vivre à Aurillac au XVIIIe siècle, Aurillac, 1983, a thesis for which Denis Richet served on the jury.

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But it wasn’t just a matter of seminars and research projects; there was also the amicable closeness that united the disciples among themselves around their master. Between 1977 and 1989, I developed a special fellowship with Jean Nagle, who had joined the CNRS a year before me.27 We often worked together on issues deriving from seminar meetings devoted to Paris. An article in Annales resulted from this collaboration, which brought us particularly close to Denis, to whom Jean paid homage at the time of his funeral. I also worked and published frequently with Christian Jouhaud, in a profound fellowship that has not faded to this day, as we plan to put together a volume of studies we have written about the Fronde. The friendships that began around Denis Richet have proved lasting ones. I would cite here Jean Nicolas, a great historian belonging to the same generation as Denis and today my friend and neighbor.28 I would cite also André Berelowitch,29 who was Denis’s son-­in-­law, and give a special mention to Colin Kaiser,30 an Anglophone Canadian who completed a remarkable thesis on the Parisian high magistracy in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was not only Denis who greatly appreciated the quality of Kaiser’s thinking, though he turned in time to other professional horizons (those of international diplomacy). My own interest in the nobility of the robe, one of the constants in my research, would not have been born without those long discussions with Colin, often in the company of our Parisian mentor. Yet another special mention is due Michel Cassan, one of the most remarkable French historians of the Wars of Religion, who became a habitué of Richet’s seminar in the 1980s.31 The internationalization of the seminar, which was frequented particularly by American and Israeli colleagues (the marvelous Myriam Yardeni and Michaël Harsgor), only increased with time. There were some who just passed through, such as Peter Ascoli32 or my friend Philip Hoffman (who has become a master of economic history still very close 27. Among Jean Nagle’s books, I will cite only Le Droit de marc d’or and La Civilisation du cœur. 28. Nicolas, La Rébellion française, and Nicolas, La Savoie au 18e siècle. 29. Berelowitch, La Hiérarchie des égaux.

30. Kaiser, “The Masters of Requests.” The thesis was completed under the direction of Roger Mettam; Kaiser initially worked in Canada with Julien Dent. 31. This was at the time when Michel Cassan was finishing his thèse d’État, Le Temps des guerres de religion. 32. Cromé, Dialogue d’entre le maheustre et le manant. Original text with variations from the royalist edition established and annotated by Peter Ascoli.

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to the EHESS through his publications with Gilles Postel-­Vinay),33 and those who came back often. It was in Richet’s seminar that I met many colleagues whose friendship I cherish: Philip Benedict, Barbara Diefendorf, Jonathan Dewald  .  .  . Barbara worked on Paris, which obviously created an immediate complicity, but Phil was my editor in 1986, and I have great memories of the attentive support he gave my contribution to the volume he was editing. We also met up in long work sessions, side by side in the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothèque nationale or in the old halls of the Archives nationales (where one cannot fail to mention Alfred Soman, who was, like me, a researcher at the CNRS). There, when they passed through Paris, one also met up with such fascinating people as Nancy Roelker, now deceased, who nurtured so many scholarly vocations and published so many pioneer works; Peggy Brown, who is still so active; or David Bien, a historian whose works inspire everyone’s great admiration and mine above all, who has tried to trace the most obscure paths of venality of office under the French monarchy. And I cannot leave out James Collins, Steven Kaplan, and Rafe Blaufarb, three scholars of very different generations and temperaments joined in the respect I have for their innovative research. Little by little, Denis brought me into his teaching, and we led the seminar together beginning in 1984. After his sudden death, when the university schedule for the year was already set, I was allowed to continue it alone. After I was hired by the EHESS at the beginning of 1991, Alain Guery joined me in a solid partnership to continue teaching in a way that intrinsically joined social and political history. After 1977 and especially after 1989 to 1991 (when I returned to scholarship after two years of union work, which prompted a great desire to open new intellectual horizons), new scholarly networks opened to me. It is important to try to reconstruct them in order to understand how my scholarship has evolved up to the present. From the time I began university studies, I had always read a lot of books by such American historians as Orest Ranum, Robert Forster, William Church, Donald Kelley, J. Russell Major, and John Salmon. My first participation in the annual conference of the Society for French Historical Studies, in Quebec in

33. Hoffman, Postel-­V inay, and Rosenthal, Des Marchés sans prix.

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March 1986, allowed me to make less abstract connections. I remember wandering late at night in the Montreal airport, having missed my connection, when I saw a man with Qui étaient les Seize? under his arm. It was William Beik. . . . Relations with all of these friends became closer. The 1986 trip, in the company of Denis Crouzet, continued into the United States, where we were graciously hosted by Nancy Roelker and Orest Ranum so as to participate in conferences, round tables, or discussions that often seemed more fascinating than those to which we were accustomed in France. The meetings of the Society, where I first made many of these acquaintances, remain a prime occasion for seeing one another, a pleasure renewed in Atlanta (1995), Toronto (2002), Paris (2004), and Cambridge/Boston (2013), where some of my friends were so kind as to organize sessions in my honor. A British network also formed with Robert Knecht, Joseph Bergin, Mark Greengrass, and David Parker, all friends with whom I share strong intellectual bonds; a German network with Wolfgang Reinhard, Neithard Bulst, Thomas Lüttenberg (Bielefeld), and Jochen Hoock (Paderborn, then Paris VII); a Québécois network with Michel de Waele and Claire Dolan, a generous friend from whom I learned how a notary draws up a will, one of my current scholarly interests; an Italian network, for which my friend Simona Cerutti, who taught me that social history can today only be called microhistory, is the chief ambassador; and, finally, a Russian network with Nikolay Koposov (who now teaches in the United States) and Pavel Uvarov (Moscow, Academy of Sciences). The work that Pavel and I did on Raoul Spifame (1500–­1563), the supposedly crazy lawyer of Henri II’s era, and his family remains one of my most pleasant intellectual memories.34 At the same time, my ties with French colleagues whom I had long esteemed intensified: Jacques Bottin (CNRS, and an old accomplice close to Pierre Jeannin); Jean Duma and Michèle Fogel (the latter two had positions at what was then known as the Université de Paris–­Nanterre); Alain and Anita Guerreau (both former students at the École des chartes and researchers at the CNRS, whose theoretical exactness taught me a lot); Michel Nassiet (Université d’Angers); Nicole Dyonet (Orléans); Luc Boltanski, Jean-­Claude Galey, and the much-­missed Bernard Lepetit (all directors of studies at the EHESS); 34. Author of the Dicaerchiae Henrici regis christianissime progymnasmata ([Paris], 1556), a collection of laws that their author attributed to King Henri II.

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Élisabeth Claverie (CNRS); Hélène Merlin-­Kajman (Université de Paris III Sorbonne–­Nouvelle); Françoise Hildesheimer (conservateur général du patrimoine at the Archives nationales) . . . ; surely I have forgotten some. But it is important not to get ahead of the story here, for the context for creating these scholarly relationships evolved with time and as I aged. The immediate context first of all: Alain Guery became an indispensable colleague in the 1990s, as we taught our joint seminar together. I do not like teaching alone, and our mutual understanding is so profound that it creates an obvious complementarity. It is not for nothing that the title for the position I have had since 1991 is “the social history of political authority,” a title that sums up well the basis of my scholarship. In 1996 Christophe Blanquie joined Alain and me, and these were years in which we turned our interests most directly toward the political dimensions of the French kingdom. And then there was the larger intellectual context. The years after the Annales announced its “tournant critique” in 1988/8935 were characterized by many changes among those historians of pre-­modern France associated with that journal and its networks (at least among those least fixed on their own certainties). Among these changes was the discovery of the work of Ernst Kantorowicz and his disciples, who, in France, saw themselves tagged with the label of the “American ceremonialist school,” and the beginning of large programmatic research projects, of which the “Genesis of the Modern State” was without doubt the most significant. The King’s Two Bodies was for me, formed as I was strictly in the French school of social history, a real discovery. I read it before the French translation was so tardily made.36 The discovery and translation of Ralph Giesey’s book also had the effect of a bomb, especially in François Furet’s circle.37 I followed the trend with a certain innocence, despite warnings from Denis Richet, who did not entirely share this infatuation. I nevertheless remain convinced that the movement born of American re-­readings of Kantorowicz constitutes an important moment in twentieth-­century

35. “Histoire et sciences sociales” and “Tentons l’expérience.” These articles show a distancing from French social history traditions.

36. Kantorowicz, Les Deux Corps du roi. The book was originally published in 1957. Refusal that French tradition offered to something considered to be merely “history of ideas” is a striking characteristic of the period following the Second World War. 37. Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony.

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historical writing, especially through the writings of Sarah Hanley,38 which have the particularity—­may she pardon this judgment!—­of being founded on analyses that are fragile in their details and yet based on broader ideas that are extraordinarily rich, convincing, and seminal, to employ this nice adjective so difficult to render into French. The “Family-­ State Compact” is for me, but also for most of those associated with my seminar today, a stunning idea that supplies one of the keys to the political evolution of the monarchy between the reigns of Henri II and Louis XIV. More concretely, the late 1980s saw the development of big research projects on the birth of the modern state under the watchful eye of Jean-­ Philippe Genet, who taught at Paris I but played a major role in the scholarly politics of the CNRS with regard to humanities and social sciences. I must say that Guery and I had reservations about the “modernity” of the state, but approaching the history of the monarchy from the perspective of new historical concepts was an exciting prospect. My role in the project considerably altered my way of understanding history. On the one hand, I broadened my European horizons, keenly observing different systems of venality of office, both in lands under Iberian domination and in England. On the other hand, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel of the European Science Foundation under the direction of Professor Wolfgang Reinhard, whose scholarly rigor offered an unattainable but stimulating model for me.39 I also profited from spending time with my colleagues Marc Boone (Ghent) and Maarten Prak (Utrecht), who remain valued friends, with Neithard Bulst (Bielefeld), and with a number of others, among whom I will cite only Anna-­Maria Rao (Università degli studi de Napoli Federico II in Naples). . . . My accomplishments in these domains of political history were uneven. In particular, I did not succeed in finishing the book on venality of office in France that I had planned to write with Jean Nagle, who did complete his part of the project.40 I nevertheless gained from this research an area of expertise that brought me closer to legal history and its particular problems, such as public domain and, more generally, the broader political significance of public property. This stage in my activities corresponded roughly to the 1990s. It is during this time 38. Hanley, The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France.

39. I consider it a great honor to have facilitated access to this rigorous and prolific work for French readers: Reinhard, Papauté confessions modernité. 40. Nagle, Un Orgueil français.

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that I improved my knowledge of the (written) Italian I had learned while working on Charles Loyseau (1564–­1627),41 when I discovered the vast continent of legal history and the history of political ideas in Italy. I found these far more interesting than I had ever found traditional histories of French law on the model of François Olivier-­Martin. In the end I came to have second thoughts about this line of research, not because I no longer found it interesting, but because it seemed to me that the relative discredit into which social history had fallen required me to come back to what had been my first area of specialization, one in which I knew how to do things that were less familiar to colleagues who excelled—­more so than I—­at the history of ideas and of law. Naturally, political and social history have to go together. It would be absurd to regret the detour my scholarship took during these years. Still, after the turn of the century, I began to return to my initial preoccupations, albeit with a broader perspective as I finally came to understand that the anthropology of kinship was one of the keys to understanding the changes that took place in the society of ancien-­régime France, as of all societies. A deeper, fresh understanding of this world required recourse to the categories and approaches of anthropologists, structuralist or otherwise. On this delicate terrain, I leaned on—­and hope to continue to lean on—­the precious collaboration of Élie Haddad. I also came to understand that religious approaches to the Wars of Religion need not lead one into the murky waters of Christian theology, still so richly and confusingly complex until its many wrinkles were ironed out by the slow advance of the Tridentine canons, but rather toward the social appropriation of liturgical practices through confraternal organizations and, more generally, a conception of the church as a body.42 At this point, I must call attention to the extraordinary work of Ann W. Ramsey, who drew from the intricacies of Parisian notarial archives an exceptionally innovative work.43 The theme

41. My interest in Charles Loyseau, about whom I still hope to write a book, grew out of the sociological approach that Roland Mousnier took to his work (Les Hiérarchies sociales de 1450 à nos jours). My research has nevertheless shown that Loyseau could not theorize “society” and that the driving force for his writing was contextual, as, inspired by the science of the law but also his ultra-­Catholic devotion, he set out to respond to the challenge represented by Henri IV’s accession to the throne and the ensuing reinforcement of “absolutism.” 42. De Lubac, “Corpus mysticum”; Rubin, Corpus Christi.

43. Ramsey, Liturgy, Politics, and Salvation. On the importance of practices of devotion, Reinburg, French Books of Hours.

