Prior to the Enlightenment, there was no difference between reason and religion. Beginning in the 18th century, writers began to use the concept of reason to discredit Christian dogma, drawing the difference between faith and rationality. the point Becker tries to make is that the opinions of the 18th century writers are no more rational or dogmatic than those of the 13th century, because the context of opinion and fact were greatly different. He initially argues that the Philosophes seem to have more in common with their medieval predecessors, who still believed in the unseen and unmovable forces of nature, in addition to the overseeing eye of the Deity. Becker calls them out for being too naive about their surroundings and the way that the universe worked. He almost paints a picture where they replaced the dogmas of Christianity with something more akin to their own beliefs, albeit in a different structure.
\nOne of the most clear ways that this trend was instituted was the concept of humanite, whereby the philosophers were trying to reformulate Christian virtues into something more rational. Yet, still these men were averse to emotion and believed in the greater good, in an intrinsic nature of universal benefit. This was probably the case as many of the philosophers were too accustomed to the society of rank and order, and to throw out this system would have meant that the old notions of place and providence would have been thrown into question. Becker claims that the only thing that the philosophes were truly interested in was taking the old divine authority and moving it down to earth, to something that they could reason with. The concept of Nature and Natural Law was what replaced the old Christian dogmas, and was founded upon the scientific principles of physics - where everything works together seamlessly and perfectly.
\nAtheism was not even considered by these men, as it would have lead them to an insecurity in the goodness of men, and the foundation for their system of morality. Not abandonding the old system entirely, the philosophers set out to create a new knowledge and history that was based on their own objective truth, instead of that of the Church. This new history was one that was seeking to discover the humanity in a new way that the Chrurch did not permit. Thus the philosophes did not practice what they intended to: which was a more subjective history basedon their own morality, instead of the objective truth seeking that the called for in their own works. Their intention in history was to separate the naturally good from the naturally bad, but to do this, they had to apply their own subjective morality on all of the subjects they were studying.
\nTo replace the old Christian history, they switched the goal of salvation with that of the golden age of antiquity in Rome and Greece.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-02T21:42:38Z", "dateModified": "2015-08-27T20:14:26Z" } }, { "key": "A3GW5DP3", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/A3GW5DP3", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/A3GW5DP3", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/TJJWWUI5", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "A3GW5DP3", "version": 1, "parentItem": "TJJWWUI5", "itemType": "note", "note": "Luria is interested in the social and mental constructs of religious coexistence in France during the seventeenth century. Following the edict of Nantes, and especially after the death of Henri IV, Catholics and Protestants lived different types of tense coexistence. Luria outlines three different modes of coexistence that took place, each the product of varying political and social pressures. True religious coexistence, or blurring as he calls it, only takes place when there are few if none outside political pressures. It involves communal and familial ties trumping those of confessional identity. The primary example for this mode he uses is the buying of the dead of both confessions together in the same graveyard, symbolizing how families and the larger social dientity of being members of the same comunity could be more important of the mode of worship. The second form of coexistence is that of separate confessional communities, but still limited toleration. This meant that the dead were buried separately and that each group had their own locales where worship could take place. This mode of coexistence relied upon a limited mutual respect for the other confession and was the primary mode of interaction for most communities in France during this century. The last mode of coexistence was one where outside political forces pressured at the local level to create homogenous, Catholic communities. Local and national magistrates often were in favor of this, as it would in turn create more uniform and easily governable communities. By the end of the century, this was more commonplace and after 1685 it was law.
\nLuria proves his thesis by examining the communities in Poitou, which many of the cities had a significant enough Protestant population following the Wars of Religion, that it made for a good case study into the coexistence of both religious confessions. During the reign of Henri IV and following his death, many of the confesional conflcits were directly related to the Edict of Nantes, both its official and secret clauses. These legalistic issues were present in both sides, as they bickered over where they could each worship publically, and who had the favor of the local magistrates. These conflicts were unique to each city, as the local government interpreted and enfoced the Edict in their own unique way. Luria does not highlight any interaction that truely fits into his first model of coexistence, but rather the two confessions operated in the terms of the Edict concerning rights to worship, even through each side claimed other rights or limitations for their opponent.
\nIt was also during the seventeenth century that the state became increasingly linked with confessionalization- not sacralization. This meant that the king desired for his subjects to be good and obedient Catholics. Yet at the same time, it meant that the figure of the king became less sacred. Think is strongly linked to the transformation of the way that Catholic Christianity was internalized by its adherents. It became increasingly a more personalized faith, one that was beginning to be understood by the impact that the believer has on their surroundings. This implied an intrusion into the private worship of the Protestants, although they were legally protected by the Edict. When under pressure by Catholic missionaries, powerful Protestants converted which iplied that the protection they provided was absent. The intense pressuring of the Capuchins menat that in times where peaceful coexistence and integration may have existed, upheaval and the cementing of confessional borders was actually taking place. These kinds of upheaval included public debates between the Capuchins and Protestant ministers, wihch may have had an impact on conversions, but certainly threw the legitimacy of the Protestant faith into question. Another form of boundary formation was the debate over the legitimacy over land and places of worship.
\nWhere Luria challenges the traditional understanding of confessional separation is his investigation into burial locations in Poitou. The burial of both Catholics and Protesants in the same, sacred space in the cities clearly can be labeled as the first mode of interaction, or the blurring between communities. What this eventually lead to was a more official stance along the lines of the second mode, where each confession had their own burial grounds. By the end of the century, official Church policy dictated that the boundaries be so separate that the Catholics could start to reclaim the entire community for itself, effectively excluding the Huguenots from all forms of public life and the burial of their dead. Many of the controversies surrounding burials and funerals are unique to France, where the Huguenots ignored Calvin's desire to ignore the traditionas of sacred burials and funary marches and feasts. This could be interpreted as the Huguenot's ties to the community, rather than to that of their religion. This is why Luria chooses to focus on these highly symbolic events as a way that Catholics and Protestants had a shared experience in this period.
\nWithin distinct families, the trends of confessional boundaries are far more difficult to piece together. Luria does his best, particualrly within noble families, to understand how marriages could be legal and profitable for each partner, if they did not share a common religious identity. What he discovered was that often peace and understanding was greatly influenced by the religion of the wife. It was her character that was seen simultaneouly as weak and as spiritually strong. This contradiction was used as social ammuntition against the larger families, as wives were converted to one faith or the other, honor and pride followed with the religion she converted to. Even in the case of mixed confessional marriages, social communication was often difficult, if not impossible. Catholics often viewed mixed marraiges with ambivalence, understanding the Protestant to be a relapsed Christian, while the Huguenots saw the mixed marriages as abominations often held together for social advantages.
\nPerhaps one of the most important ways to understand the boundaries between the confessional communities is through the idealized conceptions of conversion. Conversion is one of the central themes of Luria's work, evne though it is rarely a focal point. He tries to understand conversion as a delineating factor in the confessional boundaries being constructed throughout the seventeenth century, primarily in the abstract, idealized methods that authors and polemicists encouraged. COnversion was often seen as an intensely personal process by which the convert recognized the rigid truths of their new faith. While this may have been the case in terms of the extant literature, it is entirely possible that converts did so to give in to temporary social pressures. It was rather easy for converts to return to their old faith, so long as they recognized their error. In this manner, Luria is pointing out that there was a blurred boundary in terms of conversions, as it was quite easy for one to switch between confessions with little trouble.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-10-12T17:02:49Z", "dateModified": "2012-05-24T18:43:05Z" } }, { "key": "5E85VTSU", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/5E85VTSU", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/5E85VTSU", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/V3HZB62Q", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "5E85VTSU", "version": 1, "parentItem": "V3HZB62Q", "itemType": "note", "note": "By the eighteenth century, the economy had expanded to the point where ordinary people would begin to purchase luxury goods and other products that were not required by basic need. It was at this time that many writers in the period began to justify luxury goods, and to classify the different types of goods that were being generated. The circular reasoning of the writers helped not only to justify the existence of these new goods, but also to encourage further purchasing of them by not just the wealthy. He extrapolates the consumer revolution to greater social trends that would eventually become political at the time of the Revolution.
\nThe contemporary debate was over whether or not the new luxury goods were excessive or not, especially between the moralists of the period and the growing group of apologists. The traditional understanding about luxury, especially during the period of Louis XIV was rapidly changing to something that was easily accessible to a greater portion of the population. The luxury apologists could be understood as liberators from the cultural repression of the moralists and the previous centuries. This was greatly linked to the concept of pursuing happiness, which had not been even considered before. Kwass makes these conclusions through the writings of George Marie Butel-Dumont, who was the greatest apologist for the growing luxury trade, who wrote in the 1770's. What made his writings so revolutionary in the cultural realm was that he saw little differentiation between upper-class and lower-class luxury gods: an egalitarian so to speak. This system could never be put into place as the economy would be self-limiting by who could buy certain luxury goods, leaving the lower-classes to only be able to purchase what they could afford,as Dumont did not recognize most of the population when he wrote. The other unique part about Dumont's consumer philosophy is that he, in true Enlightement fashion, felt that there would be a natural check to the desires of the population for luxury goods. He felt that luxury should be about this pursuit of happiness, and not about conspicuous consumption.