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of corporative Catholicism has also become one of my principal scholarly preoccupations. Those who accompany me on this journey are particularly dear to me. These include Laurence Croq, Nicolas Lyon-­Caen, and my friend David Garrioch (Monash University, Melbourne), who has proved himself a strong and subtle historian of eighteenth-­century Paris. But attention to corporative Catholicism also led me back to the radical Leaguers who were the object of my research in 1983. I benefitted from the collaboration of José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez (University of Murcia) in this work and had the pleasure to write a book with him that allowed me to gain another point of view on the Seize, that of Philip II of Spain and authorities in Brussels. Through all the years I spent at the EHESS, I must not forget the friendship of Francesco Di Donato (professore ordinario delle Istituzioni politiche at the Università de Napoli Parthenope), of Norie Takazawa (International Christian University in Japan), of Olivier Poncet (professor at the École des chartes), of Marco Penzi, Éric Tuncq, Élodie Miles, and Cédric Mottier, nor of those who still are working under my direction. A number of others also frequent the halls of 105 boulevard Raspail, where the seminars have been held for some years now, including Sara Beam, Hilary Bernstein, Michael Breen, Mack Holt, Robert Schneider, all of whom had contributed to this volume in their particular fields and with their distinctive voices. They are scholars whose writings have never ceased to nourish my ideas and interests. I would also cite two names dear to me, Christian Maurel44 and Jérémie Barthas,45 who have both begun their research under the direction of Christiane Klapisch. To all of them, I owe much more than I have given. To teach is of course to give, but it is equally to receive. A whole constellation of scholars has been formed in connection with the teaching that I did at the EHESS with Alain Guery and, more recently, with Fanny Cosandey, Élie Haddad, and Mathieu Marraud, whether they did their thesis with me or not. Just listing them brings out a whole array of social-­history problematics. Christophe Blanquie began with the biography of a prominent figure in the Fronde in Bordeaux, a thesis whose subject he had registered 44. Maurel, “Construction généalogique et développement de l’État moderne,” a remarkable article conceived as part of a research project that I oversaw. 45. Barthas, L’Argent n’est pas le nerf de la guerre.

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with Denis Richet. Christophe thus represents a symbolic tie between Denis and me.46 Ably demonstrating the need to base synthetic interpretations on concrete analyses, Blanquie has become one of the best specialists in monarchical institutions; his works on the presidial courts and venality of office are particularly authoritative.47 Fanny Cosandey took up a question deriving directly from the reception in France of Ralph Giesey and his circle (the “ceremonialist school” as imagined by French historians): How did royal ceremonies create the rules that expressed things like public law and conveyed the political life of the monarchy? What role did sex (or gender) play in political power or hierarchies? How can one understand the power and prestige of the queens of France within the system set out by the Salic law? Cosandey’s answers have, in my opinion, radically displaced historiographical positions resting on a dogmatic vision of gender not founded on empirical research.48 Răducu Gabriel Păun, now a researcher at the CNRS, defended a thesis codirected by Professor Andrei Pippidi of the University of Bucharest in 2003, a remarkable work in which he untangles the complex ties between princely patronage and forms of political power in seventeenth-­ century Moldavia, revealing a world of princely officers ultimately not so different from Central and even Western Europe. The work, unfortunately still unpublished, takes a fresh look at the theory of clienteles, a subject that most likely had previously been ignored because of the “Romanian” monarchies’ dependency on the Sublime Porte.49 As kinship became one of the central concerns of the seminar, research themes also evolved in the direction of rethinking social change on the basis of family practices. Claire Chatelain was the first to go down this path with the fascinating saga of the Miron family. Of Catalan origin, they entered the service of Anne of Brittany and, from there, served the monarchy in a wide range of ways (medicine, finance, magistracy, episcopacy . . .) until experiencing a rapid decline in the second half of the seventeenth century. Claire Chatelain’s thesis inaugurated a new manner of 46. Blanquie, Une Vie de frondeur. The thesis was defended in1993.

47. Blanquie, Les Présidiaux de Richelieu; Blanquie, Les Présidiaux de Daguesseau. More recently, Blanquie, Une enquête de Colbert en 1665. 48. Cosandey, La Reine de France. The thesis was submitted in 1997. 49. Păun, “Pouvoirs, offices et patronages.”

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doing history of the family on the basis of lineages of the urban patriciate (two members of the Miron family were prévôts des marchands of Paris and another was mayor of Nantes).50 Élie Haddad studied the family of the Counts of Belin (who gave Paris a governor during the League and contributed one of the most active participants in the quarrel over Pierre Corneille’s Cid in 1637) and completed his thesis under the knowledgeable direction of Michel Cassan at Limoges. He participated regularly in my Parisian seminar after completing a postgraduate research degree (diplôme d’études approfondies) under my direction. His work offers a fresh theorization of the anthropological notion of “house” (maison) by revealing how kinship was manipulated, especially through transmission of economic, political, and symbolic capital through the female line, to assure the continuation of family entities and how these practices quickly broke down when the exercise of noble power desired by Louis XIV and Colbert undercut the economic bases that allowed families to be perpetuated through the ties of matrimony.51 With Martine Bennini family analysis broadened, as she applied the prosopographical method to a coherent body of seventeenth-­century Parisian magistrates. Her very dense and thorough study demonstrates the power of a methodology that reconstructs the collective portrait of an institutionally coherent group (defined in this case by their possession of very expensive offices) but also the limits of results that cast only a very partial light on the broader social ties or experiences of individuals in the group.52 Paris served as the backdrop for the seminar, as it had for Denis Richet’s. A multifaceted history of Paris emerged from the pens (or rather the keyboards) of Sung-­Jae Lee, Clément Gurvil, Safia Hamdi, Nicolas Lyon-­ Caen, Laurence Croq, and Mathieu Marraud, among whom only the first three were my students, but all of whom were regular participants of our Friday morning gatherings. Sung-­Jae Lee showed clearly that the conception Parisian priests had of charity changed very little with the Catholic Reformation, although Tridentine historians had

50. Chatelain, Chronique d’une ascension sociale. The thesis was defended in 2001. 51. Haddad, Fondation et ruine d’une « maison ».

52. Bennini, Les Conseillers à la Cour des aides. The thesis was defended in 2004.

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always treated this as a major turning point.53 What was the most numerous group among the population of sixteenth-­century Paris? Clément Gurvil replies that they were those who worked the land—­those who are usually called peasants, though one hesitates to use the term for city dwellers who were often tightly integrated into the territorial and corporative structures of Paris. The innovative capacity of these Parisians, who had to supply an extensive market with perishable commodities, is striking: they played an active role in introducing products of the Renaissance’s agricultural revolution (melons, tomatoes, artichokes . . .) to consumers. How can I even hope to sum up the discoveries sketched out in Gurvil’s big book?54 Safia Hamdi studied venality of office in the municipality of Paris under the reign of Louis XIV. This distinctive system, which was both older than the sale of royal office and less favorable to the interests of the officeholders, was ultimately destroyed by the king’s policies and replaced by a new system of “economic police.” Positions in the new system were conferred by the prévôt des marchands following the monarchy’s usual practices, thereby increasing the burden of taxes and concealed charges that weighed on Parisian consumers.55 What one might call the very heart of Parisian history, that is to say, the civil, institutional, and religious life of the community, lies at the center of the work of three major historians from the generation that demonstrated its mastery in the 1990s and 2000s. One woman and two men in the new millennium set about studying eighteenth-­century Parisian politics as something other than just a prelude to the French Revolution. Nicolas Lyon-­Caen radically renewed the social-­history approach to Jansenism in the parishes, resulting in analyses of magisterial and exemplary scale.56 Laurence Croq worked on ideas and practices of the bourgeoisie, focusing particularly on the mercers’ corporation, so as to give a broader picture of the evolution of this municipal institution.57 Finally, Mathieu 53. Lee, “Images de la pauvreté.” He is currently an assistant professor at Chungbuk National University in Korea. 54. Gurvil, Les Paysans de Paris.

55. Safia Hamdi, currently an associate professor at the Université des sciences sociales de Tunis, defended in 2007: “Les Officiers de la police économique à Paris sous le règne de Louis XIV.”

56. Lyon-­Caen, La Boîte à Perrette. His thesis was directed by Claude Michaud, a professor at the Université de Paris I; he is currently a researcher at the CNRS.

57. Croq, “Les ‘Bourgeois de Paris’ au XVIIIe siècle.” She completed her PhD thesis under the direction of Daniel Roche and is currently an associate professor at the Université de Paris La Défense.

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Marraud, a historian of the Parisian nobility and now of the Six-­Corps (Paris’s six most prominent merchants’ corporations), wrote a magisterial book, a sort of genealogical saga that, through a study of the devolution of inheritances, reveals the passage of the Parisian bourgeoisie “from the city to the state” over the course of the Enlightenment century.58 I cannot speak of them in the same way as the friends and colleagues of the past. Their work lives around me, nourishing mine, and they encompass me in an unfailing friendship. They represent my present. I represent, I hope, still a part of their future, a future that they will some day continue without me. Robert Descimon (April 2013 and June 2014) Translated by Barbara Diefendorf

Works cited [Annales editors]. “Histoire et sciences sociales: Un tournant critique?” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 43 (1988): 291–­93.

———. “Tentons l’expérience.”Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 44 (1989): 1317–­ 23.

Barnavi, Élie. Le Parti de Dieu: Étude sociale et politique des chefs de la Ligue parisienne 1585–­1594. Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1980.

———, and Robert Descimon. La Sainte Ligue, le juge et la potence: L’assassinat du président Brisson (15 novembre 1591). Paris: Hachette, 1985. Barthas, Jérémie. L’Argent n’est pas le nerf de la guerre: Essai sur une prétendue erreur de Machiavel. Rome: École française de Rome, 2011.

Bennini, Martine. Les Conseillers à la Cour des aides (1604–­1697): Étude sociale. Société des amis des archives de France. Paris: Champion, 2010.

Berelowitch, André. La Hiérarchie des égaux: La noblesse russe d’ancien régime XVIe–­XVIIe siècles. Paris: Seuil, 2001. Blanquie, Christophe. Une Enquête de Colbert en 1665: La généralité de Bordeaux dans l’enquête sur les offices. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012. ———. Les Présidiaux de Daguesseau. Paris: Publisud, 2004.

———. Les Présidiaux de Richelieu: Justice et vénalité (1630–­1642). Paris: Christian, 2000. ———. Une Vie de frondeur: Le chevalier de Thodias (1616–­1672), Un gouverneur de Fronsac et Coutras, premier jurat de Bordeaux. Coutras: GRAHC, [2001].

Her numerous publications include Le Prince, la ville et le bourgeois, ed. Laurence Croq (Paris: Nolin, 2004), and Croq and Garrioch, eds., La Religion vécue. 58. Marraud, La Noblesse de Paris au XVIIIe siècle; more recently, De la Ville à l’État. A researcher at the CNRS, he did his thesis at the EHESS under the direction of Guy Chaussinand-­Nogaret.

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280 a Intellectual Trajectories and Relationships of a French Historian Bourdieu, Pierre. “L’Illusion biographique.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 62/63 (1986): 64–­72. Cassan, Michel. Le Temps des guerres de Religion: Le cas du Limousin (vers 1530–­vers 1630). Paris: Publisud, 1996.

Certeau, Michel. L’Écriture de l’histoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. ———. La Fable mystique. Paris: Gallimard, 1982.

Chartier, Roger, and Denis Richet, ed. Représentation et vouloir politiques: Autour des États généraux de 1614. Paris: Éditions de l’Ehess, 1982. Chatelain, Claire. Chronique d’une ascension sociale. Exercice de la parenté chez de grands officiers (XVIe–­XVIIe siècles). Paris: Éditions de l’Ehess, 2008.

Constant, Jean-­Marie. “Un Groupe socio-­politique stratégique: La noblesse seconde dans la première moitié du xviie siècle.” In L’État et les aristocraties, XIIe–­XVIIe siècles: France, Angleterre, Écosse, edited by Philippe Contamine, 279–­304. Paris: Presses de l’ENS, Paris, 1989. Reprinted in Jean-­Marie Constant, La Noblesse en liberté XVIe–­XVIIe siècles, 83–­101. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2004. Cosandey, Fanny. La Reine de France, symbole et pouvoir. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque des Histoires, 2000. Cromé, François. Dialogue d’entre le maheustre et le manant. Edited by Peter Ascoli. Geneva: Droz, 1977.

Croq, Laurence. “Les ‘Bourgeois de Paris’ au XVIIIe siècle: Identification d’une catégorie sociale polymorphe.” PhD thesis, Université de Paris I, 1997. ———, ed. Le Prince, la ville et le bourgeois. Paris: Nolin, 2004.

———, and David Garrioch, ed. La Religion vécue: Les laïcs dans l’Europe moderne. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013.

Crouzet, Denis. Les Guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion vers 1525–­vers 1610. 2 vols. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990.

Descimon, Robert. “Les Barricades de la Fronde parisienne: Une lecture sociologique.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 45 (1990): 397–­422. Dewald, Jonathan. Lost Worlds: The Emergence of French Social History, 1815–­1970. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

Elyada, Ouzi, ed. Lettres bougrement patriotiques de la Mère Duchêne, suivi du Journal des femmes, 1791. Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1989. Fauchois, Yann. Religion et France révolutionnaire. Preface by Denis Richet. Paris: Herscher, 1989. Foisil, Madeleine, ed. Journal de Jean Héroard. 2 vols. Paris: Fayard, 1989.

Giesey, Ralph E. The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France. Geneva: Droz, 1960. Translated into French as Le roi ne meurt jamais. Preface by François Furet (Paris: Flammarion, 1987).

Grell, Chantal, and Arnaud Ramière de Fortanier, eds. Le Second Ordre: L’idéal nobiliaire; Hommage à Ellery Schalk. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris–­Sorbonne, 1999. Grimmer, Claude. Vivre à Aurillac au XVIIIe siècle. Aurillac: Gerbert, 1983 (PhD thesis, Ehess, 1982). Gurvil, Clément. Les Paysans de Paris du milieu du XVe siècle au début du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Champion, 2010.

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Haddad, Élie. Fondation et ruine d’une “maison”: Histoire sociale des comtes de Belin (1582–­ 1706). Limoges: Pulim, 2009.

Hamdi, Safia. “Les Officiers de la police économique à Paris sous le règne de Louis XIV.” PhD thesis, Ehess, 2007.

Hanley, Sarah. The Lit de Justice of the Kings of France: Constitutional Ideology in Legend, Ritual and Discourse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Translated into French as Le Lit de justice des rois de France (Paris: Aubier, 1991).

Hoffman, Philip T., Gilles Postel-­V inay, and Jean-­Laurent Rosenthal. Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660–­1870. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Translated into French as Des marchés sans prix: Une économie politique du crédit à Paris 1660–­1870 (Paris: Éditions de l’Ehess, 2001). Jacquart, Jean. La Crise rurale en Île-­de-­France 1550–­1670. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, A. Colin, 1974.

Jeannin, Pierre. Marchands du nord: Espaces et trafics à l’époque moderne. Paris: Presse de l’École normale supérieure, 1996.

Jouhaud, Christian. Mazarinades: La Fronde des mots. Paris: Aubier, 1985. New edition, 2009. ———. Les Pouvoirs de la littérature. Paris: Gallimard, 2000.

Kaiser, Colin R. E. “The Masters of Requests: An Extraordinary Judicial Company in the Age of Centralization (1589–­1648).” PhD thesis in history, University of London, 1977.

Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Published in French by Jean-­ Philippe Genet and Nicole Genet as Les Deux Corps du roi (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).

Lee, Sung-­Jae. “Images de la pauvreté et quête du salut chez les ecclésiastiques aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” 2 vols. PhD thesis, Ehess, 2006.

Lubac, Henri de. “Corpus mysticum”: L’eucharistie et l’Église au Moyen Âge. Paris: Aubier, 1944.

Lyon-­Caen, Nicolas. La Boîte à Perrette: Le jansénisme parisien au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: A. Michel, 2010.

Marraud, Mathieu. De la Ville à l’État: La bourgeoisie parisienne XVIIe–­XVIIIe siècle. Paris: A. Michel, 2009.

———. La Noblesse de Paris au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Le Seuil, 2000.

Maurel, Christian. “Construction généalogique et développement de l’État moderne: La généalogie des Bailleul.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 46 (1991): 807–­25. Meuvret, Jean. Études d’histoire économique. Paris: A. Colin, 1971.

———. Le Problème des subsistances à l’époque Louis XIV. 3 vols. The Hague: Mouton, 1977–­88.

Mousnier, Roland. Les Hiérarchies sociales de 1450 à nos jours. Paris: PUF, coll. SUP, 1969. Nagle, Jean. La Civilisation du cœur: Histoire du sentiment politique en France du XIIe au xixe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 1998.

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282 a Intellectual Trajectories and Relationships of a French Historian ———. Le Droit de marc d’or des offices. Geneva: Droz, 1992.

———. Un Orgueil français: La vénalité des offices sous l’ancien régime. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2008. Nicolas, Jean. La Rébellion française: Mouvements populaires et conscience sociale 1661–­ 1789. Paris: Le Seuil, 2002.

———. La Savoie au 18e siècle: Noblesse et bourgeoisie. 2 vols. Paris: Maloine, 1978.

Nora, Pierre, ed. Essais d’égo-­histoire: Maurice Agulhon, Pierre Chaunu, Georges Duby, Raoul Girardet, Jacques Le Goff, Michelle Perrot, René Rémond. Paris: Gallimard, 1987. Păun, Răducu Gabriel. “Pouvoirs, offices et patronages dans la Principauté de Moldavie au XVIIe siècle.” PhD thesis, University of Bucharest, 2003.

Ramsey, Ann W. Liturgy, Politics, and Salvation: The Catholic League in Paris and the Nature of Catholic Reform, 1540–­1630. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1999.

Reinburg, Virginia. French Books of Hours: Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400–­1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Reinhard, Wolfgang. Papauté confessions modernité. Edited and with a preface by Robert Descimon. Paris: Éditions de l’Ehess, 1998.

Richet, Denis. “Les Barricades à Paris le 12 mai 1588.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 45 (1990): 383–­91. Reprinted in Richet, De la Réforme à la Révolution, 53–­67. ———. La France moderne: L’esprit des institutions. Paris: Flammarion, 1973. Translated into Italian as Lo spirito delle istituzioni. Edited by Francesco Di Donato (Rome: Laterza, 1998).

———. “Pourquoi j’aime l’histoire? Essai d’autobiographie intellectuelle.” In Richet, De la Réforme à la Révolution: Études sur la France moderne, 543–­51. ———. De la Réforme à la Révolution: Études sur la France moderne. Preface by Pierre Goubert. Paris: Aubier, 1991.

Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Schalk, Ellery. From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1986. Translated into French as L’Épée et le sang: Une histoire du concept de noblesse (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1996). Véniel, Béatrice. Une Histoire de peaux et de laines: Les mégissiers parisiens au XVIe siècle. Paris: Éditions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2008.

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Bibliography of Robert Descimon’s Writings 1975 “Structures d’un marché de draperie dans le Languedoc au milieu du XVIe siècle.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 30, no. 6 (1975): 1414–­46.

“Préambule historique: La France du premier ancien régime.” In Histoire littéraire de la France, vol. 2, 1492–­1600, edited by Pierre Abraham and Roland Desné, 11–­35. Series editor Henri Weber. Paris: Éditions sociales, 1975.

1979 “Les Quartiers de Paris du moyen âge au XVIIIe siècle: Évolution d’un espace plurifonctionnel.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 34, no. 5 (1979): 956–­83 (with Jean Nagle).

“La France moderne, quelle croissance?” [Extended review of Histoire économique et sociale de la France, edited by Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse, vol. 1, De 1450 à 1660 (Paris: PUF, 1977).] Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 34, no. 6 (1979): 1304–­17.

1982 “La Ligue à Paris (1585–­1594): Une révision” and “La Ligue: Des divergences fondamentales.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 37, no. 1 (1982): 72–­111 and 122–­28. “Les Capitaines bourgeois des quartiers Saint-­Séverin et Sainte-­Geneviève durant la Ligue (1588–­1594): Le partage politique de la rive gauche.” La Montagne Sainte-­Geneviève et ses abords 246 (1982): 59–­69.

1983 Qui étaient les Seize? Mythes et réalités de la Ligue parisienne (1585–­1594). Paris: Klincksieck, 1983. Also published in Paris et Île-­de-­France Mémoires 34 (1983): 7–­300.

a 283 b

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284 a Bibliography of Robert Descimon’s Writings

1984 “Le Financement frondeur de la Guerre de Paris.” In La France d’ancien régime: Études réunies en l’honneur de Pierre Goubert, 1:195–­205. Toulouse: Privat, 1984.

“La Fronde en mouvement: Le développement de la crise politique entre 1648 et 1652.” XVIIe siècle: Revue publiée par la Société d’études du XVIIe siècle 145 (Oct. 1984): 305–­21.

1985 La Sainte Ligue, le juge et la potence: L’assassinat du président Brisson (15 novembre 1591). Paris: Hachette, 1985 (with Élie Barnavi).

“Prise de parti, appartenance sociale et relations familiales dans la Ligue parisienne (1585–­1594).” In Les Réformes: Enracinement socio-­culturel, 25e colloque international d’études humanistes, Tours 1er–­13 juillet 1982, edited by Bernard Chevalier and Robert Sauzet, 123–­41. Paris: Guy Trédaniel, éditions de la Maisnie, 1985. “De Paris à Bordeaux: Pour qui court le peuple pendant la Fronde (1652)?” In Mouvements populaires et conscience sociale XVIe–­XIXe siècles, edited by Jean Nicolas, 21–­42. Paris: Maloine, 1985 (with Christian Jouhaud).

1986 “La Fortune de Jacques Amyot (1513–­1593): Autour de Jean Amyot et de l’héritage de l’évêque d’Auxerre.” In Fortunes des Jacques Amyot: Actes du colloque international (Melun, 18–­20 avril 1985), edited by Michel Balard, 73–­86. Paris: Nizet, 1986. “Ancien régime” and “Institutions.” In Dictionnaire des sciences historiques, edited by André Burguière, 35–­37 and 369–­72. Paris: PUF, 1986.

1987 “Solidarité communautaire et sociabilité armée: Les compagnies de la milice bourgeoise à Paris (XVIe–­XVIIe siècles).” In Sociabilité, pouvoirs et société, edited by Françoise Thélamon, 599–­610. Rouen: Publications de l’Université, 1987.

“Les Assemblées de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris (mi-­XVIe/mi-­XVIIe siècles).” Paris et Île-­ de-­France Mémoires 38 (1987): 39–­54.

1988 “L’Échevinage parisien sous Henri IV (1594–­1609): Autonomie urbaine, conflits politiques et exclusives sociales.” In La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genèse de l’État moderne (XIIe–­XVIIIe siècles), edited by Neithard Bulst and Jean-­Philippe Genet, 113–­50. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1988.

“Henri III et Henri IV: Le triomphe dynastique.” In L’élection du chef de l’État en France de Hugues Capet à nos jours: Entretiens d’Auxerre 1987, 45–­61. Paris: Beauchesne, 1988.

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1989 “Un État des temps modernes?” In La longue durée de l’État, edited by Jacques Le Goff, 181–­356. Vol. 2 of Histoire de la France, edited by André Burguière and Jacques Revel. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989 (with Alain Guery). “Les Barricades frondeuses (26–­28 août 1648).” In La Fronde en questions: Actes du dix-­ huitième colloque du Centre méridional de rencontres sur le XVIIe siècle (Marseille 28–­29, Cassis 30–­31 janvier 1988), edited by Roger Duchêne and Pierre Ronzeaud, 245–­61. Aix: Université de Provence, 1989. “Les Parisiens, la Ligue et Henri IV (1585–­1610).” In Henri IV, le roi et la reconstruction du royaume, Actes du colloque de Pau-­Nérac, 1989, 24–­40. Pau: J & D Éditions, 1989. “Paris on the Eve of Saint-­Bartholomew: Taxation, Privilege, and Social Geography.” In Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, edited by Philip Benedict, 69–­104. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

“La haute noblesse parlementaire parisienne: La production d’une aristocratie d’État aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” In L’État et les aristocraties XIIe–­XVIIe siècle France, Angleterre, Écosse, edited by Philippe Contamine, 357–­84. Paris: Presses de l’ENS, 1989.

1990 La France du premier XVIIe siècle. Paris: Belin, 1990 (with Christian Jouhaud).

“Attitudes politiques et comportements civiques durant la Ligue parisienne.” In Culture et pratiques politiques en France et en Irlande XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle, Actes du colloque de Marseille 28 septembre–­2 octobre 1988, 65–­81. Paris, Publications du CRH, 1990.

“Les Barricades de la Fronde parisienne: Une lecture sociologique.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 45, no. 2 (1990): 397–­422.

“Modernité et archaïsme de l’État monarchique: Le parlement de Paris saisi par la vénalité (XVIe siècle).” In L’État moderne, genèse: Bilan et perspectives, edited by Jean-­Philippe Genet, 147–­61. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1990.

1991 “La Royauté française entre féodalité et sacerdoce: Roi seigneur ou roi magistrat?” Revue de synthèse 112, no. 3/4 (1991): 455–­73.