\nThe most revolutionary aspect of Dumont's views on luxury was that it reconfigured the social order, where necessity was so basic that anyone could achieve it and that luxury then occupied the rest of the scope of purchases for people of all classes. This would imply that luxury was available to all people, thus eliminating many of the distinctions between social classes and destroying the old regime social order. While this may seem to be the case Dumont was no including the notion that people still had to be able to afford these luxury gods, of which most of the population could not.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-06T03:46:55Z", "dateModified": "2012-05-24T14:57:05Z" } }, { "key": "MCI64FVH", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/MCI64FVH", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/MCI64FVH", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/VNZZD8ZN", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "MCI64FVH", "version": 1, "parentItem": "VNZZD8ZN", "itemType": "note", "note": "This work fits in before the Parrott and Lynn, in discussing how the Military Revolution did not fully take hold in France during the 16th century, and that the reason that no single side of the Wars of Religion could win was due to the inability to secure an advantage through the new advances. Since the crown could not score a definitive victory over the rebelling Huguenots, the entire series of wars continued and the revenue raising infrastructure of the king collapsed. The huguenots were able to prolong the wars due to their own financial security, and from foreign assistance from other Protestant nations. What occurred was a stalemate due to the increasing expenses of waging modern warfare, while both sides were unable to completely mobilize over the course of almost 40 years.
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\nThe history of the Annales School is such that the traditional establishment of the historical was simultaneously the enemy and the rebel. The concept of long-term social effects became so central to historical literature, especially in France, that the Annales became monolithic. It was only after its period of dominance ended in the 1970's, that it was no longer the central historiographical methodology. The Annales is perhaps the most influential historical joural in terms of illustrating the interaction between history and the social sciences: that using interdisciplinary methods could be fruitful to historical investigation. Burke divides the Annales school up into three generations, each with its own distinctive methodological approach to the concepts of society and social change.
\nBoth of the founders of the Annales school, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre took a problem-oriented approach to history focusing on the social factors of change in history, as opposed to the political discourse that was dominant in the 19th century. They were initially concerned with the development of mentalites, which were the popular beliefs and thoughts that were generally taken for granted in political histories. Mentalites also were one of the first historical methodologies to utilize other disciplines, particularly psychology. Bloch's Royal Touch was particularly revolutionary as it investigated the development of these ideas over a long period of time, and did so across national boundaries. Febvre was less sociological than Bloch, and focused on individuals as well as mentalites. This was typified in Febvre's work discussing Rablais, attacking the traditional, narrow-minded historians who treated Rablais's works as if they were contemporary to modern day. Febvre placed Rablais into the proper mental context of the sixteenth century, explaining how he fit into the humanist Christian tradition. After WWII, Bloch had died and Febvre set out to try to establish the methodologies the pair had pioneered into a journal and school of thought. After establishing the Annales school, Febvre passed the management and methodlogical leadership to Fernand Braudel.
\nBraudel's The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II is the most prominent study in this second age of the Annales school. It takes Bloch's notion of mentalites and long term societal factors and extends them to environmental and economic factors. He attributes this methodology to the fact that although human-influenced events are the most interesting to audience, he felt that they were the most superficial especially when compared to the longue duree. This type of methodology was not without its detractors, as some saw Braudel's study as too determinalistic concerning envorinmental factors. Yet overall, Bruadel's greatest contribution to the Annales was his structuralist approach combined with the longue duree, whereby long term factors itneracted with economic, social and political factors to create a type of \"total History\". Braudel's focus on long-term factors was also receptive to a growing field of historical analysis: quantitative history. This notion of quantitative analysis was throroughly spread through social history, as the hsitorians Goubert and Labrousse spent their time understanidng how different social classes fared in regions and nations, as opposed to studying the welfare of a person or nation. These structural investigations into the political, enviornmental and social structures were characterisitic of the second generation that Burke describes.
\nBuke describes the last generation of the Annales as being intellectually fragmented in a manner that had had not happened in the previous 50 years, when the journal and school of thought was guided by the dominant methodologies of Febvre or Braudel. It is in this generation that the methodology of cultural studies came to the forefront. This menat a shift back to what Bloch had investigated in The Royal Touch, with a history of mentalites over the long term. This in turn, became a trend towards studying ideologies and historical anthropology, as shown in the works of Duby, Chaunu, Le Goff, Chartier and Le Roy Ladurie. On a different note, the work of Foucault has reintroduced the idea of politics into the Annales, where their place is on a more localized level: concerning the interpersonal and regional politics which play out over the long-term. The greatest reaction to the economic and enviornmental determinalism of Braudel is a return to the narrative form, especially considering the turn towards micropolitics and anthropological studies.
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Hoffman intends to reassess the French agricultural economy in terms of a cross-disciplinary investigation into how the entire nation was able to function drawing its wealth from an imperfect system. This involves looking not only at economic principles that can be applied to modern economies, but also to integrate social, cultural and anthropological interpretations to better understand the intangibles that influenced the efficiency and everyday functioning of the French agricultural economy. What he sets out to prove is that the premodern French economy functioned much the same as modern capitalist economies in the manner that those taking part in it were still participating out of self-interest and did everything they could to improve their economic and social standing. The economy of Old Regime France was not necessarily stagnent, but was actually not entirely different from post-Revolutionary systems.
\nHoffman describes the agricultural economy of the Old Regime as being quite active, both in terms of trade and the interaction between those who worked and owned the land. Most farmers did not own their own land, and even fewer could farm what they needed to support their own lives after taxes and tithes were taken out. Thus, in order to make payments, a complex market system existed that allowed the farmers to keep up. This system consisted of creditors and debtors, landlords and tenants, masters and servants. Even though these systems were inherently unfair, each party had some agancy to achieve their desired end. The debtors could stop payments or the tenants could stop taking care of their rented property, damaging the wealth of those in control. This fragile system existed on a local level in the traditional French economy.
\nMuch like the rest of French society, even in the cities, honor was very important even to those in the lowest rungs of local society. The economy of honor kept many of the farmers and servants honest, as if this informal economy enforced the rules set out by the wealthy. These informal rules and enforcements did not hold for long-distance commerce, as both sides dealt dishonestly when distance was a factor. Dealing with middlemen and the dangers of sending one's entire livlihood off to be sold at a distance meant that most farmers were hesitant to have their product leave the local economy. He concludes that this hesitancy meant that the larger French economy was reluctant to grow in the same terms as the contemporary English one was. Hoffman argues that although many of the farmers in the countryside were reluctant to take part in what could be considered to be a modern economy, they were by no means backwards. They dealt with currency, set the value of their goods in a way that resembles the market demand. The limiting factor was this moral issue whereby many farmers were hesitant to risk losing their entire value, to the cunning of another. This meant that the people in the countryisde dealt with their economic partners in a very strategic method to maximize their profit.
\nHoffman also concludes that it is wrong to blame the peasant farmers for the stagnation in the economy, but rather to place blame on the wealthy landowners who used the complicated legal system of property rights to hinder agricultural consolidation and progress. In fact, large areas of France experienced great progress in agricultural production, but the growth was not necessarily uniform throughout the country. What he attributes to agricultural growth were the factors that influenced the rest of the economy: taxes, transportation and government involvement. Hoffman proves that true economic growth was possible in a society that has traditionally been understood to be backward and focused on maintaining the status quo of the wealthy.
\nlook at land prices, agricultural output, assume that the productivity can be reflected in land prices. There is some level of underlying value.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-05T13:54:02Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-28T12:47:01Z" } }, { "key": "6GKGW5NR", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/6GKGW5NR", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/6GKGW5NR", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/J9TRZJJF", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "6GKGW5NR", "version": 1, "parentItem": "J9TRZJJF", "itemType": "note", "note": "Maza is placing the causes celebres of the late 18th century in their proper context: they were the fodder that a rapacious public clamored for. Reading trial literature meant hat the entire population could be involved in a growing and prestigious class: that of the judicial elite. Yet at the same time, Maza argues that the language used in the trial literature can give a great insight into what public opinion was at the time about various political and social issues. What drew readers to these trial materials was their intense interest into the private lives of the people on trial: that this concept of the private life was only coming into focus as part of the public consciousness. These concerns were being formed and molded into the public consciousness, as the buying public was becoming more interested in the themes of love, family and personal life.
\nMaza's overarching thesis is that the causes celebres were the tool by which public opinion was established in a time when it was widely considered to be an abstract entity. She follows Habermas' theory that postulates that the birth of the Public Sphere was the result of a growing distinction between civil society and the state. Maza proves this through an in-depth examination of the shift in popular literature over the course of the 18th century. The theater, and the theatrical allegory that was dominant from the reign of Louis XIV and Louis XV was gradually replaced by the drame of the courtroom. The old symbols and allegories of royal power were replaced with the legal diction of a growing judicial culture that existed largely outside of the field of royal propaganda.