1992 “Les Fonctions de la métaphore du mariage politique du roi et de la république. France, XVe–­XVIIIe siècles.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 47, no. 6 (1992): 1127–­47.

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1993 Introduction to Michel de L’Hospital, Discours pour la majorité de Charles IX et trois autres discours, edited by Robert Descimon, 7–­39. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1993.

“‘Bourgeois de Paris’: Les migrations sociales d’un privilège XIVe–­XVIIIe siècle.” In Histoire sociale, histoire globale? Actes du colloque des 27–­28 janvier 1989, edited by Christophe Charle, 173–­82. Paris: Éditions de la MSH, 1993. “Milice bourgeoise et identité citadine à Paris au temps de la Ligue.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 48, no. 4 (1993): 885–­906.

1994 “Le Corps de ville et les élections échevinales à Paris aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: Codification coutumière et pratiques sociales.” In “Lectures de la ville (XVe–­XXe siècle),” edited by Jacques Bottin and Alain Cabantous. Special issue of Histoire, économie et société 133 (1994): 507–­30. “Les Assemblées de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris (mi-­XVIe–­mi-­XVIIe siècles).” Paris et Île-­ de-­France Mémoires 38 (1987): 39–­54. “Les Scrutateurs des élections échevinales (mi-­XVIe–­mi-­XVIIe siècle): Des médiateurs de fidélité.” Paris et ses campagnes sous l’ancien régime, Mélanges offerts à Jean Jacquart, edited by Michel Balard, Jean-­Claude Hervé, and Nicole Lemaître, 195–­209. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1994. “La Vénalité des offices politiques de la ville de Paris (1500–­1681).” Bulletin de la Société d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 3/4 (1994): 16–­27.

“Les Ducs de Nevers au temps de Blaise de Vigenère ou la puissance de faire des hommes puissants.” Blaise de Vigenère, poète et mythographe au temps de Henri III, 13–­ 37. Cahiers V. L. Saulnier 11. Paris: Presses de l’École normale supérieure, 1994.

1995 “Corpo cittadino, corpi di mestiere e borghesia a Parigi nel XVI e XVII secolo: Le libertà dei borghesi.” Quaderni storici 89 (Aug. 1995): 417–­44.

“L’union au domaine royal et le principe d’inaliénabilité: La construction d’une loi fondamentale aux XVIe–­XVIIe siècles.” Droits 22, no. 1 (1995): 79–­90.

“Juristes, science du droit et pouvoir d’État au temps de Galilée.” In Tribute to Galileo in Padua, International Symposium, 1992, Padova, 2–­6 dicembre 1992, 103–­27. Trieste: LINT, 1995.

1996 “Le Corps de ville et le système cérémoniel parisien au début de l’âge moderne.” In Statuts individuels, statuts corporatifs et statuts judiciaires dans les villes européennes (Moyen Âge et Temps modernes), edited by Marc Boone and Maarten Prak, 73–­ 138. Louvain: Garant, 1996.

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“Les Capitaines de la milice bourgeoise à Paris (1589–­1651): Pour une prosopographie de l’espace social parisien.” In L’État moderne et les élites XIIIe–­XVIIIe siècles: Apports et limites de la méthode prosopographique, edited by Jean-­Philippe Genet and Günther Lottes, 189–­211. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1996.

“Power Elites and the Prince: The State as Enterprise.” In Power Elites and State Building, edited by Wolfgang Reinhard, 101–­21. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Also published in French as “Les élites du pouvoir et le prince: L’État comme entreprise” in Les élites du pouvoir et la construction de l’État en Europe, edited by Wolfgang Reinhard, 133–­62 (Paris: PUF, 1996). (The French translation was overseen by Robert Descimon.)

“L’Invention de la noblesse de robe: La jurisprudence du parlement de Paris aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” In Les parlements de province: Pouvoirs, justice et société du XVe au XVIIIe siècle, edited by Jacques Poumarède and Jack Thomas, 677–­90. Toulouse: Framespa, 1996.

1997 “De Officieren van de Parijse schutterij aan het einde van de zestiende eeuw.” Tijdschrift voor sociale geschiedenis 23 (1997): 12–­40. “Il Mercato degli uffici regi a Parigi (1604–­1665): Economia politica ed economia privata della funzione pubblica di antico regime.” Quaderni storici 96 (1997): 685–­716.

“La Vénalité des offices et la construction de l’État dans la France moderne: Des problèmes de la représentation symbolique aux problèmes du coût social du pouvoir.” In Les figures de l’administrateur: Institutions, réseaux, pouvoirs en Espagne, en France et au Portugal, edited by Robert Descimon, Jean-­Frédéric Schaub, and Bernard Vincent, 77–­93. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1997. “The Birth of the Nobility of the Robe: Dignity versus Privilege in the Parlement of Paris, 1500–­1700.” In Changing Identities in Early Modern France, edited by Michael Wolfe, 95–­123. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

“Élites parisiennes entre XVe et XVII siècle: Du bon usage du Cabinet des titres.” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 155 (1997): 607–­44. “État” and “Ordres et classes.” In Dictionnaire européen des Lumières, edited by Michel Delon, 433–­35 and 800–­802. Paris, PUF, 1997.

1998 “L’Homme qui signa l’édit de Nantes: Pierre Forget de Fresnes (†18 avril 1610); Éléments de biographie.” In Coexister dans l’intolérance: L’édit de Nantes (1598), edited by Michel Grandjean and Bernard Roussel, 11–­74. Geneva: Labor & Fides, 1998.

“Éléments pour une étude sociale des conseillers au Châtelet sous Henri IV (22 mars 1594–­14 mai 1610.” In Les officiers “moyens” à l’époque moderne: France, Angleterre, Espagne, edited by Michel Cassan, 261–­91. Limoges: PULIM, 1998.

“La Imaginen de Felipe II en la Liga radical francesa.” In Felipe II (1527–­1598): Europa y la Monarquia Catolica, vol. 1, El Gobierno de la Monarquia (Corte y Reinos), edited by José Martinez Millan, 111–­36. Madrid: Parteluz, 1998 (with José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez).

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1999 “Autopsie du massacre de l’Hôtel de Ville (4 juillet 1652): Paris et la Fronde des Princes.” Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 54, no. 2 (1999): 319–­51.

“Intolérance des ligueurs radicaux? À propos des testaments du cardinal de Pellevé et du chanoine Sanguin.” In La Tolérance, colloque international de Nantes mai 1998: Quatrième centenaire de l’édit de Nantes, edited by Guy Saupin, Rémy Fabre, and Marcel Launay, 19–­27. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1999. “Culte du nom et idéologie nobiliaire au XVIIe siècle: L’exemple d’un bourgeois gentilhomme.” In Le second ordre: L’idéal nobiliaire. Hommage à Ellery Schalk, edited by Chantal Grell and Arnaud Ramière de Fortanier, 303–­14. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris–­Sorbonne, 1999.

“Chercher de nouvelles voies pour interpréter les phénomènes nobiliaires dans la France moderne: La noblesse, ‘essence’ ou rapport social?” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 46, no. 1 (1999): 5–­21. “Un’Esperienza personale nel contesto francese.” Quaderni storici 100 (1999): 59–­64.

2000 “Un État des temps modernes?” In Histoire de la France, vol. 4, La longue durée de l’État, edited by André Burguière and Jacques Revel, 209–­513 and 521–­34. General editor, Jacques Le Goff. Rev. ed. of L’Etat et les pouvoirs, 1989. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000 (with Alain Guery).

“Conflits familiaux dans la robe parisienne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles: Les paradoxes de la transmission du statut.” Cahiers d’histoire 45, no. 4 (2000): 677–­97. “Plusieurs histoires dans l’histoire littéraire.” [Critical commentary on Christian Jouhaud, Les pouvoirs de la littérature: Histoire d’un paradoxe (Paris: Gallimard, 2000).] Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 55 (2000): 1009–­15.

2001 “‘La Relation de la nomination de Guillaume de Lamoignon à la place de premier président du parlement écrite par lui-­même.’” In L’office du juge: Part de souveraineté ou puissance nulle?, edited by Olivier Cayla and Marie-­France Renoux-­Zagamé, 73–­88. Paris: Bruylant, LGDJ, 2001. “Quelques réflexions à propos des commissaires du roi dans la rédaction et la réforme des coutumes au XVIe siècle.” Cahiers du Centre de recherches historiques 26 (2001): 93–­106.

“Les Paradoxes d’un juge seigneurial: Charles Loyseau (1564–­1627).” “Officiers moyens (II),” edited by Christophe Blanquie. Special issue of Cahiers du Centre de recherches historiques 27 (2001): 153–­76.

2002 L’Absolutisme en France: Histoire et historiographie. Paris: Le Seuil, Collection Points Histoire, 2002 (with Fanny Cosandey).

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“Declareuil (1913) contre Hauser (1912): Les rendez-­vous manqués de l’histoire et de l’histoire du droit.” Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 57, no. 6 (2002): 1615–­36.

“La Réconciliation des Hotman protestants et catholiques (des années 1580 aux années 1630).” In De Michel de L’Hospital à l’édit de Nantes: Politique et religion face aux Églises, edited by Thierry Wanegffelen, 529–­62. Clermont-­Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2002.

“La Bibliothèque de Jean Hotman de Villiers (1636).” In Conflits politiques, controverses religieuses: Essais d’histoire européenne aux 16e–­18e siècles, edited by Ouzi Elyada and Jacques Le Brun, 211–­21. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2002.

“Dignité contre vénalité: L’œuvre de Charles Loyseau (1564–­1627) entre science du droit et science des saints.” In Historische Anstöße: Festschrift für Wolfgang Reinhard zum 65. Geburtstag am 10. April 2002, edited by Peter Burschel, Mark Häberlein, Volker Reinhardt, Wolfgang E. J. Weber, and Reinhard Wendt, 326–­ 38. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002. “Penser librement son intolérance: Le président Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553–­1617) et l’Épître dédicatoire des Historiae sui temporis (1604).” In La liberté de penser: Hommage à Maurice Laugaa, edited by François Lecercle, 73–­86. Poitiers: La Licorne, 2002.

2003 “Reading Tocqueville: Property and Aristocracy in Modern France.” In Tocqueville and Beyond: Essays on the Old Regime in Honor of David D. Bien, edited by Robert Schneider and Robert Schwartz, 127–­54. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2003.

“Marineros con brújula pero sin mar: Los exiliados católicos radicals franceses al final de las guerras de Religión; Discurso, acción política, interés social y processos de desagregación.” Historia y Política: Ideas, procesos y movimientos sociales 9 (2003): 219–­44 (with José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez). “The ‘Bourgeoisie seconde’: Social Differentiation in the Parisian Municipal Oligarchy in the Sixteenth Century, 1500–­1610.” In “A New Look at the ‘Bourgeoisie Seconde’­” [articles presented at the French Historical Studies conference, Toronto, 2002, including articles by Mack Holt, Sara Beam, and Hilary Bernstein]. Special issue of French History 17, no. 4 (2003): 388–­424.

“La Chicane contre la justice: Quel paradigme du droit dans le Dictionnaire universel de Furetière?” In “Le Dictionnaire universel de Furetière,” edited by Hélène Merlin-­ Kajman. Special issue of Littératures classiques 47 (2003): 245–­52. “Offices.” In Dictionnaire de la culture juridique, edited by Denis Alland and Stéphane Rials, 1103–­6. Paris: Lamy-­PUF, 2003.

2004 “Réseaux de famille, réseaux de pouvoir? Les quarteniers de la ville de Paris et le contrôle du corps municipal dans le deuxième quart du XVIe siècle.” In Liens sociaux et actes notariés dans le monde urbain en France et en Europe, edited by François-­ Joseph Ruggiu, Scarlett Beauvalet, and Vincent Gourdon, 153–­86. Paris: Presse de l’Université de Paris–­Sorbonne, 2004.

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290 a Bibliography of Robert Descimon’s Writings “Le Discours de la représentation bourgeoise et l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris: Aperçus synoptiques du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle.” In Le Prince, la ville et le bourgeois, edited by Laurence Croq, 203–­21. Paris: Nolin, 2004.

“Bourgeois et habitants: Réflexions sur les appartenances multiples des Parisiens au XVIe siècle.” In “Être parisien.” Special issue of Paris et Île-­de-­France, Mémoires 55 (2004): 185–­91.

“Les Notaires de Paris du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle: Office, profession, archives.” In Offices et officiers “moyens” en France à l’époque moderne, edited by Michel Cassan, 15–­42. Limoges: PULIM, 2004.

2005 Les Ligueurs de l’exil: Le refuge catholique français après 1594. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005 (with José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez). “Les Auxiliaires de justice du Châtelet de Paris: Aperçus sur l’économie du monde des offices ministériels (xvie–­xviiie siècle).” In Entre justice et justiciables: Les auxiliaires de la justice du moyen âge au XXe siècle, edited by Claire Dolan, 301–­25. Québec: Presses universitaires Laval, 2005.