\nThis shift in the nature of public opinion can also be understood politically, as the elements of interest in the causes celebres illustrate a gradual change in attitudes towards governing and the role of the population in the government. This type of revisionism is intended to overthrow the idea of the bourgoisie being filled with the rhetoric of the Enlightenment, but replaces it with a more fluid model where political thought already began to change in the decades before the Revolution. The causes celebres were representative of a new public morality that underlined most of the major interest in the larger cases. Most of the cases involved wealthy aristocrats who were abusing this new concept of the public. This foundation of secular and public morality was one of the foundations upon which the Revolution was built. The legal nature of French society in the decades leading and after the Revolution meant that the interpretation of these moralities was the job of the legal class, who was no longer under the strict control of the parlements nor the king. The public opinion was dictated and managed by this new legal class, who acted as an intermediator between the people and the state.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-11-24T02:51:45Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-28T01:56:12Z" } }, { "key": "M2FSSPMR", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/M2FSSPMR", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/M2FSSPMR", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/79T57QRV", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "M2FSSPMR", "version": 1, "parentItem": "79T57QRV", "itemType": "note", "note": "Goodman is interested in how the Republic of Letters in Enlightenment France developed alongside of the existing absolutist state during the 18th century, and the role that women played in it’s functioning. The Enlightenment Republic of Letters differed from the older philosophical correspondence of the previous centuries, in the fact it was centered in the Parisian salons, which were often managed by elite women known as salonnieres. Due to the way the Republic was formed through these correspondences and meetings, the highest personal value was considered civility and politeness. This polite form of exchange was understood by the members of the Republic as the highest value and a mark of the greatest civilizations. This substitution of honor and pride for civility was the direct result of the women’s involvement facilitating the discussions, centering on the salons. Goodman describes the newly evolving philosophical ideas as the “reciprocal exchange of conversation among equals… [which was more important] than the hierarchy of the society of orders and the absolutist state.” (5)
\nGoodman tries to reconcile the values of the Republic of Letters with that of the increasingly intrusive police state of 18th century France, as their fundamental values were quite different. The emphasis on the salonnieres is the key to understanding how the society of the Republic of Letters was constructed, and how these values translated into the larger social and public spheres of France. The women of the salons were the ones who emphasized the importance of civility, but their position of influence was to be short lived as masculine ideals of female inferiority soon infiltrated the Republic. The role of women the source of virtue and civility was an ideal that came from 17th century France, particularly from the era of Louis XIV. Women, in their inherent weakness, were understood to have brought civilization to France as a result of their virtuous behavior that was later imitated by the men who controlled the nation. The centrality of women, in particular the salonnieres, to the polite and sociable discourse of the Republic of Letters is not to be underestimated. Women were understood to complete the coarse nature of men, and create a more perfect society. The salonnieres also played a key role in developing the ideals of the Enlightenment, as they maintained the rules of the civil and polite discourse that took place in the discussions in person, and through the literary correspondence and publication. Goodman illustrates how the virtues of women were understood and respected in the Republic of Letters as being superior to the intense rhetoric of the Jesuits or average bickering among men. The discussions that were held at the salons also served the purpose of acting as an equalizer for all those involved including men, as the women were the facilitators, the criteria for respect and prestige were quite different than that of the absolutist state.
\nBeyond the influence of the salon and the salonniere, Goodman places a great deal of emphasis on the greater societal implications of the polite sociability enforced in the salon. The salon also acted as a focal point for the literary culture of the French Republic of Letters, whereby correspondence was centered and Enlightenment works were published and purchased.. The widespread reading of the newsletters produced as part of the Republic of Letters helped to spread the notion of civility and the highlighted role of women to the rest of France and Europe. The opinions of the philosophers (in particular Rousseau early on) became disunited to the point where the polite conversation and civil discourse began to lose its highly valued role in the Republic of Letters. This shift in the fundamental workings of the Republic signaled the end of the preeminence of the salon, which was replaced with musees, which emphasized the highest value of fraternite in the philosophical world. Gone was the need for the virtue and civility that women were thought to provide, as it was replaced with the rationality and fraternity that became popular with the arrival of Freemasonry in France during the 1780’s. Goodman concludes that women were further excluded from the philosophical discourse, and the ideal of gender equality in a perfect society was not realized with the Revolution. She credits the women of the salons for instituting the discussions that created the Republic of Letters in the mid-18th century, and for facilitating the meetings that developed many of its most important philosophical ideas.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-14T03:34:35Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-27T02:11:50Z" } }, { "key": "VCFN2TJU", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/VCFN2TJU", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/VCFN2TJU", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/GITUB66A", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "VCFN2TJU", "version": 1, "parentItem": "GITUB66A", "itemType": "note", "note": "Darnton investigates how the illegal literary works of the 18th century can be understood as the foundation of the ideas that caused the French Revolution. The books that he investigates were deemed illegal by the absolutist state, whether it was for political, social or religious reasons. From this illicit literature, Darnton draws out themes that were hidden deep within the text pertaining to philosophy, liberty and the nature of the monarchy. His analysis of this body of illegal literature may only seem to only tell once side of the story: which is what ideas were deemed valuable by the readers, leaving out what the readers actually thought of these works. While the opinions of the readers are absent from the historical record, it is still possible to infer the popularity of a book from the resources, the sales figures and numbers of editions for each work. These figures help Darnton explain what the French literary consumer valued and how these intellectual choices are important to the foundations of the French Revolution.
\nDarnton justifies the use of the illegal literature to support his thesis by utilizing a close analysis of the correspondence found in the business records of the Societe Typographique de Neuchatel (STN), a Swiss publisher that supplied a majority of his resources for the study. By claiming that the records of the STN were representative of the entire illegal book trade in France he is able to extrapolate their correspondence and sales to the rest of the country where they didn’t conduct business. After setting the context of the illegal book trade arriving from Neuchatel in Switzerland, Darnton investigates the revolutionary implications of each type of illicit literature. Each genre he investigates; philosophical pornography, utopian social fantasy, and political tabloid literature each contain an anti-monarchical theme. These themes reject the dogma of the divine monarchy, and replace it with a rational and somewhat libertine form of thinking. The in-depth analysis of the three major illegal works of the period; Therese philosophe, L’an 2440, and Anecdotes sur Mme La Comtesse du Barry each describe an underground intellectual movement relating to philosophy, societal utopianism and political awareness. As stated above, each dealt with anti-monarchical or anti-Christian thought in its own way. The rejection of the power of the Church and the crown in this literature can be understood as representative of the popular dissatisfaction that existed before the Revolution. Although he makes the connection between the growing discontent of the people to the greater messages of the illegal literature, the question of reader reception still was unanswered.
\nIt is in the last section that Darnton’s argument is most powerful when he examines the larger implications of the themes found throughout the literature iin the public sphere. He makes the connection between subversive ideas that the illegal literature contained to the larger cultural historiography of pre-Revolutionary France. These ideas can be representative of the opinions that ere part of the developing public sphere directly in correlation with Habermas’ model. The public awareness and acceptance of this salacious literature and the messages that they contained can be understood as planting the seeds for the Revolution, particularly the political literature that spoke out against the supposed corruption of Louis XV and Louis XVI. These types of publications undermined the public support for the monarchy that any kind of crisis, like the one in 1787, sparked off public outrage at the supposed corruption of the king and those he surrounded himself with. This argument works well in the light of some of the erroneous public beliefs that were in place after 1789, such as the idea that the Cardinal de Rohan cuckolded Louis XVI for his supposed role in the Diamond Necklace Affair.
\nDarnton establishes the idea that by the time of the French Revolution, much of the anti-monarchical sentiment and desire for individual liberties came not from the works of the famous philosophers, but rather from minds of the people who existed in the new public sphere. He stops short of intrinsically linking the events of 1789 to the ideas in these illegal books, but makes the point that the ideas that drove the Revolution did not solely derive from the works of the great philosophers of the Enlightenment.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-06T19:46:26Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-25T21:42:27Z" } }, { "key": "U9DT35M9", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/U9DT35M9", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/U9DT35M9", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/HD4GI9JK", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "U9DT35M9", "version": 1, "parentItem": "HD4GI9JK", "itemType": "note", "note": "Chartier addresses the French Revolution using a revisionist approach, exploring its cultural origins as opposed to the traditional explanation of intellectual and philosophical causes. What he sets out to prove is that although there is a striking similarity between the Enlightenment philosophy popular beliefs that already existed in French culture. Combining the traditional historiography with newer cultural interpretations, he illustrates that the work of the philosophes was a reflection of the cultural ideals that already were circulating in France. Chartier revises the earlier historiography that interpreted the Revolution as the result of Enlightenment thinking, and replaces that with a concept that the sentiment to revolt was already present in the whole of French culture. He does this by employing Habermas’ notion of the Public Sphere whereby the population created its own consciousness through literary works and discussions of morals and justice at a local level. The development of a French public sphere over the course of the 18th century was what enabled the writings of the philosophes to be so popular, as they were merely putting into words what was already widely thought.
\nTo prove his thesis, Chartier claims that the population had held an unfavorable view of the king for decades before the Revolution, and that the people had already developed a highly tuned sense of justice. He attributes these characteristics of the French public sphere to the process of dechristianization of the popluation over the course of the century. The policies of the Church had become far less tolerant of popular moral ambiguity since the 16th century, due to the Counter-Reformation and the Jansenist controversy of the 17th and mid-18th centuries. As the people were beginning to turn away from the Church, the works of the philosophes replaced dogma and God’s omnipresence with reverence for the rational perfection of Natural Law and the mere presence of a divine creator. As the population became increasingly dechristianized, the divine rationalization of the monarchy too was cast aside. The publically flaunted promiscuity of Louis XV actively undermined his role as the divine king. The public sphere could not comprehend how God could choose a king, and be his representative on Earth, yet not hold to even the most basic tenets of Christianity.
\nThe sense of justice that the people had formed over the course of the century can be attributed to a greater awareness of politics in the public sphere. The political attitudes of the people were often dissatisfied with the monarchy, which was increasingly seen as an immoral and irresponsible institution. This too can be linked to the immoral behavior of Louis XV with the failure of the current political system. These trends can be coupled with the continued development of the public sphere, which was largely the result widespread correspondence and spread of new ideas. He agrees with Robert Darnton that many of these anti-royal ideas may have originated from illicit literature that exposed (in jest or factually) the inner lives of the politically powerful. Since the ideas of the Enlightenment were circulating before the philosophes were writing their works, all they had to do is tap into the popular discontent and cultural trends. Chartier claims that if the Enlightenment ideas did not exist in the public sphere, then the writings of the philosophes would have fallen on deaf and unreceptive ears.
\nWhat Chartier has written is a combination of cultural and intellectual history, whereby he explores the origins of the French Revolution not in a determinalist sense, but in a sense that searches for the intellectual factors in popular culture and the public sphere. He replaces the old notions of the Enlightenment Philosophes as being responsible for the Revolution, and replaces it with the ideas of a more diverse and disparate network of common people. The disseminators and originators of this heightened awareness in politics and society were the booksellers and literary audiences. The new trade of ideas throughout France made it possible for these ideas to move widely and uniformly. Unfortunately for the ordinary people who took part in the Revolution, they were often acting against their own ideals of justice and morality in the times of the Terror and the institutions of early Republic. The ideals of the Revolutionary state were supposed to be transparent, but in fact they were violent and intrusive.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-14T03:33:02Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-25T18:43:14Z" } }, { "key": "D7V9C6VT", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/D7V9C6VT", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/D7V9C6VT", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/2CG3CTQ9", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "D7V9C6VT", "version": 1, "parentItem": "2CG3CTQ9", "itemType": "note", "note": "Goubert is primarily interested in the menatalites of Louis XIV, how he interacted with the population of France and how the collective actions of his subjects profoudnly influenced the way that he thought and acted.
\nGoubert is interested in understanding Louis XIV not as a person or an absolute monarch, but rather as a king who interacted with his entire populace. To do this he investigates the state of the nation, the populace and the way that the national economy functioned.
\nThe people of France were resliant, who responded positively to both disease, discomfort, famine and war. The population grew consistently following times of crisis, and the same can be said of the economy. Much of the local economy in France remained the same from the medieval: solely based on agriculture and sources of commercial revenue were scarce when compared to the economies of the Dutch or English. Much of the same can be siad for traditional French society, which was still largely striated into the 3 main social classes: peasants, clergy and different forms of nobility. The key to understanding the general social structure of France is a form of what Goubert describes as \"Landed Capitalism\" whereby wealth was based on landownership and most of the exchange of wealth was based on the enchange of land and the goods produced from it. Establishing the nature of France at the time of Louis's reign is important as the foundatio of Goubert's study as it helps to better explain the actions of the monarch.
\nLouis's formative eyars were shaped by the Frondes, and he strongly resented the entire population for their role in the rebellion. To repair his status as king, the young Louis was primarily interested in maintaining his reputation, both as a king and as a fellow monarch in Europe. This was partially due to the embarrassments that he experienced during the Frondes, and it was also due to his inheritied characterisic from his family. This also sparked Louis's intense distrust of anyone with power, which is evident by the choices he made early in his reigh, which included abolishing the office of first minister as well as choosing men of humble origins for high office ensuring their loyalty to the king. Much in the same manner, Louis disassembled the power of all three of the traditional estates, drawing a great deal of authority through the abolition of older offices such as the first minister, colonel-in-chief of the infnatry, and the Assembly of the Clergy. Abroad, Louis spent most of his time asserting the pheudo-historical claims that France had on other European lands and contesting the agendas of the Habsburgs and Spain. In terms of spirituality, Louis was primarily interested in furthering the claims of Catholicism, but mainly in political terms. He cared little for theological debate, and only desired obedience from his various subjects and saw theological dissent as a form of treason.
\nTo establish outward signs of his greatness, Louis comissioned the palace and royal city to be constructed at Versailles. Louis envisioned himself as a latter day Augustus, where the arts, sciences and letters all worked together to establish the glory of Louis for posterity. This same type of centralization in terms of adminstration also was located at Versailles. Le Tellier and Louvois (his son) were placed in charge of the political administration of the kingdom, and whose job it was to maintain order amongst the nobles and the royal household. Lluis himself saw to it that he kept the nobiltiy satisfied through honoring them with titles, wealth and connections to the crown. This was far harder to accomplish post-1672, as France was no longer in a state of financial success as it had been since 1661 under Colbert's financial system of organization. The financial strain that France was in after the Dutch Wars was due to Louis pride and desire for glory, which to date, had only been successful.
\nThe years following his early successes were met with repeated frustrations, both in international affairs and in internal matters. Louis's mentality towards these troubles had not dramatically changed since he was a headstrong young man, and he sought to control these foreign and domestic problems using force. The Jansenist controversy was handled in much of the same fashion as Louis tried to manage the Dutch; with overwhelming force and coersion. This only was solved, when the Jansenists were spared the wrath of the king, as a conflict with the pope took precedence. The Huguenots did not fare as well however, as Louis so strongly desired confessional purity that he exiled all Protestants in 1685. Goubert contributes Louis' change of heart concerning Protestantism due to his reformation at the insistence of Bossuet, Mme de Maintenon and his Jesuit confessor. Louis had changed his concept of greatness and glory to a spiritual realm, where he as the Protector of Christianity and the Most Christian King had the duty to extirpate heresy in his kingdom. Louis's overconfident actions in this era of his reign only served to alienate all of his traditional allies and fortify ill feelings from his enemies. His annexations of neighboring territories and principalities in addition to numerous unilateral commercial demands effectively placed Louis on his own for the last quarter century of his reign.
\nGoubert attributes some of the difficulties faced by Louis in the last era of his reign due to demographic problems due to famine and overtaxation. Varying years of famine and bountiful harvest prepared France for the coming years, where wealth and poverty could be seen exisiting simultaneously. At the same time, France's position in the international economy was improving, even though the scale of their trade seemed small compared to the Dutch or the English. Goubert claims that France's vitality had not been sapped by Louis's early failures, as it still had a great deal of energy and wealth to supply Louis for the last 25 years of his reign. By the beginning of the 18th century, Due to the old burdens placed on the population, in addition to the new financial and military burdens, Louis found his government more efficient and dutiful when it came to collecting revenue and maintaining order than they ever had been before.
\nEven in his end days, the mentality of Louis had not changed since he was a young man. Obsessed with his legacy of honor and greatness, Louis would not let any diplomatic or economic slight go unpunished, even in the time where France was recovering from the economic atrocities of the 1690's. The War of the Spanish Succession was between Louis's honor, and the desires of the rest of Europe. For the last time Louis abused the work of the people and took their happiness for granted. Louis's last years were spend in ruin: both in terms of his health and the administration he had pained to create. After coming to an end of the aforementioned war, Louis dedicated the last year of his life making right with the Church, and attempting to establish a lasting peace. The revolt of the ruling class against the system created by Louis was already underway before the king died. A professional bureaucracy was created, demolishing the old system of patronage that had been developed since Richelieu. This was the beginning of the recession of the monarchy from public view. Where Louis XIV spent his entire life in the forefront of public life, Louis XV spent his life behind the scenes running this new bureaucracy.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-10-28T19:32:35Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-21T19:17:56Z" } }, { "key": "UCT7CFTA", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/UCT7CFTA", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/UCT7CFTA", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/ZWF4754I", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "UCT7CFTA", "version": 1, "parentItem": "ZWF4754I", "itemType": "note", "note": "First and foremost, this is a work that is involved in explaining the mentalites of both Rablais in refutation of the thesis he was an atheist, but it also Febvre's explanation of how the author was the product of the age that he lived in. This is a study of the religious mentalites of the sixteenth century, when Rablais was alive in France. The overarching issues that Febvre brings up are the spiritual mentalities that were widespread, particularly the concepts of unbelief, which is in opposition to atheism. Febvre argues that atheism was not even possible considering the mentalites of the entire nation and spiritual culture during the 16th century. Febvre makes it overtly clear in his introduction that it is important to understand each discipline in its own historical context, particular the satire of Rablais. Each age creates mentalites out of what is available to it, both on physical terms, but also building upon what has been created to date in terms of intellectual thought. Febvre is careful to situate the mentalites of the entire age in their proper context, not placing any modern interpretations to the literature being analyzed.