“Guillaume Du Vair (7 mars 1556–­3 août 1621): Les enseignements d’une biographie sociale; La construction symbolique d’un grand homme et l’échec d’un lignage.” In Guillaume du Vair: Parlementaire et écrivain (1556–­1621), edited by Bruno Petey-­Girard and Alexandre Tarrête, 17–­77. Geneva: Droz, 2005. “Un Langage de la dignité: La qualification des personnes dans la société parisienne de l’époque moderne.” In Dire et vivre l’ordre social en France sous l’ancien régime, edited by Fanny Cosandey, 69–­123. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2005.

2006 “Les Officiers dits ‘moyens’ à Paris: Leur représentation dans les assemblées générales de la ville (vers 1550–­vers 1680).” In “Dénombrements officiers ‘moyens’ (III)” edited by Christophe Blanquie. Special issue of Cahiers du Centre de recherches historiques, no. 38 (2006): 41–­53.

“La Vénalité des offices comme dette publique sous l’ancien régime français: Le bien commun au pays des intérêts privés.” In La dette publique dans l’histoire, colloque organisé par le Centre de recherches historiques en novembre 2001, edited by Jean Andreau, Gérard Béaur, and Jean-­Yves Grenier, 175–­240. Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2006.

“Don de transmission, indisponibilité et constitution des lignages au sein de la bourgeoisie parisienne au XVIIe siècle.” Hypothèses 2006: Travaux de l’École doctorale d’Histoire, 413–­22. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006.

2007 “Transmission collatérale et reproduction népotique au XVIe siècle: Un exemple de mobilité sociale et géographique (le Robillart de Valenton, de Paris et de Normandie).” In Mélanges offerts au professeur Maurice Gresset, edited by Paul

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Delsalle, François Lassus, Corinne Marchal, and François Vion-­Delphon, 311–­ 18. Annales littéraires de l’Université de Franche Comté 820, Séries historiques 28. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-­Comté, 2007.

“Les de Thou au miroir des archives notariales du XVIe siècle: Les chemins de la haute robe.” In Jacques Auguste de Thou: Ecritures et condition robine, edited by Frank Lestringant, 13–­35. Cahiers V. L. Saulnier 24. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris–­Sorbonne, 2007.

“Comment critiquer la raison mystique? Dévotion et finance au XVIIe siècle.” In Le sujet absolu: Une confrontation de notre présent aux débats du XVIIe siècle français, edited by Pierre-­Antoine Fabre, Pascale Gruson, and Michèle Leclerc-­Olive, 59–­69. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2007.

2008 “L’Exemplarité sociale des Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux.” In Construire l’exemplarité: Pratiques littéraires et discours historiens (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècles), edited by Laurence Giavarini, 181–­95. Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2008.

2009 “Chastel’s Attempted Regicide (27 December 1594) and Its Subsequent Transformation into an ‘Affair.’” In Politics and Religion in Early Bourbon France, edited by Alison Forrestal and Eric Nelson, 86–­105. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

“Les Élections échevinales à Paris (mi-­XVIe siècle–­1679): Analyse des procédures formelles et informelles” In Élections et pouvoirs politiques du VIIe au XVIIe siècle, edited by Corinne Péneau, 239–­77. Paris: Éditions Bière, 2009.

“La Fortune des Parisiennes: L’exercice féminin de la transmission (XVIe–­XVIIe siècle).” In La Famiglia nell’economia europea secc. XIII–­XVIII / The Economic Role of the Family in the European Economy from the 13th to the 18th centuries, edited by Simonetta Cavaciocchi, 619–­34. Atti della Quarantesima Settimana di Studi, Fondazio F. Dattini, ser. 2, 40. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009. “Droit et pratiques de la transmission des charges publiques à Paris (mi-­XVIe–­mi-­ XVIIe siècle).” In Mobilité et transmission dans les sociétés de l’Europe moderne (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècles), edited by Anna Bellavitis, Laurence Croq, and Monica Martinat, 219–­34. Rennes: PUR, 2009 (with Simone Geoffroy-­Poisson).

“Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553–­1617): Une rupture intellectuelle, politique et sociale.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 226, no. 3 (2009): 485–­95. “ La Milicia burguesa parisina en el siglo XVI: Una antropología muy política.” In Las milicias del rey de España: Sociedad, política e identidad en las monarquías Ibéricas, edited by José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez, 299–­329. Madrid: Red Columnaria, 2009. “Le Modèle commun de la cité: Quelles possibles historicisations?” In Compétences critiques et sens de la justice: Colloque de Cerisy, edited by Marc Breviglieri, Claudette Lafaye, and Danny Trom, 275–­80. Paris: Economica, Coll. Études sociologiques, 2009.

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2010 Épreuves de noblesse: Les expériences nobiliaires de la haute robe parisienne (XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle). Edited by Robert Descimon and Élie Haddad. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010. Including the following chapters at least in part by Robert Descimon: “Économie politique de l’office vénal anoblissant,” 31–­45 (with Martine Bennini).

“La Construction juridique d’un système patrimonial de l’office: Une affaire de patrilignage et de genre,” 47–­59 (with Simone Geoffroy-­Poisson).

“La Réconciliation manquée des Spifame: Domination, transgression, reconversion (XVIe–­XVIIe siècle),” 87–­105 (in collaboration with Pavel Ouvarov and Élodie Milles).

“Conclusion: Nobles de lignage et noblesse de service; Sociogenèse comparée de l’épée et de la robe (XVe–­XVIIIe siècle),” 277–­302.

“Sites coutumiers et mots incertains: La formation de la noblesse française à la charnière du Moyen Âge et des Temps modernes.” In Les Nobles et la ville dans l’espace francophone, edited by Thierry Dutour, 343–­60. Paris: PUPS, 2010. “Au XVIe siècle, l’office de la chambre des Comptes de Paris comme investissement: Les marchands bourgeois face à la fonction publique.” In Contrôler les finances sous l’ancien régime: Regards d’aujourd’hui sur les Chambres des comptes, edited by Dominique Le Page, 305–­24. Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2010.

“Le Travail du langage sur la société d’ancien régime.” In Noms de métiers et catégories professionnelles: Acteurs, pratiques, discours (XVe siècle à nos jours), edited by Georges Hanne and Claire Judde de Larivière, 113–­28. Toulouse: Méridiennes, 2010. “L’Écriture du jurisconsulte Charles Loyseau (1564–­1627): Un modèle d’action rhétorique au temps d’Henri IV?” In L’Écriture des juristes XVIe–­XVIIIe siècle, edited by Laurence Giavarini, 277–­94. Paris: Éditions classiques Garnier, 2010.

2011 “La Société française avant les Lumières: Une société hiérarchique?” In Classement, déclassement, reclassement, edited by Gilles Chabaud, 51–­69. Limoges: PULIM, 2011.

“La Dignité du dignitaire.” In Penser et vivre l’honneur à l’époque moderne, edited by Hervé Drévillon and Diego Venturino, 351–­58. Rennes: PUR, 2011.

“Le Changement social à Paris de la fin de la Ligue aux États généraux (1594–­1615).” In Lendemains de guerre civile en France sous Henri IV, edited by Michel De Waele, 193–­220. Québec: Éditions du CIERL, PUL, 2011. “Patriarcat et discordes familiales: Les conflits liés aux enjeux de l’alliance et de la transmission dans la robe parisienne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” In La Justice des familles: Autour de la transmission des biens, des savoirs et des pouvoirs (Europe, Nouveau Monde, XIIe–­XIXe siècles), edited by Anna Bellavitis and Isabelle Chabot, 49–­68. Rome: École française de Rome, 2011.

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Bibliography of Robert Descimon’s Writings

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“Le Malheur privé fait le bonheur public: Histoire d’Antoine Moriau (13 novembre 1699–­ 20 mai 1759), un homme qui aimait les livres.” In À travers l’histoire du livre et des Lumières: Études d’histoire du livre et des Lumières offertes au professeur Daniel Roche par ses élèves, ses collègues et ses amis, edited by Frédéric Barbier and Robert Descimon, 139–­55. Histoire et civilisation du livre 7. Geneva: Droz, 2011.

“La Vie et la vie de Louise de Marillac.” Paper presented at the journée d’études, Nicolas Lefèvre de Lezeau et l’écriture, 23 March 2011, Paris, Les Dossiers du GRIHL (ENBACH et EACEA), 2011 (online at https://dossiersgrilh.revues.org/4712). “Les Oratoriens du XVIIe siècle dans la lutte contre les calvinistes.” In L’Oratoire du Louvre et les protestants parisiens, edited by Philippe Braunstein, 68–­73. Paris: Labor et Fides, 2011.

“La Production locale de la noblesse la constitue-­t-­elle en catégorie transnationale?” In Pratiques du transnational: Terrain, preuves, limites, edited by Jean-­Paul Zúñiga, 147–­64. Paris: Bibliothèque du Centre de recherche historique, 2011 (with Dinah Ribard).

2012 “Le Catholicisme corporatif des temps de la Ligue: Témoignages de testaments parisiens des XVIe et XVIIe siècles.” In Pierre Chaunu historien, edited by Jean-­Pierre Bardet, Denis Crouzet, and Annie Molinié-­Bertrand, 169–­88. Paris: PUPS, 2012.

“La Vénalité des offices politiques et perpétuels de la municipalité de Paris (procureur du roi, greffier et receveur de la Ville, XVIe siècle–­années 1750).” In Le Pouvoir municipal de la fin du moyen âge à 1789, edited by Philippe Hamon and Catherine Laurent, 59–­82. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012. “Antoine Moriau (1699–­1759), fondateur de la bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, et son testament olographe.” [critical edition] La Cité: Société historique et archéologique des IIIe, IVe, XIe et XIIe arrondissements de Paris 31 (December 2012): 112–­20 (with Safia Hamdi). “La Demeure parisienne et le travail des limites au moyen âge et au début des Temps modernes.” In La Demeure médiévale à Paris, edited by Étienne Hamon and Valentine Weiss, 38–­45. Paris: Somogy and Archives nationales, 2012 (with Valentine Weiss).

2013 Los Franceses de Felipe II: El exilio católico después de 1594. Madrid: FCE, 2013. Spanish translation and revised edition of Les ligueurs de l’Exil, with José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez.

“Paris, mi-­XVIIe siècle: Espace social, espace civique.” In Les Histoires de Paris (XVIe–­ XVIIIe siècle), edited by Thierry Belleguic and Laurent Turcot, 1:285–­301. Paris: Hermann, 2013 (with Michel Demonet).

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294 a Bibliography of Robert Descimon’s Writings “Les Chemins de l’inégalité menaient-­ils à la pérennité des lignages? Réflexions sur les procédés juridiques qui permettaient de s’émanciper des normes égalitaires dans la coutume de Paris (XVIe–­XVIIe siècle).” In Fidéicommis: Procédés juridiques et pratiques sociales (Italie-­Europe, bas moyen âge–­XVIIIe siècle), edited by Jean-­ François Chauvard, 383–­401. Rome: École française, 2013. “Détours et contours de la rente: Les structures pérennes de la transmission entre générations.” [Review essay on André Masson, Des liens et des transferts entre générations (Paris: Éditions de l’Ehess, 2013)]. Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 68, no. 3 (2013): 839–­48.

“Le Testament de Jean Boucher: Édition accompagnée de quelques commentaires sur l’histoire familiale des Boucher de Louans.” In Jean Boucher (1548–­1646?): Prêtre, prédicateur, polémiste, edited by Bruce Hayes, 113–­30. Œuvres et critiques 38.2. Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2013 (with José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez).

2014 “Cité humaniste, id est cité absolutiste? Paris et Guillaume Budé (26 janvier 1468–­22 août 1540), prévôt des marchands en 1522.” In Cités humanistes, cités politiques (1400–­1600), edited by Élisabeth Crouzet-­Pavan, Denis Crouzet, and Philippe Desan, 61–­70. Paris: PUPS, 2014. “Mai 1588–­août 1648: Les barricades parisiennes; Une relecture politiste.” In Paris: L’insurrection capitale, edited by Jean-­Claude Caron, 31–­41. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2014.

2015 “Henri Drouot, la ‘bourgeoisie seconde’ et l’histoire sociale des guerres de Religion en Bourgogne et en France.” In “Henri Drouot, historien du XVIe siècle.” Special issue of Annales de Bourgogne 87/88 (2015): 35–­58. “La Prévôté des marchands à l’époque moderne: De la corporation territoriale à l’incorporation administrative.” Les Cahiers de Tunisie 65, no. 212/213 (2015): 23–­40 (with Safia Hamdi).