\nwhat Febvre discovers is that atheism and unbelief were simply outside of the intellectual constructs of the time. This was an era where Christianity was not doubted, more or less even questioned. What the intellectuals of the time did was fight against the unknown, but not in the manner that 20th century intellectual did. Rablais, Montaigne and their contemporaries viewed the unknown not as a void, but rather as a living organism, in the way that natural law functioned. Beyond the refutation of the concept that Rablais was modern, Febvre synthesizes contemporary science, religion, philosophy and religion to make hsi claim about how the intellectuals in the 16th century understood their lives, their beliefs and how they comprehended the unknown. Even though Febvre recognized that any scholar would be unable to completely realize the entire scope of Rablais's beliefs, he concludes that through an examination of his contemporaries, one could extrapolate the general sentiment and commonly held beliefs of the period. He concludes not that Rablais was ahead of his time but rather that men did not have the intellectual traditions to make such a bold statement as disbelief. What Rablais did was completely within the intellectual limitations of the time, and unbelief was only the danger of not knowing what was in the unknown.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-11-15T13:37:35Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-21T19:12:06Z" } }, { "key": "WATKT3VK", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/WATKT3VK", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/WATKT3VK", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/R8A9JTJK", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "WATKT3VK", "version": 1, "parentItem": "R8A9JTJK", "itemType": "note", "note": "This work is about the foundations of real power in the 17th century, and how it was distributed and consolidated in the growing absolutist state. The system of patronage in early modern France was one that primarily included vertical ties, ending with the person of the king. It was not necessarily a tidy or efficient system, as patron-client relationships were unequal, and the horizontal ties were uneven. In the growing centralized power of the crown, the patronage system was used in the provinces where the king did not hold as much centralized power. The ties between the powerful clients in these more remote areas gave the king a degree of influence where royal power had not yet reached. As the royal bureaucracy developed over the course of the century, so did the ties between the client-brokers in the provinces, who used their own power combined with the endowed wealth from the crown to push the royal agenda. It was this money from the king that coerced and convinced the regional notables to support the perogative of the crown.
\nProponents of the clientage system interpret as a social system based on inherent inequality and distribution of power. Kettering approaches the topic through an interdisciplinary lens (sociology, political science, anthropology) to better understand how the system worked and how these interpretations can be applied to the historiography. Understanding the clientage networks of 17th century France in this way, Kettering establishes that the new bureaucracy was the result of royal and noble cooperation, using Provence as the case study. Explaining the nature of the clientage systems can shed light on the true nature of political power in France. Unfortunately, there was enough corruption and difficulty dealing with the nobility for the clientage system to work smoothly. That is why the bureaucratic system formed by COlbert had to be put into place.
\nThe clientage system in France had developed of a central weakness on behalf of the crown: begnning with Henri IV and later Richelieu, client-patron networks were formed as the result of unruly provinces or governors. Eventually these turned into systems of great strategic importance, where power was exercised through them. The power brokers in the provinces were very influential, as they used their royal connections to wealth and power, to distribute to those loyal on the fringes of the kingdom. Their increasing influence, particularly in the regional power structures, helped increase royal power in areas that it couldn't get to previously. The provincial brokers also helped to undermine the power of the great nobles, who often woudl cause trouble for the crown. By allying themselves with the intendants, the provincial brokers were able to isolate the influence of problematic nobles. The same power to isolate came to be useful when the crown worked on consolidating its power to absorb all of the regional power of the nobility, by replacing all nobles in the provinces with intendants, when the nobility moved to Versailles.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-10T03:48:59Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-21T18:21:28Z" } }, { "key": "ZSTNTIXK", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/ZSTNTIXK", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/ZSTNTIXK", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/UCE24SF6", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "ZSTNTIXK", "version": 1, "parentItem": "UCE24SF6", "itemType": "note", "note": "Parker interprets the absolutist system of government to be a paradox: that it tried to centralize its power and take autonomy away from the provinces, but many of the independent assemblies still retained power to permit taxation on behalf of the crown. One way that the monarchy dealt with the problem of centralization while maintaining order and enforcing its will, was to create more governmental and bureaucratic offices. These layers of governmnet employees made them indebted to the state, all the while filling the kings coffers.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-12T05:03:57Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-21T18:20:08Z" } }, { "key": "8CTTZ76S", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/8CTTZ76S", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/8CTTZ76S", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/ANJANAFN", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "8CTTZ76S", "version": 1, "parentItem": "ANJANAFN", "itemType": "note", "note": "Beik in this work argues that the absolutist state was not the product of centrlaized consoldiaton of power, but rather was the final phase of a feudal model of kingship based on landownership and the wealth that was associated with it. The absolutism of Louis XIV was successful because he was able to curry the favor, not not the angst, of his powerful nobles whose interests were further protected by the state. The financial security of the nobility was exchanged for their autonomous power held prior to the mid seventeenth century.
\nThe development of absolutism in the seventeenth century France was one that caused a great deal of uneasiness in the ruling classes and in the Church. They were wary of the centralized power that the crown was asserting without conferring with the estates or the bishops. This was exacerbated with the concept that the moral and social order was falling apart around them, as the old systems of governance were gradually being replaced by the central power in the crown. Beik summarizes this central conflict between the provincal aristocrats who strove to maintain their localized power, and the progressive employees of the state who worked to expand the power of the king and his bureaucracy. What made this conflict more unique was that both the state and the grands wanted the same thing: a more personal and direct rule on behalf of the king. Where they differed was in the manner which this rule was to be implemented. The nobles did not want their hereditary and traditional role threatened, and the agents of the crown were seeking to avoid the interference the grands gave them when trying to collect revenue.
\nThrough the establishment of absolutism throughout the century, the method in which the reforms were put into place mattered more than the reforms themselves. Beik describes the \"sins of Richelieu\" during his era of power being seen as virtues held by Louis XIV, due to the way that the king instituted his reforms. The latter was a reformer in the most symbolic and confident way, whereas Richelieu was more abrasive and unsure of his actions. The mode of reform and interaction with the subjects is one of the key points of interaction that Beik makes, as the influential nobles in Languedoc still had to function in national politics even though they had their own Estates. This was particularly the case, as even though the rulers of the province held unquestionable power they still needed the protection of the king against foreign armies and unknown threats. This is because as land was the primary source of wealth in France, it was a mutual interest for both the landowner and the king to protect the national borders from outside and internal threats.
\nThe grands of Languedoc also had a vested interest in cooperating with the absolutist state, due to the unique situation the province was in concerning the collection of taxes. The collection of the taille was important to both the king as well as the rulers, as it supported both of their political, social and economic interests. Yet beyond these shared concerns about the safety of property and wealth, there was still the issue of how the king enforced his will on his subjects. The social turmoil of this period already had destabilized the public order, and the conflict between the interests of the crown and the localities was still commonplace throughout the century. To carry out royal perogitive, the king was still largely reliant upont he local power of the nobles. Even this form of cooperation was not enough to fully maintain the absolutist system that was gradually being implemented throughout the century. As the king needed more money in the form of tax revenues, especially to fund Louis XIV's wars, the system of governance had to adapt to the increasing financial burdens.
\nThe increased coercion of the state on the localities for compliance was met with mixed resistance as both the royal bureaucracy and the local rulers were not organized enough to fully assert their power. This crisis of management, as Beik describes it, left the province of Languedoc always dangerously close to popular outbursts of violence against royal policies, while those who asserted the rights of the local authorities found themselves castrated by royal power. Although the grands of Languedoc were able to band together to protect their own economic interests, Louis XIV knew how to enforce his power through class rule. Louis rewarded those loyal to him, and punished those who were disloyal to his policies. This was designed so that the personal choices that the rulers of the province were making were rewarded the most when they served the interests of the crown, not their own. Those who supported the crown were rewarded by having their position in society enforced or even enhanced, which was especially important in a time where mobility was understood as a threat to the larger social order. THis was contradicted by the fact that many of the major political institutions in Languedoc were often in opposition to each other, instead of uniting against the changing royal policies.
\nBeik makes it clear that the experiences of Languedoc during the period when absolutism evolved were not typical; no area was impacted in the same way by the centralization of the state power. Beik describes the general development of absolutism as \"the political manifestation of a system of domination protecting the interests of a privileged class of officers and landed lords.\" (335) This implies that by protecting the interests of the powerful, wealth could be better extracted for the benefit of the state. Absolutism was not about playing one class off of another, or the abolishment of the nobles from the social order. Instead, Louis allied with the nobles, who in turn bettered their social position through the privileges and titles given out by the state for loyal behavior and actions. This was even more cemented in the social order through the venality of office, and the way that authority and prestige could be earned or purchased. Inequality was built into the system, as not all privileges, offices and tax exemptions were the same: they each had a different personal and financial fee payable to the crown.
\nIn the end Beik argues that absolutism needs to be reevaluated, not as a modern system where the state asserted its authority over local interests, but rather as an extension of the old feudal system with some advances pushing the French state towards modernity.
\n", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-11-11T16:18:05Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-21T18:18:02Z" } }, { "key": "H3DCQPND", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/H3DCQPND", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/H3DCQPND", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/CR69P8KU", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "H3DCQPND", "version": 1, "parentItem": "CR69P8KU", "itemType": "note", "note": "
Bloch sets out to understand the personal motivations that the kings of England and France had when claiming the power to miraculously heal scrofula. It was something that was seemingly easy to do as the populace readily believed this ability, as miracles were thought to be commonplace. It was only though centuries of skepticism that this theory began to be overturned. Initially it was still believed to be a miracle, though intellectuals often doubted why it only pertained to the kings of France predominantly, and secondarily to the English crown. Outright rejection of the royal claims would meant that sound evidence was needed to counteract the scores of witnesses that testify to the healing power of the king. Judging by the widespread superstitions and widespread beliefs concerning the ability of the king to heal for scrofula among other miraculous deeds, Bloch is primarily interested understanding the common perceptions of supernatural powers attributed to the English and French crowns. This reverence is the result of an intrinsic mystique that surrounded the figure of the king, which was essential to their public perception by their subjects. This concept of examining royalty in this manner was revolutionary at the time: as Bloch was not interested in the politics, judicial or military aspects, but was rather concerned with the common view of the king being able to heal for scrofula.
\nTo best understand how both the kings of England and France came to hold this mythological gift, Bloch investigates the social anomaly as a long term development. Tracing the belief in the healing power of the king back to the genesis of the Capetian kingship in France and to the subsequent decades in the high middle ages in England. Not accepting that the supersititious beliefs of the people could have been formed in the early modern period when they were so widely known, Bloch starts his reconstruction at this point. Considering that many of the royal lineages and dynasties in Europe during the medieval and early modern periods claimed to be mystical descendants of ancient Germanic figures, there is not necessarily a direct connection between the sacred nature of their Christian kingship and their geneology. Bloch attributes the early mythical claims of king to the medieval concept that the king held control over nature and natural events, which perhaps helped persuade the people to give them their original positions as leaders. It may have been with Charlemagne, who combined the mystical powers of germanic kingship with the divine approval that he received from the Pope and the Church, that divinity and magical powers were merged into one entity. This was symbolized with the annointing of the king with a sacred oil, linking together their power and divine approval through the ancient tradition that was so mentioned in the bible. After the practice began with Robert I in France, Bloch postulates that the kings of England, particularly Henry I decided also to touch for scrofula as to not be outdone by his political and dynastic rival.
\nAs the ceremony of the royal touch developed throughout the medieval period, the meaning that the words the king spoke imbued the process with political and spiritual meaning. Yet, to the people who received the royal touch, the act of the touch was one of wonder as people from outside of France (as England was less accessible) came to be healed by the king. These people saw the ability of the king to heal as a reflection of his divine approval, and that they belonged in the office. This was particularly important when the legitimacy of the crown, whether French or English, was in contention. This was even more so the case during the Hundred Years War, when both thrones were in a contest for legitimacy and claims to lands in France. The Church denied any intrinsic spiritual power endowed through annointing, yet they had no temporal recourse to deny the power that royal polemicists were pushing. It was only during the Hundred Years War that the doctrine of the Royal Touch truly became a political tool. Charles V used the notion of his divine power to rally and unify his subjects and used the royal touch as something to inspire awe and loyalty. The royal touch in France also became one of the foundations upon which Gallicanism was founded, as the divine power of the king was not subject to the authority of the Church and was intrinsic to the monarchy. In the end, the institution of the Royal Touch came about due to the inability of the Church to decry a tradition which had generations of credibility, yet by the end of the medieval period imitators and impostors sprang up trying to claim the same legitiamcy but were refuted by the same authorities that challenged the English and the French.
\nThis mystical power had to be confined to the person of the king, and not spread to his relatives or competitors. In France, the Power of the Touch was imbued during consecration. The anointing performed at coronation meant that the king was endowed with similar spiritual gifts and power that a priest or monk would have been, although the king did not have to follow the same spiritual directives nor was he under the authority of the Pope. This was also understood as a uniform practice for all royalty in europe, as both kings and emperors were annointed with Holy Oil at their coronation, and were permitted to take Communion in both forms, which was often reserved only for the clergy. But the spiritual power of the kings, particularly in France needed to come from another source of authority in order to counterbalance the influence of the Church: that of the people. So the notion of the kings two bodies arose, that the spiritual body was endowed by God, while the physical body was supported by the people. The divine approval of both kings was established in the late medieval period through numerous legends vividly explaining divine favor on the king, whether in the form of a phial of holy oil, or in the symbol or colors of the royal crest. Kings were thought to be supernatural by their subjects, as was present in the popular belief in a royal birthmark present on every king.
\nReflecting upon the widespread beliefs about the Royal Touch, it is not surprising that they helped play a role in the formation of the French state, and in the transformation from the Renaissance to the absolute monarchy. By this time there was less contention about the nature of the Royal Touch within the Church, as Francis I laid hands on the ill in the Papal palace while visiting. Yet it was also in this period that many foreign writers, imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance and eventually Natural Law, began to cast doubt on the ability of both kings to cure such a disease. While Protestantism did not deny the ability of the kings to effect miracles such as the Touch, they denied the claim that the ability to do so came from the annointing of the Holy Oil, which derived it's power from the Catholic Church. No one in this period denied the idea that the kings were indeed practicing miracles, the disagreement was over where the power to heal came from. The power of the king to heal scrofula was thrown into question during the period of the League, as their polemicists denied the ability of the king to heal unless they were consecrated by the Church and actively followed its directives. This is one way they discredited the policies of Henri III, claiming that he no longer had the ability to cure the King's Evil, as he deviated from God's will. Nor could Henri IV cure scrofula, as he had not been properly consecrated, further separating the person of the king from his spiritual abilities. In turn, after his annointing and coronation, Henri IV made the Touch a central part of his propaganda, further establishing his legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The Royal Touch had become a tool of propaganda in addition to a sign of divine favor. This power eventually was transformed in absolutist propaganda, thereby representing the king as an embodiement of God himself, which justified the utmost allegiance of his subjects.
\nThe Royal Touch could be understood as something that is intrinsically connected to royal dynasty. If God no longer favored a monarch, and had their line die out, the favor endowed by God could be transferred through the anointing of another king. It became very hard to continue this process as the desacralization of the monarchy after Louis XIV. The dynasty no longer had any political purpose to use the Touch anymore, and it failed when Louis XVI tried to revive it.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-10-25T01:43:17Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-17T20:00:38Z" } }, { "key": "37FPD978", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/37FPD978", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/37FPD978", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/UFCS2C7P", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "37FPD978", "version": 1, "parentItem": "UFCS2C7P", "itemType": "note", "note": "Dewald argues that the identity of the nobility in 17th century France was absorbed with selfhood: a unique concept that dealt with breeding, position adn education. This was also linked to an incrased awareness of the individuality of their social class, one which Dewald argues lead into the concept of the modern person. This modern identity came out of very traditional and backwards values. The nobles were increasingly concerned about worth, wealth, friendship, sexuality and civic order. Their awareness of both their biological and intellectual heiritage was understood as a reflection of their position at the top of the natural social order. The assurance that came with this awareness helped to push forward many of the m5ost important intellectual and philosophical advances of the period, including: individualism, skepticism and the primacy of social change. The fact that these beliefs came from the increasingly aware nobility meant that they were utilizing their position to continually justify their existence.
\nThe other major factor that was influencing the self-awareness of the nobility was French culture itself. The increasing emphasis on birth an lineage to prove nobility, the strict moral enforcement of the Church, and the subordination of personal impulses. The last reason is most important of all, when the state required conformity at all costs to ensure its political superiority. Dewald investigates the responses of the upper nobility to these cultural and social pressures, both in their celebration of conformity and in the increasing individual awareness of one's social and political role. He argues that the modern self-awareness came out of the increasing pressure for the noblity to fit in at the top of an ancient society that was based on morals and warfare.