2016 “Un Patricien parisien à l’évêché: Guillaume Voile (?–­1568).” In Notre Dame et l’Hôtel de Ville: Incarner Paris du moyen âge à nos jours, edited by Isabelle Backouche, Boris, Bove, Robert Descimon, and Claude Gauvard, 171–­89. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne/Comité d’histoire de la Ville de Paris, 2016.

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Glossary Some French terms have close English false cognates: for example, the chief priest/minister of a French parish is a curé, for which the English term is “vicar,” and the assistant priest in France is the vicaire, or “curate” in English. This glossary aims to clarify definitions of institutions, offices, and other terms for which there is often no direct English equivalent. avocat: an attorney or barrister who pleaded cases in courts. avocat du roi: an official who served as the king’s attorney.

bailli: a presiding judicial official. In royal courts of primary jurisdiction, called bailliages (bailiwicks), the bailli was a nobleman drawn from the most powerful local families. He was the chief military officer of the district and sometimes adjudicated disputes between nobles. The seigneurial bailli was the chief judge of a seigneury.

bans de vendange: the specific dates on which grape harvesting could begin each year, set by local magistrates in conjunction with the local vignerons. Harvesting the grapes was banned before the set date, and violators were regularly fined. bourg: village center, around the parish church.

bourgeois mandés: delegates sent by a city’s districts to participate in municipal elections or advise on city affairs.

bourgeoisie seconde: the second-­tier non-­noble elite, a group that historians of the concept view as having felt their path to social mobility was blocked by more socially prominent elites with better access to political influence and power.

brigues: illicit electoral contests.

bureau de ville: city government, in Paris and certain other cities.

cahier de doléances: list of grievances drawn up for and by representative assemblies.

cens, censive: a cens was a contract giving someone perpetual use of a parcel of land; the specific parcel spelled out in the contract was the censive. This was like a perpetual rental of land, as the purchaser agreed to pay an annual sum of money or a portion of the crop harvested each year in return for the use of the land. Châtelet: The fortress-­like building that housed the officers of the prévôté of Paris; by extension, the officers of the prévôté.

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296 a Glossary commissaire: an administrative officer, or commissioner; this could be a long-­term professional position, for example at the Châtelet of Paris, or a temporary appointment.

conseil de ville: city council.

conseiller: a judge in a royal court or a counselor in a municipal government, depending on context. corps de ville: members of city government.

crimes énormes: serious crimes such as treason, infanticide, assassination, grand theft, or arson that warranted the death penalty if the defendant was convicted.

dévot: a devout Catholic displaying the interiorized faith characteristic of the Catholic Reformation, but also a term often associated with the politico-­religious faction most active in opposing Protestantism in the era after the Edict of Nantes. dizainiers: officers of the neighborhood or subdistrict known in Paris as a dizaine.

droit annuel: an annual fee paid by royal officeholders that gave them a hereditary property right to their offices. Introduced in 1604, the droit annuel increased the value of these offices in ways that made venality very hard to end. échevin: alderman, or city official who policed and administered justice and order in a city. échevinage: council of aldermen.

élection: local financial district, so-­called after their chief official, the élu. Elected by local estates in the early fourteenth century, élus became royal officials in 1373. Roughly two-­thirds of France had élections; that region was called the pays d’élection. The other third (including, for example, Burgundy) had provincial estates and so were pays d’États.

élu: the chief official in an élection; but also, depending on context, an elected representative. In Burgundy, for example, the seven members of the commission that acted for the Estates of Burgundy when they were not in session were called “élus” and included one cleric, one noble, one person from the Third Estate, the mayor of Dijon, two masters from the Chambre des comptes, and a representative of the king. état civil: The collective name given to the records of births, marriages, and deaths kept by parish churches in the ancien régime. feu: literally “hearth,” but also a term used to designate a taxable adult living independently and listed on the parish tax roll.

Fronde: an uprising against the French Crown that began in Paris in 1648 and, expanding both geographically and in terms of social makeup and demands of the rebels, evolved into a civil war that lasted until 1652. gabelle: salt tax.

gens du roi: royal attorneys and solicitors.

gens mécaniques: craftsmen working with their hands.

Grand Bureau des Pauvres: the municipally run agency created in Paris in 1544 to provide assistance to poor people in their homes. greffier: chief clerk, who kept a register of transactions [greffe] in his jurisdiction. A seigneurial greffier held an office, often leased for a given period.

guet: civic guard, usually responsible to and under control of the municipal government.

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Glossary

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hôpital général: workhouse founded in the seventeenth century to enclose the poor. hôtel de ville: city hall.

hôtel-­dieu: a charity hospital, usually created by private donors and run by clerics in the later Middle Ages. Some hôtels-­dieu were taken over by municipal agencies in the sixteenth century.

jurade: name of the Bordeaux city council.

jurat: a member of the Bordeaux city council.

laboureur: ploughman. In Alligny, a full plough team was four oxen [laboureur à quatre boeufs], and most peasants described as “laboureur” had only two oxen [laboureur à deux boeufs]. This smaller plough team could not do the heavy spring ploughing. letters of remission: letters issued by the royal chancellery court pardoning an individual for a specific crime, later to be registered at the local criminal court with authority over the trial.

lieutenant de justice (or lieutenant-­général): a royal officeholder appointed to initiate and conduct local criminal proceedings. Some cities, including Paris, separated these functions between a lieutenant criminel and a lieutenant civil charged with civil proceedings.

ligueur: a supporter of the radical Catholic faction, or Holy League, that held power in Paris and a number of other French cities between 1588 and the mid-­1590s. mainmorte: a form of serfdom in which the serf (mainmortable) owned his or her land but could pass it only to heirs living with him or her at the time of the serf ’s death; if the serf had no such heir, the land reverted to the lord. To avoid this escheat, serfs often lived in a community of goods (communs en biens) with multiple households sharing the same roof. maître des requêtes: master of requests; a key legal advisor to a king or great aristocrat.

métayer: sharecropper, but in contrast to the usual meaning of that term in American English, it connoted a peasant with a plough team, leasing a large farm, and so a relatively rich, rather than a poor farmer. noblesse de robe: the collective term for men who acquired a form of nobility through the purchase of venal offices—­usually royal offices—­such as judgeships in the parlements. These offices did not give the holder a noble title or landed estate but were tied directly to the function of the office.

octroi: An excise duty on an agricultural product such as wine brought into a city from outside. The amount was set by the Crown and remained relatively stable and predictable, though it was often lowered in times of dearth. The octroi on wine, for example, was rarely raised in the ancien régime, largely because of the public outcry by both the producers and consumers. parlements: royal appeals courts that by the sixteenth century had jurisdiction over all the major provinces of France; these courts also registered royal edicts to give them the force of law and undertook considerable responsibility for maintaining public order at the local level. paulette: a term commonly used for the droit annuel, the tax collected annually on royal office to allow the holder to transmit it to his heirs or dispose of it in other ways. The term is derived from the name of the financier, Charles Paulet, who initially proposed it.

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298 a Glossary politique: a pejorative epithet applied to those who placed loyalty to the Crown and the royal succession above religious and confessional differences; later extended with less pejorative intent to encompass more broadly those Catholic royalists who supported the king against the Holy League. praticien: a clerk who prepared cases for seigneurial courts, witnessed documents for a notary, and assisted legal professionals in other ways. prévôt des marchands: the highest municipal officer, equivalent to a mayor, in Paris.

procureur: solicitor; more broadly, a representative empowered to act in certain situations. Village communities often had a procureur d’office as their agent, for example; he was not always a legal professional and could even be illiterate. prud’hommes: goodmen, or men brought in to advise in certain situations. quartenier: captain of a city district known as a quartier, or quarter.

question préalable: torture applied after the defendant was convicted and sentenced to death in order to obtain information about accomplices.

question préparatoire: torture applied after a defendant was charged to obtain a confession of guilt. receveur: treasurer, or official charged with receiving and accounting for funds.

rente: A type of loan in which an investor would lend a sum of money to a borrower in return for an annual interest payment—­usually one sixteenth of the principal—­ that the borrower and his heirs were required to pay in perpetuity on the same date each year until the entire principal sum could be repaid in one cash payment.

répartiteur: the agency charged with distributing funds in a particular district under Paris’s Grand Bureau des Pauvres.

Sainte Union: the Holy League, a radical faction that rose up against the French Crown in 1585 to demand stronger measures against the Protestants, a new war to end heresy in France, and the exclusion of Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre, from the line of succession to the French throne. sécretaire du roi: a venal office connected to the royal chancellery; in practice a sinecure purchased for the noble status it conveyed, a status that became hereditary after twenty years of service. Seize/Sixteen: prominent members of Paris’s Sainte Union, or Holy League. The group took its name from the sixteen quartiers, or districts, into which Paris was divided.

sénéchaussée: a district of government—­the equivalent in the south of France of a bailliage—­and the mid-­level royal court that adjudicated affairs at this district level. Six Corps des marchands: the six most powerful merchants’ guilds in Paris. syndic: appointed representative of a corporate or ecclesiastical body.

taille: the chief royal direct tax; when used in the plural, the term meant all direct taxes taken together. Clerics and nobles were exempt from the taille, but many regions and cities also acquired exemptions. Burgundy, for example, did not pay the original taille, voted in 1439 by an assembly not including Burgundian deputies, but paid direct taxes voted by the Estates of Burgundy, as well as the taillon, a tax created by Henri II to pay soldiers. The term “taillables” referred to all those subject to these direct taxes and usually carried a pejorative connotation.

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Glossary

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venal offices: offices sold by the Crown to raise revenue and staff administrative posts, notably judicial posts; a phenomenon that expanded on a large scale during the sixteenth century. vibailli: co-­chief of the judicial unit known as the bailliage.

vigneron: those who tended the vines, harvested the grapes, and made the wine from the grapes after the harvest each year.

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Contributors Sara Beam (PhD, University of California–­Berkeley), associate professor of history at the University of Victoria (Canada), publishes widely on the history of early modern France and its borderlands. Her first book, Laughing Matters: Farce and the Making of Absolutism in France, winner of the 2008 Roland H. Bainton Book Prize, examines the censorship and regulation of satirical theater in France between 1450 and 1650. Her research also examines the practice of criminal justice in early modern Europe, with a particular focus on torture and its decline in the seventeenth century. She is currently preparing a book manuscript on torture and execution in Reformation Geneva. Philip Benedict (PhD, Princeton University) was professor and sometime director of the Institute of Reformation History of the University of Geneva. His books include Rouen during the Wars of Religion (1981), The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots 1600–­85 (2001), Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (2002), Graphic History (2007), and (with Nicolas Fornerod) L’organisation et l’action des Églises réformées de France 1557–­1563: Synodes provinciaux et autres documents (2012). Hilary J. Bernstein (PhD, Princeton University) is an associate professor at the University of California–­Santa Barbara. Particularly interested in the politics and cultural environment of French cities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she is the author of Between Crown and Community: Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-­Century Poitiers (2004). She remembers with fondness attending the seminar of Robert Descimon in 1992 to 1994 while first doing dissertation research in Poitiers, and has returned to the seminar periodically, while in Paris, ever since. She is currently working on a book on urban history writing in French provincial cities in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries.

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302 a Contributors

Michael P. Breen (PhD, Brown University) is associate professor of history and humanities at Reed College (Portland, OR, USA). He is the author of Law, City, and King: Legal Culture, Municipal Politics, and State-­ Formation in Early-­Modern Dijon (2007), as well as several articles on law, politics, and society in early modern France. He is currently working on a book tracing the growing importance of law as a social and cultural practice in medieval and early modern Europe, and a separate study of the legal and medical controversies surrounding marital annulment trials for impotence in early modern France. James B. Collins (PhD, Columbia University) is professor of history at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Fiscal Limits of Absolutism (1988), Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Burgundy (1994), The State in Early Modern France (2nd ed. 2009), and La monarchie républicaine: État et société dans la France moderne (2016). Mark Critchlow (PhD, Sheffield University) teaches at (and has been acting head of ) the Manchester Mesivta, an Orthodox Jewish high school for boys. He successfully defended his PhD thesis (directed by Mark Greengrass) on the Histoire Anonyme de la Ligue in 2015. Jonathan Dewald (PhD, University of California–­Berkeley) is UB Distinguished Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His books include The European Nobility, 1400–­ 1800 (1996); Lost Worlds: The Emergence of French Social History (2006); and Status, Power, and Identity in Early Modern France: The Rohan Family, 1550–­1715 (2015). He also edited the six-­volume Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World (2004). Barbara B. Diefendorf (PhD, University of California–­Berkeley) is professor of history emerita at Boston University. Her books include Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony (1983), Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-­Century Paris (1991), and From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (2004, winner of the J. Russell Major Prize from the American Historical Association). She is currently completing a book manuscript on the contested early stages of France’s Catholic Reformation.