\nIn the end this dualistic personality of the nobility came out of their enthusiasm for the developing social and cultural trends, but was held in check by the royal and religious guidelines that enforced more traditional values. The increasing self-awareness of the nobility was understood in their literature, correspondence and friendships, but their public role as existing at the top of the political sphere meant that they had to submit to the desires of the king. Dewald argues that the contradiction within the nobility persisted into the 18th century, but was not of the same category, and many of the nobles were no longer under the same pressures from the state following the death of Louis XIV.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-12T01:05:02Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-16T16:18:17Z" } }, { "key": "6CM8TA9A", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/6CM8TA9A", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/6CM8TA9A", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/E7XI2F8D", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "6CM8TA9A", "version": 1, "parentItem": "E7XI2F8D", "itemType": "note", "note": "Violence in early modern Europe was based on the economy of honor. It was understood as righteous vengeance, which was very different from anger. Although the large-scale feud is largely absent from the historical record, Carroll finds a great deal of evidence pertaining to the development of dueling within the nobility. The morality of vengeance also underwent a transformation, as it was strictly forbidden by the Church, yet the rhetoric of violence was formulated in a way that factored in God's approval. WIth the emphasis on individualism in post-Renaissance France, the aristocratic class continued to define themselves through honor and personal justice. Feuds and duels were widely understood to be part of centemporary society, as the memories and stories of killed family members continued on for generations. Carroll argues that the feud was an integrated and expected part of French society. He makes this claim based on the literature that he discovered from various personal sources, as well as published pardon tales and letters of remission. These pardon tales came from the nobles who were pardoned by the state.
\nCarroll looks at two major aspects of vindictatory violence: first the structure of what it was, how it happened and the role of family and honor. The second aspect is how this violence interacted with the rest of society- what law, sex and gender had to do with it. What he proves is that the society of the early modern world was not entirely different from the medieval, and in reality it was far more violent on a personal level. The resurgence of religious violence and the increase in social mobility threatened those who traditionally held power (ie the sword nobility) who turned to defending their honor at all costs. Carroll interprets politics as entering every aspect of life during this period, and with the downfall of the power of the centralized monarchy following 1559, personal violence increased in the power vacuum left by Henri II. The ability of the crown to curb this kind of violence was at the core of its process of centralization, and it would take almost 2 centuries for the feud and duel to face in French society.
\nCarroll also redefines the socializing process that Elias put forth, rejecting the idea that men became more civilized and less violent. Carroll concludes that the rhetoric of violence helped the forming early modern society be more cohesive and consistent. The political organization that was a byproduct of the feud helped to delineate the power that was considered to be characteristic of the centralizing absolutist monarchy. Eventually, the development of a standing army in the 17th century meant that the state had an increasing monopoly on violence, and used it for its own strengthening.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-11T22:44:29Z", "dateModified": "2012-02-08T00:52:35Z" } }, { "key": "NQTKPXTQ", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/NQTKPXTQ", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/NQTKPXTQ", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/R3F5IK4X", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "NQTKPXTQ", "version": 1, "parentItem": "R3F5IK4X", "itemType": "note", "note": "These essays examine the shape of religious life in France under the first 3 Bourbon kings. Briggs considers this to be a period of repression, whereby the Church and the monarchy worked together to impose a new order on the population following the Wars of Religion. A great deal of popular religious culture was erased as part of the adopted Tridentine reforms. Religion was the only institution that bound the entire population together, whether they were Catholic or Protestant. Unlike other historians, Briggs believes that the reforming tendencies of the 17th century Chruch did not eradicate popular superstitions and beliefs in the rural areas, but rather the educated ministers were sole outposts in a sea of uneducated people. The efforts of the Church were steady, in eroding these beliefs even to the current day.
\nWhat separated the elite culture from that of the popular was the way that both sides interpreted the same spiritual material.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-12T20:51:35Z", "dateModified": "2011-05-14T18:26:21Z" } }, { "key": "TTGFFRCF", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/TTGFFRCF", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/TTGFFRCF", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/ATX4A2SK", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "TTGFFRCF", "version": 1, "parentItem": "ATX4A2SK", "itemType": "note", "note": "Collins postulates that the role of the provincial institutions was to maintain order in a society that was far more fluid and mobile than previously thought. Also, Collins breaks down the old notions of the absolutist state ruling over the provinces and the nobles with an iron fist, and replaces it with an interpretation that was strongly based on collaboration between the king and the provincial estates. He situates this collaboration as taking place in a society that was growing out of its old feudal structure, to one that was more based on a centralized bureaucracy and the growing power of the judicial elite.
\nCollins understands French society during the 17th century as one compromised of contradictions. To be one way and simultaneously the other is common in France during the early modern period. This was seen in the fact that most French political writers could not define the primary orders of society as clearly as they designed: there was too much contradiction between the orders and classes. Class was based on wealth and the order was determined by social or legal position, which were combined in the political realm. This meant that there was an inherent social mobility that was determined by one's status in their class or order. Collins also strives to define absolutism; not as the ability of the king to rule by himself, but rather as the system by which that he ruled without being accountable to other political or legal entities. The purpose of the French state was to maintain order, but the purpose of society was to consolidate influence and power, yet was inherently mobile and unstable.
\nYet through all of this mobility, Collins concludes that while there was a degree of fluidity, much of the wealth in Brittany remained consolidated in the hands of the great seigneurs who held the power as well. While this may appear to have been a feudal tradition, the king trusted these wealthy nobles as they were the only ones with the resources to carry out the desires of the crown. This was definitely not a feudal system, as these grands gained most of their wealth from economic sources- not political revenue. This is where his analogy of contradiction is most clear, in the ways that the crown and the grands collected revenue. The king wanted more tax revenue to support national causes, while the grands resisted direct taxation, yet had no problem taxing those beholden to them. The paradox lies in the fact that while the crown resorted to centralizing the revenue collecting system, the grands still essentially amassed most of their wealth and power from their landholdings, and the king was dependent upon them for financial resources. This was still the case even in a more monetized, capital-intensive economy that was dually based on the wealth of the grands and of landlords who made money from commercial gains.
\nThe paradox of the absolutist state in the seventeenth century was that it was still largely reliant upon feudal sources of power and wealth. The cooperation of the nobility was not military as it had been previously (or as an opposition) but rather was economic and social, as the king promised to protect all of his subjects in return for their financial support. This form of protection was not necessarily military, as the figure of the king had lost its innate power in combat following the death of Henri IV. The king's form of protection was designed to preserve the old social order by protecting the property of his subjects. While this was the case, there were more contradictory attitudes towards the status of the individual, as man was increasingly understood in individual terms. The old communal, feudal order had to be reconciled with this idea that men are individuals, yet were not created equal (thus the system of orders). So according to French philopsphers, the primary goal of the government was to maintain order through the institutions of property and class.
\nWhat made the absolutist form of governance so different from that of feudalism was this individual strand. The king did not have to submit to the old communal institutions, but rather asserted his individual will on those institutions. Yet even with the advent of the individual and the individual will, the old institutions still worked closely with the crown to achieve their own goals. This idea of cooperation was also a contradiction, since the consolidation of power with the intent of excluding the Estates that Major describes, where the interests of the crown and the old systems of power were in conflict. In even the same model of the consolidation of power, many Estates remained in existence and were influential, because their interests did not conflict but rather supported that of the crown.
\nThe prolonged existence of regional bodies of power was due to the idea that many powerful elites were fearful of the rise of the individual and saw their own power threatened by the disorder that could strike at any moment. This was because the ruling classes saw an innate threat to their power, against the general population who was understood to be barbaric and hardly capable of self-governance. So, the ruling classes and institutions lived in constant fear of the people and used every precaution to safeguard against an uprising by closely regulating morality in the public sphere, both spiritually and temporally. This caused a constant tension between the ruling orders and the people, as there were constant outbursts of violence, as the people interpreted moral regulation as intrusive into their lives.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-11-11T01:42:36Z", "dateModified": "2011-05-11T14:21:48Z" } }, { "key": "XTHHDJAH", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/XTHHDJAH", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/XTHHDJAH", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/MPGIS2I4", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "XTHHDJAH", "version": 1, "parentItem": "MPGIS2I4", "itemType": "note", "note": "Diefendorf is arguing that the spiritual activity of prominent noble women in the period of France's Catholic Reformation, was not the result of male domiance but rather the result of their own innovation in the face of social and economic upheaval following the French Wars of Religion up until the period of the Frondes. She primarily investigates the works and lives of a select group of noble women living in Paris in the span of her study, and how their personal experiences greatly influenced how they openly professed and practiced their faith. In conjuction with the personal desires of these prominent women, Diefendorf argues that the economic rigors of the first half of the seventeenth century greatly influenced the ways that these women practiced their faith. Often their intense pietistic desires would have to be adapted to the financial needs of the orders being founded. The greatly idealistic and personal piety of the women early in the study, such as Barbe Acurie, found the greatest spiritual joy in self-mortification and identifying with Christ being crucified. Their emphasis on the salvation of the group, and repenting for the sins of the entire community was a distinct product of the period of the League. During the opening decades of the seventeenth century, many of the prominent women began to identify with Christ and his charity to the poor. This marked a distinct shift in elite female piety, as many of these women were reacting to their surroundings bth socially and economically. In times of dearth and rising vagrancy rates, these wealthy women were utilizing their unique wealth and influence in a way that men not only permitted, but encouraged. This meant catechizing and serving both the poor and the infirmed. By the end of the study, Diefendorf concludes that the spiritual works of these women, were not just the result of misogynistic practices within the Catholic Church, but were true innovations on behalf of these women who were meeting the needs of their communities as they saw them.
\nThe intense piety that resulted from the meteoric rise of the Catholic League, especially in Paris, had a long-term effect on the subsequent Catholic Reformation. Diefendorf uses evendence of female pietistic practices and organizations to underscore the egalitarian social and cultural practices that the Reformation both supported and spoke out against. She investigates the lives of women as they model their behavior on the strong ascetic lifestyle which they were permitted to take part in. As the seventeenth century progressed, it because more favorable for these women to use their religious fervor and (sometimes) wealth to reach out to those less fortunate in the form of charity. The role of women was limited before the end of the Wars of Religion, and was even more limited after the Council of Trent, but they contiued to exercise what influence they could in the form of education and charity.
\nDuring the period of the League, when popular penitence was at its highest point, Diefendorf's story begins with wealthy women from all sections of the nobility internalizing thier faith. She notes that this was done in imitation of the late medieval saints, and many similarities exist. Following the example of Barbe Acarie, many of these noble women began to serve in charitable capacities, in order to better refuse their own bodies as acts of penitence. Her behavior conflicts with some of the more well-known examples of female leadership in the time of the League, as many of the women in the house of Guise held positions of esteem, but were simultaneously subjected to ridicule by their male coutnerparts and enemies. This is representative of the Christocentric nature of the faith of many of the women in this work: that they would rather serve the poor and reach out to them and offer salvation, than they would in traditional medieval forms of penitence. These form of pierty originiated during the period of the League, as the organization itself held the keys to public penitance, while many of these women used what tools they could to have an impact on their spiritual life.
\nFollowing the period of the League, especially during the decades following the death of Henri IV when France was in a great deal of poltical and social turmoi the opportunities for these pious women shifted from isolated aescitiscm to one of active chairty. Diefendorf accounts for this, as those with wealth and influence were increasingly less influenced by the mass hysteria of the League and were more influenced by the political crises of France's involveent in the Thirty Years War. The uptick in popular piety meant that in this same period, many lay houses were being founded by the wealthy and influential, but money was still scarce. This is proved by looking at how many houses were constantly in debt, regardless of how extravagent or simple they were. The more decadent houses are proof of how the new convents and female orders were outlets for these wealthy women, as many papal dispensations were handed out for these wealthy benefactrices to enter the convent when they pleased with a small entourage. This would even reach the point where convents would accept those into their orders who did not fit the requirekments of chasitity and purity, which were overlooked as the prospective nun brought a large dowery. Diefendorf makes it clear that even though this period was characterized by an increasingly public form of piety and outreach, even themost isolated convents were still greatly influenced by contemporary events.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-10-03T18:57:11Z", "dateModified": "2011-05-11T14:21:41Z" } }, { "key": "CQCVNUCG", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/CQCVNUCG", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/CQCVNUCG", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/TTTK4FCG", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "CQCVNUCG", "version": 1, "parentItem": "TTTK4FCG", "itemType": "note", "note": "The People living in Paris during the 18th century lived in constant flux; between desire and fufillment, strange and familiar customs, and happiness and discontent. This helped create a heightened awareness on behalf of the people in Paris, whose tacit participation in the ideals of the century helped bring them to have a greater realization of the political and social atmosphere that they operated in.
\nParis was hard enough to define for the government and the police, as it continued to grow at a rapid pace throughout the century. This prodigious growth enabled the population to be very socially and physically mobile, which made them very hard to keep track of by the authorities. The expansion of the neighborhoods around the old city developed unevenly, as wealth concentrated itself in certain areas, and the authorities tried to regulate where things were built. What happened was that the city became less unified in terms of wealth and prosperity, spintering its identity.
\nIn order to best understand who these people are, it is necessary to overturn a great deal of the old historiography concerning the masses and their everyday lives prior to the Revolution. To uncover who the people really were, Roche looks at the stories told about them, both from contemporaries and from the notaries in the legal record. The moralists saw the people as lacking ethics, and existing in the city as savage barbarians. It was simultaneously seen as a place of disease, both morally and corporally, by the upper class. Each neighborhood had its own symptoms of malaise, and corruption was rampant throughout. Roche warns against trying to generalize the people into a single entity, that the attitudes of the wealthy were characteristic and lumped the people together as one defined by poor, sick and uncultured. The writings of these people make it hard to consider the people as existing in a class of orders. Where Roche finds the most useful material is in notary records, especially for those after death.
\nRoche divides the people into two categories: the servants and the lower class. Both were volatile groups, but served very different social purposes. The servants were a unique group as they interacted with both the lower and upper classes, giving them a sense of superority over their lower class counterparts. The servant class also had the chance to become more wealthy, especially for those who worked for the great households. For wage earners, they often lived in constant uncertainty, as wages and the cost of living varied greatly over the course of the century. Debt and payments were also common, as the people borrowed in times of need, and also to live a higher standard of living than what they could afford.
\nThe social distinctions in Paris were exacerbated by the types of housing that each class lived in. The poor were often confined to high-rent single room apartments, which were usually inadequate and not very private. The wealthy lived in more private circumstances, and often the servants (especially the very wealthy) would live with them, with an apartment on the side. Regardless of the location, the rent was very high, and took up a large part of the earnings of the lower class, and even fewer were landowners. These tensions rising from the inadequacy of housing just made the other social problems worse.
\nEven the lower classes, with their limited purchasing ability still became consumers over the course of the century. The advances in household goods meant that average people spent more money on things that they were expected to own. Even as the costs of furniture and other goods increased, the people in Paris had to purchase them as their ability to do so waned before the Revolution. One of the most obvious products that signaled a shift in the buying habits of the normal person was the possession of a mirror, which not only cost a lot but also raised their awareness of their own existence. This meant that the lower classes became more aware of their appearance, and began to buy far more sumptuous goods. Gone were the purchasing of clothes that would last generations, and the people began to buy more clothes. Roche claims that this sharpened social class even more, as those with the resources to purchase more and fancier clothes did so.
\nLiteracy is another trait of the common people that is important to discern their interests. The fact that more people were becoming literate during the 18th century meant that popular ideas could be disseminated faster and between social classes. The number of books and types of publications that the people bought were not necessarily symbolic of social class, but those with more money had the ability to purchase more. At the same time, popular publications of newspapers, broadsides and posters catered to public interests, to the dismay of the upper classes. The authorities too used these forms of popular literacy to control the populations, as the people were aware of what was being printed and posted in the city.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-03T15:48:33Z", "dateModified": "2011-05-11T14:20:15Z" } }, { "key": "DZXCJA6A", "version": 1, "library": { "type": "group", "id": 19793, "name": "Hist804: Early Modern France", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france", "type": "text/html" } } }, "links": { "self": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/DZXCJA6A", "type": "application/json" }, "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/groups/hist804_early_modern_france/items/DZXCJA6A", "type": "text/html" }, "up": { "href": "https://api.zotero.org/groups/19793/items/ZFZQMKXC", "type": "application/json" } }, "meta": { "createdByUser": { "id": 116062, "username": "dludingt", "name": "Dan Ludington", "links": { "alternate": { "href": "https://www.zotero.org/dludingt", "type": "text/html" } } }, "numChildren": 0 }, "data": { "key": "DZXCJA6A", "version": 1, "parentItem": "ZFZQMKXC", "itemType": "note", "note": "This work is a massive synthesis about how the lives of Parisians, and tangentially all of the French people, became more concerning with well-being and comfort, both of these are early forms of what is considered privacy today. Even in the more established homes, privacy was still not even a consideration, but became moreso as the 18th century progressed. To illustrate how the people in Paris became more interested in comfort and privacy, notarial records were examined, to determine what goods people were buying, and combined with an analysis of the location and the occupation of the person, it is possible to trace this phenomenon.
\nWhat happened over the course of the century was described as a \"multiplying effect\" where the families who were well-off enough to bring a in a notary after a death, accumulated goods at a rate unheard of in prior centuries. This trend can be linked to the Enlightenment, and its greater emphasis on happiness and well-being. This well-being also took the form of economic and spatial specialization, where rooms, furniture and other goods were categorized as serving a certain function. The other objects that did not serve a useful purpose, began to hold even greater intrinsic value to their owners. Books, religious decorations, and works of art all were greatly valued by the Parisians reveals their cultural preferences and piety.
\nAlthough many of the families and people that Pardailhe-Galabrun investigates come from the bourgoisie, craftsmen or the rich classes, they are representative of this revoltuion in consumerism. The decreasing seize of the families, particularly the shift towards only nuclear families living together was a trend that started in the 14th century. The first major advance towards comfort and privacy was the transformation of housing from being vertical, to spreading out horizontally. This gave room for privacy, and it was also symbolic of how wealthy the owner was. Even decently well-off master craftsmen were confined to living in single-room apartments, as they could not afford the higher rent. The developing privacy was primarily a luxury only permitted for the richer people. As the spaces expanded and became more specialized, particularly in the differentiation between living spaces and public spaces, so did the lives of the people living in these new homes.
", "tags": [], "relations": {}, "dateAdded": "2010-12-04T02:15:59Z", "dateModified": "2011-05-11T14:20:04Z" } } ]