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Contributors

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Mark Greengrass (DPhil, Oxford University) is emeritus professor of early modern history at the University of Sheffield and a member of the Centre Roland Mousnier, Université de Paris–­IV (Sorbonne). His recent publications include Christendom Destroyed. Europe, 1517–­1648 (volume 5 of the Penguin History of Europe; 2014). Mack P. Holt (PhD, Emory University) is professor of history at George Mason University. He has published a variety of books and articles on the Reformation and Wars of Religion in France, including most recently “Religious Violence in Sixteenth-­Century France: Moving Beyond Pollution and Purification,” in Ritual and Violence: Natalie Zemon Davis and Early Modern France, edited by Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer (2012); “La religion vécue en Bourgogne à la veille des guerres de religion,” in Le bon historien sait faire parler les silences: Hommages à Thierry Wanegffelen, edited by in Fabien Salesse (2012); and “Les réseaux d’autorité et de pouvoir à l’hôtel de ville et au parlement à Dijon entre 1580 et 1630,” Annales de Bourgogne 85 (2013). Marco Penzi (PhD, Università di San Marino) is attached to the Groupe d’études ibériques at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (GEI-­EHESS), Paris. He has published extensively, especially on the theologo-­political divisions in late sixteenth-­century France and Europe, and on the military and confessional engagement of French Catholic noble military in them. Robert A. Schneider (PhD, University of Michigan) is professor of history at Indiana University and was editor of the American Historical Review from 2005 to 2015. He has published two monographs, Public Life in Toulouse, 1463–­1789 (1989) and The Ceremonial City (2005). He has been a visiting professor at the National University of Ireland–­Maynooth and the University of Bristol, as well as a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and twice directeur d’études invité at the École des hautes études, Paris. He is currently completing a book-­length manuscript, “Dignified Retreat: Writers and Intellectuals in the Age of Richelieu.”

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Index “n” following a page number indicates a note on that page.

A

absolutism and clientage/alliances, 9–10, 276 Descimon’s study of, 1–2, 9 de Thou’s construction of, 9 development of, 5–6, 28–29 Loyseau’s views of, 274n41 and matrimonial economic bases, 277 and sociopolitical evolution, 4–5 theoretical vs. pragmatic, 9 and venality, 10 Académie des inscriptions et belles-­lettres, 215 Alligny-en-Morvan, 106, 108–9, 117–19 Andrews, Richard, 64 Annales journal, 10, 12, 272 Annales movement/tradition, 13, 25–28, 30, 33, 37–39 anthropology, and historical scholarship, 28, 31–35, 48, 274, 277 Appleby, Joyce, 25 Ascoli, Peter, 213, 269 authority, patriarchal/family and royal/ state (Hanley), 43

B

Babelon, Jean-­Pierre, 188 Balzac, Louis Guez de, 241, 242, 254 Barclay, John, 253–54 Bardin, Pierre, Le Lycée, 241 Barnavi, Élie, 6n8, 87, 267–68 Barthas, Jérémie, 275 Bazin, Jacques, 231–32 Beam, Sara, 14, 275 Béguin, Katia, 27n9 Beik, William, 271

Benedict, Philip, 16–17, 192, 213, 270 Bennini, Martine, 277 Berelowitch, André, 261n1, 269 Bergin, Joseph, 271 Berlanstein, Lenard, 52 Bernstein, Hilary, 15–16, 275 Bérulle, Pierre de, 219, 222 Bien, David, 270 Blanquie, Christophe, 272, 275–76 Blaufarb, Rafe, 55, 270 Bloch, Marc, 2, 26–27 Bluche, François, 26–27 Boislisle, Arthur de, 215–16 Boltanski, Luc, 271 Boone, Marc, 273 Bordeaux, and judicial torture, 61–82 Bottin, Jacques, 271 Boulliau, Ismaël, 240, 242–43 Bourdieu, Pierre, 45 Bourges, histories of, 139–54 Brackett, John, 66 Braudel, Fernand, 31 Breen, Michael, 13–14, 275 Brisson, Barnabé, 34, 229, 241 Brown, E. A. R. (Peggy), 270 Bulst, Neithard, 271, 273 Burguière, André, 30n20, 268

C

Calvin, John, 162, 167, 169 case studies, 12, 15, 93–96, 108–14, 220 Cassan, Michel, 269, 277 Catholic League. See Holy League (1585–94) Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), 240, 269–73

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306 a Index Certeau, Michel de, 264 Cerutti, Simona, 271 Chabot, Pierre, 173–74, 178 Champeaud, Grégory, 77 Champollion-­Figeac, Jacques-­Joseph, 218n23 Chapelain, Jean, 241, 254 Chartier, Roger, 28n15, 264 Chatelain, Claire, 276–77 Chaumeau, Jean, Histoire de Berry, 149 Chaunu, Pierre, 268 Chaussinand-­Nogaret, Guy, 27n9, 279n58 Chenu, Jean, 139–44, 148–50, 154 Christin, Olivier, 160 Church, William, 270 Clausonne, Guillume Rogues, sieur de, 178–79 Claverie, Élizabeth, 272 clergy, exempt from taxation, 130n80 Colbert, Jean-­Baptiste, 27, 29, 277 Collins, James, 15–16, 270 Colonial Exposition (Vincennes), 32 Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (CTHS), 215 communitarianism, and the Fronde, 10–11 Constant, Jean-­Marie, 268 corporative Catholicism, 275 Cosandey, Fanny, 9, 88, 275, 276, 287 Coste, Laurent, 61n, 77 crime/criminal justice burglaries, 200n56 and judicial torture, 61–82 key studies for, 42n1 and poverty, 200 Critchlow, Mark, 18, 218 Croq, Laurence, 256, 275, 277–78 Crouzet, Denis, 27n8, 267–68, 271 cultural history analyses of the Fronde, 10 defined by Wars of Religion, 245–50 by Dewald, 13n26, 261n3 of Dupuy family, 240–56 and judicial history, 47, 56

D

Daubresse, Sylvie, 51 Daussy, Hugues, 165 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 20, 43, 267

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Declareuil, Joseph, 36, 39 Demonet, Michel, 265 Descimon, Henri, 262 Descimon, Robert and Annales scholarship, 28–39, 266, 272 approach to history, 3–12, 28–39, 136–39, 153, 184, 261, 266, 272–75 and corporative Catholicism, 8, 275 education of, 261–63 on the French state, 4–5, 8–9, 272–73 on the Holy League 5, 7–9, 28–30, 33–34, 61, 87, 186, 203, 212 on Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 8–9, 238– 39, 241, 244–45, 247, 250, 254–55 and legal history, 46–50, 62, 274 on the nobility of the robe, 4–5, 47, 107–8, 239 on Paris city government, 134–39, 263, 265–66 Qui étaient les Seize?, 1–2, 7, 28–29, 87–89, 136, 158, 186, 233, 234, 267 scholarly networks, 263–79 seminar, 272, 275, 277–79 on urban elites, 4–5, 8–10, 46–50, 61–62, 78, 134–39, 238 use of notarial records, 3, 89, 212–13, 223, 231n56, 271 De Smet, Ingrid A. R., 251–52, 255 de Thou, Jacques-­Auguste, 8–9, 18, 237– 38, 244, 249, 251, 252–53, 254–55 Dewald, Jonathan, 2, 12–13, 261n3, 264n9, 270 d’Hozier, Charles, 107 Diefendorf, Barbara, 18, 270 Dijon, 89–90, 92, 108–14 Dolan, Claire, 50, 52–53, 271 Donato, Francesco Di, 275 Duféy, Pierre, 213–14 Duma, Jean, 271 Dupront, Alphonse, 268 Dupuy brothers, 240, 242–43, 249, 250–52, 253–56 Dupuy cabinet, 240–43, 246, 249, 252 Dupuy, Jacques, 18–19, 242 Dupuy, Pierre, 9n17, 18–19, 243–44 Durkheim, Émile, 261 du Vaire, Guillaume, 241 Dyonet, Nicole, 271

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Index

E

École des chartes, 214–16 École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), 25, 27, 218, 264, 267, 270, 275 elites and Annales school, 26–27 Descimon’s focus on, 1–12, 61, 194 and Dijon, 88–103 and ethnology of complex societies, 35 and familial strategies, 136–54 interplay with legal authority, 45–47, 55 and literacy, 108–14 and poor relief, 185–204 and social distance, 240–52 Elyada, Ouzi (Itsikowicz), 268 ethnology, and history, 35 European Science Foundation, 273

F

family analyses and anthropological notion of house, 277 and municipal office holding, 136–37 and notarial sources, 223n37, 227n37 and taxation, 124–31 of Toulouse officials, 79n35 family-­state compact, 9–10, 43, 49–52 family strategies, 67, 120–21, 125–26 famine, war, and plague, 194–204 Faret, Nicolas, L’ honnête homme . . . , 241 Farr, James, 45 Fauchois, Yann, 261n1, 268 Febvre, Lucien, 26, 30–31, 32n27, 33, 37–38 Fogel, Michèle, 271 Foisil, Madeleine, 268 Fornerod, Nicolas, 158n, 160 Forster, Robert, 26, 270 Francourt, Gervais Barbier, seigneu de, 163, 172–73, 177 the Fronde, social analyses of, 10–11, 34, 269 Fumaroli, Marc, 240, 251 Furet, François, 268, 268n24, 272

SocialRelations-Diefendorf.indb 307

b 307

G

Galey, Jean-­Claude, 271 Gallicanism, and the Dupuy cabinet, 237–40 Garrioch, David, 275 Gassendi, Pierre, 249 gender, re-­envisioning of, 44, 49–50, 276 genealogies. See also under research resources critical approach to, 4 and elites, 35 and historiography, 35–36, 139–40, 279 of Rozée family, 223n37, 227n37, 226–28 and social history, 4, 35–36, 139–40, 279 Genet, Jean-­Philippe, 273 Gerber, Matthew, 45 Giesey, Ralph, 272, 276 Goubert, Pierre, 31, 31n24, 33, 261n1, 262–63, 265n13 Goulart, Simon, 229n50, 233 governance, research methods/resources for, 106, 129–30, 136–38 Greengrass, Mark, 18, 218, 271 Grimmer, Claude, 268 Guerreau, Alain, 271 Guerreau, Anita, 271 Guery, Alain, 270, 272–73, 275 Guizot, François, 214–15 Gurvil, Clément, 277–78

H

Haddad, Élie, 107, 274–75, 277 Hamdi, Safia, 277–78 Hanley, Sarah, 9–10, 42–44, 49–50, 273 Hardwick, Julie, 52–54 Hauser, Henri, 36, 39 Hayhoe, Jeremy, 51, 53 health care facilities, 186, 189–91 Henri II, 76–77, 190, 246, 273 Henri III, 5–6, 145, 195–97 Henri IV, 5, 9–10, 29, 95, 197–99, 201, 234 Hildesheimer, Françoise, 272 historical method Annales tradition, 25–39, 266 ceremonialist school, 276

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308 a Index historical method, continued and microhistory, 129–30 of Richet, 266–67 See also Descimon, Robert historiography. See also social history; sociopolitical history agricultural revolution, 278 and anachronism, 30 autobiographical writing, 261 case studies as interpreters of social groups, 12, 15, 93–96, 108–14, 220 of Catholic League, 212 conception of charity by Parisian priests, 277–78 and the crisis of history theme, 37 Descimon’s early interests in, 261–62, 270 of devolution of inheritances, 279 and ethnology, 35 family practices and social change, 200–221, 276–77 family/state compact concept, 9–10 and genealogy, 4, 35–36, 139–40, 224–26, 279 and genesis of the modern state, 272 and history of law, 47 and hypotheses, 228nn41–42 of ideas and law, 274 intellectual resources for (See research resources) and iségoria (equality of speech), 264 of law, state, society, 13 and mercers’ corporation, 278 and personal anecdotes, 234–35 and polemic, 223 and political history writing, 87 of political ideas, 274 reconciling history/history of law disciplines, 47–48 and social history approaches, 13, 278 and societal progress, 37–38 and urban history, 136–37 and venality of office, 10, 273 of Wars of Religion, 180–81 Hoffman, Philip, 269–70 Holt, Mack, 14–16, 275 Holy League (1585–94) and absolutism, 29

SocialRelations-Diefendorf.indb 308

Descimon’s study of, 7–9, 61, 87 de Thou’s view of, 8–9 as historical problem, 6–7, 9, 218, 266 impacts of, 11, 17–18 manuscript history, 215–35 and Paris Oratory, 219 revolt and defeat by Henri IV, 5–6 as sociopolitical problem, 266 wars of, and destitute refugees, 194–95 Hoock, Jochen, 271 Hôtel de Ville, 11, 88, 265 Hotman, Daniel, and family, 220 Houllemare, Marie, 50–51 humanism of the Dupuys, 240–43 on leisure, 253 and poor relief, 184–85, 189 Hunt, Lynn, 25

J

Jacob, Margaret, 25 Jacquart, Jean, 198, 264 Jeannin, Pierre, 263–64, 271 Jouanna, Arlette, 30 Jouhaud, Christian, 27n9, 239, 252, 265, 267–69 judicial torture, 61–82 Julia, Dominique, 264 jurade (city council) of Bordeaux, 62, 67–68, 73

K

Kaiser, Colin, 269 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 272–73 Kaplan, Steven, 270 Kelley, Donald, 270 Kettering, Sharon, 43 Kingdon, Robert M., 160 kinship manipulation, 4, 12, 15, 277 Klapisch, Christiane, 275 Knecht, Robert, 271 Koposov, Nikolay, 271 Kuehn, Thomas, 45

L

Labbé, Philippe, 151 Labrousse, C. E., 261n1

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Index La Mothe le Vayer, François de, 240, 242, 249–51 La Roche-­F lavin, Bernard de, 73 La Thaumassière, Gaspard Thaumas de, Histoire de Berry, 143, 149 Laval, Antoine de, De loysir et comme on le peut employer honnestement, 237–38, 246, 253 the League. See Holy League (1585–94) Lebigre, Arlette, 43 Lee, Sung-­Jae, 277 legal systems/structures. See also social history assumptions challenged, 65–66 as basis for societal relationships, 44 Châtelet of Paris, 46, 187 in Dijon, 89–90, 92, 108–14 and family/state compact, 43 and judicial torture, 61–82 jurade (city council) of Bordeaux, 62, 68, 73 and law courts, 44–45 manipulated by elites, 114–15 in Paris, 187 right to appeal, 73 as semi-­autonomous social field, 45–46 and sentencing practices, 66–67, 73–74 sociocultural study of, 52–56 unanswered questions about, 55–56 and venality, 48 Le Mao, Caroline, 51–52, 61n Lenormant, Pierre, 231–32 Lepetit, Bernard, 271 Le Roy, Etienne, 44 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 32–33, 261n1, 262 l’Estoile, Pierre de, 198–200, 215, 218 Leuwers, Hervé, 52 Lévi-­Strauss, Claude, 31, 33n31, 35 Lévy-­Bruhl, Lucien, 30 l’Hospital, Michel de, speeches of, 213 Lilti, Antoine, 27n9 Lipsius, Justus, 247, 254–55 literacy, 108–14, 130–31 literary genres/styles, 242, 244 literary groups, 245–48 Louis XIV, establishes economic police, 278

SocialRelations-Diefendorf.indb 309

b 309

Loyseau, Charles, 3n1, 55, 274, 274n41 Luhmann, Niklas, 44 Lüttenberg, Thomas, 271 Lyon-­Caen, Nicolas, 275, 277–78

M

Maimbourg, Louis, 218 Major, J. Russell, 270 Marraud, Mathieu, 275, 277–79 Mauclair, Fabrice, 51, 53, 55 Maurel, Christian, 275 Mauss, Marcel, 31, 261 Merlin-­Kajman, Hélène, 272 Mettam, Roger, 269n30 Meuvret, Jean, 263–64 Meyer, Jean, 26–27 Michelet, Jules, 26 Miles, Élodie, 275 Montaigne, Michel de, 73 Montazel, Laurence, 65 Moore, Sally Falk, 45 Mottier, Cédric, 275 Mousnier, Roland, 26–27, 30, 265n13, 268, 274n41

N

Nagle, Jean, 269 Nassiet, Michel, 271 Naudé, Gabriel, 248 Nicolas, Jean, 269, 273 nobility Descimon’s study of, 46–47, 239–40 as historical concept, 30, 34, 107 of the robe, and cultural imitation, 8–9 second tier concept of, 268 Nora, Pierre, 261

O

Olivier-­Martin, François, 274 Oratory, and Holy League manuscript history, 219–22 Otis-­Cour, Leah, 65–66

P

Paris city government, 134–39, 144n27, 187 elites, 1–2, 7–9, 18–19, 29, 49–50, 185–86, 206, 245, 248–50, 256

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310 a Index Paris, continued Fronde in, 10–11, 34 Grand Bureau des Pauvres, 187–91, 192–94, 206, 208 historical writing on, 264, 265–66, 277–79 Holy League in, 5–8, 17, 18, 28–29, 34, 61, 196–98, 201–3 Hôpital de la Trinité, 189, 191 legal professions in, 48–49 literary and intellectual landscape, 245–46, 248 Pauvres enfermés 205–207 Petites Maisons, 190–91 poor relief in 184–211 siege of 1590, 197, 230 taxes, 193–94, 195–97, 198, 199–200, 202, 204–5 Paris League. See Holy League (1585–94) Parker, David, 42–44, 46, 50, 53–54, 271 Parlement of Bordeaux, asserts self-­ superiority, 68 Păun, Răducu Gabriel, 276 Peleus, Julien, 233 Penzi, Marco, 18, 218, 275 Piant, Hervé, 51, 53 Pintard, René, Le libertinage érudit, 251 Pippidi, Andrei, 276 political history of the monarchy, 273 refining definitions of, 88, 102–3 resources for, 87–88 (See also research resources) and Richet’s seminar, 267–68 and social history, 88, 101 sociocultural dimension of, 88 symbiosis with cultural history, 184 and use/interpretation of sources, 14–15 and venality of office, 273, 278 politics, as negotiations, 102–3 Poncet, Olivier, 275 poor relief, 184–200, 197n41, 204–9 population studies, of a single street, 95–96 Postel-­V inay, Gilles, 270 Prak, Maarten, 273 Protestant party, of Wars of Religion, 158

SocialRelations-Diefendorf.indb 310

R

Ramsey, Ann W., 274–75 Ranum, Orest, 20–21, 26, 30, 270–71 Rao, Anna-­Maria, 273 Raynssant, Sébastien, 219 Reformed churches, deputies of, 158–60, 166–80 refugees, 190–91, 194–204 Reinhard, Wolfgang, 271, 273 religion, as dimension of Richet’s seminar, 267–68 Republic of Letters, 239, 251, 252, 255, 256 research resources armillaries, 151–52 baptismal records, 95, 100–101, 109 biographical material, 174–80 charitable organization records, 206–8 Châtelet archives, 187, 193 church/parish/synod records, 124–25, 127n68, 129, 159–60, 162–64, 170–80 circular letters, 168–69, 172–73 city records, 195–96, 199–200 confidential records, 202 consistory records, 168–69, 172–80 correspondence, 162, 167–69, 172–80, 255–56 for Dupuy cabinet, 241n7 ecclesiastical histories, 171–72 edicts, 165–66, 176 election records, 134–39, 141, 144–45 Gallica server, 265n13 genealogies/family histories, 35–36, 98–99, 107, 116, 127, 127n68, 139–40, 153–54 incomplete records, 113–14, 217 institutional records, 135–36 inventory of destroyed archives, 191–92 Journal d’Héroard, 268 judicial case records, 65–67 letters patent, 143–44, 148, 161–62, 186n6, 219 manuscript history of SHF, 217 manuscripts, 215–16, 219, 229 marginalia, 141–42, 146–50, 146n32, 147n33, 152–53, 153n55

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Index municipal government documents, 88, 108–14, 139–40, 142–43, 145, 150–51 nineteenth-­century versions of sources, 213 notarial contracts/records, 212, 274–75; used by Benedict, 160, 170–71; Collins, 114–17, 124; Descimon, 46–49, 88–91, 274–75; Greengrass, 212; Holt, 14–16, 94–95 notebooks, 229 online sources, 131n82 parlement records, 66, 79, 187, 201, 205 personal and business transactions, 89–94, 107, 167 personal anecdotes, 229nn49–50, 230–35 and personal biases, 221–22 petitions to the king, 163–64, 163n13, 166–74 printed speeches, 213–14 public assistance records, 184–91 of Registres de déliberations du Bureau de la Ville de Paris, 265–66 of representatives to Hôtel de Ville, 88, 265 torture interrogation records, 71–72, 74–75 trial records, 68–69 unpublished city council minutes, 203 use/analysis of: comparative, 150n42; for constructing family tree, 226n; and Descimon’s generosity, 20; evaluation of, 219, 221–22, 232–33; inference from contextual evidence, 169n32; for political history, 14–15, 87–88; for reconstructing family trees, 223, 227–28; by Richet and disciples, 265–66, 364; for study of poor relief, 185–86; as unreliable, 213–14; for urban/civic history, 16; value of, 217–18 research subject suggestions Rozée’s manuscript, 233–34 venality of office, 273 Revel, Jacques, 37 Richet, Denis, 16–17, 20, 89, 261–68, 265n12, 272, 276

SocialRelations-Diefendorf.indb 311

b 311

La France moderne, 51 L’Esprit des institutions, 267 Richet/Descimon seminar, 20, 27, 270 Rigault, Nicolas, 9n17, 243–44 Roche, Daniel, 263–64 Rochefort, Thomas de, 201–4 Roelker, Nancy, 270–71 Romier, Lucien, 160–61 Roussel, Bernard, 159n1 Rozée, Alexandre, and history of a ms., 222–23, 227 Rozée family, 218–19, 222–23, 223n37, 227n37 Rozée, Pierre, 226n, 227–28, 234–35 Ruiz Ibáñez, José Javier, 275

S

Sainte Union. See Holy League (1585–94) Saint-­Jacob, Pierre de, 262 Salmon, John H. M., 213, 270 Schalk, Ellery, 268 Schnapper, Bernard, 64, 75 Schneider, Robert, 18–19, 275 Schneider, Zoë, 51, 53 scholarly relationships, 19–20, 272 Scorbiac, Guichard de, 179–80 Séguier, Antoine, 202–3, 207 Senault, Pierre, 220, 230–31 Serres, Jean de, 233 Servanton, Mathieu, 61n, 80n81 social history and Annales tradition, 25–28 assumptions of power, 33–35 Descimon’s shaping of, 38–39 of French law (Descimon), 47–56 and genealogies, 4, 35–36, 139–40, 279 and legal systems, 36 as microhistory, 271 of political authority, 272 and Richet’s seminar, 267–68 roles of notaries and solicitors, 48–49 and social power, 33 and strands of doubt, 37–38 symbiosis with political history, 184 transformation of Épreuves de noblesse, 48 and venality, 48 social practices, redefined, 107

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312 a Index social relations in case study, 95–96 clash of values, 203–4 and cultural factors, 108 of Dupuy family, 240–52, 254–55 and evolution of poor relief, 208–9 and family records, 127–28 and financial contracts, 94–95 found in election records, 134–39 and institutional forms, 138–39 and literacy, 130–31 and political history, 88, 101–2 and research resources, 117–31, 136–37 social services, 185–86, 189–91. See also poor relief Société de l’histoire de France (SHF), 214–15 Society for French Historical Studies, 21, 270–71 sociocultural transformation, of legal system, 51–52 sociology, and historical scholarship, 48 sociopolitical history Breen’s view of, 13–14 Descimon’s approach to, 3 evolution of, 273 of the Holy League, 7–9, 61, 87, 266–67 of judicial torture, 62–82 of monarchical state, 4–5 and religious culture, 266–67 second-­tier nobility concept, 268 Soman, Alfred, 64, 74, 270 the Sorbonne, historical scholarship of, 13, 26–27, 38 Spifame, Raoul (1500–1563), 108, 271 Stoianovich, Traian, 26 structure, as historical language, 29–30, 31n24

T

Taffin, Jean, 233 Takazawa, Norie, 275 Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon, Historiettes, 49 taxation confidential records of, 201–2 and end of ancien régime, 15 and poor relief, 193–94, 204–5

SocialRelations-Diefendorf.indb 312

Teresa of Ávila, 222 Thiersault, Pierre, 219–20 Thompson, E. P., 46 Tuncq, Éric, 275

U

Uvarov, Pavel, 271

V

Valois, Charles, 216–19 Valois, Noël, 216 venality and absolutism, 10 as customary and legal, 48 and legal systems/structures, 45–46, 48, 66 and Parisian bureau de ville, 138 privatization of, 49 resisted in Bordeaux, 75 Véniel, Béatrice, 266 Vérité, Isabelle, 263n5 Vernant, Jean-­Pierre, 262 Vidal-­Naquet, Pierre, 262 Vilar, Pierre, 262 violence, as sociopolitical domination, 34–35

W

Waele, Michel de, 271 war, and famine/plague, 194–204 Wars of Religion, scholarly interpretations of, 4–7, 158, 160, 180–81, 274 Wars of the Holy League, and destitute refugees, 194–95 women allowed to sign documents, 121 and literacy, 108, 130 resident nobles, 119 and venal office holding, 48 Woronoff, Denis, 262

Y

Yardeni, Myriam, 268–69

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