"Juridical Nationalism"

Parlement's role as standard-bearer of Gallicanism dates from the Pragmatic Sanction (1438) and it was never lowered. For the French kings, however, as Strayer's seminal essay demonstrates, the roots of Gallicanism as an expression of French "nationalism"—in the premodern sense—lie deep in the Middle Ages, even before the dramatic conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip IV (the Fair) at the turn of the fourteenth century.

The most Christian King ruled a chosen people, who lived in a kingdom which was the principal support and eternal defender of the faith. Loyalty to France was bound to be loyalty to the Church, even if the Church occasionally doubted it. . . .

In France the religion of nationalism grew early and easily out of the religion of monarchy, and although neither the degree of French unity nor the depth of French nationalism should be exaggerated, both were strong enough to give France a clear advantage over her neighbors for many centuries.^[57]

[57] . Strayer, "The Holy Land," 16.

Myriam Yardeni uses the felicitous phrase conscience nationale to describe this protonationalism, which manifested itself in other, non-Gallican, contexts, among which threats of (or actual) foreign invasion, naturally figured.^[58] When François I was defeated at Pavia, there was considerable fear in Paris that imperial troops would follow up that victory by an attack from the northeast, via the classic invasion route, because the Low Countries were under the rule of Charles V. Even before the regent's appeal to Parlement to help her organize the national defense, leading magistrates were rushing to do so. Président Antoine Le Viste is described as "un des premiers qui offrirent non seulement leurs biens, mais aussi leurs propres personnes pour la conservation du sol et de l'autorité royale . . . [il] offrit de garder en personne la porte St-Antoine, ce qu'il exécuta le 7 mars 1524."

Le Viste became one of the most influential members of a municipal council established for the national defense that raised troops, set up new fortifications, borrowed money, and in general took charge of the nation—thus ironically fulfilling the political role that François I had strenuously denied Parisian magistrates during the struggle over the Concordat.^[59] This action was quite in character for mainstream parlementaires. They did not press their advantage in the king's absence to the point of endangering the country, even at the moment they were exploiting it in the matter of St-Benoît. It was consistent with parlementaire values: opposition to the crown's violation of the Gallican liberties was a matter of national defense, on the highest level. Leaders of the court throughout the century figured as patriotic activists on the political scene, from Jean de Selve's repudiation of the Treaty of Madrid in 1526 to Guillaume Du Vair's defense of the Salic law in 1593.^[60]

The role of the magistrates is repeatedly underlined by Yardeni: "Aside from the clergy, education (culture ) became essentially the patrimony of the conquering robins ; they formed the intellectual elite of the nation. History and historiography were a part of this patrimony and consequently these [disciplines] were connected to a strongly juridical conception of the world."^[61]

This facet of parlementaire mentalité was christened "juridical nation-

[58] . Myriam Yardeni, La Conscience nationale en France pendant les guerres de religion (1559-1598) (Louvain, 1971), 26-27, 63-64.

[59] . Blanchard, Présidents , 143; Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 1:558-577.

[60] . Blanchard, Présidents , 61-62; Maugis, Parlement de Paris , 1:550-555 on historical precedent, and 1:640-641 on de Selve; L'Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux , ed. Brunet, 6:40-41 on Du Vair.

[61] . Yardeni, Conscience nationale , 63-64.

alism" by Vittorio de Caprariis and has been fully analyzed by him and by Donald Kelley. Starting with Seyssel's Monarchie , where France is described as le coeur du monde, légiste writers exalted the French constitution above all others, for uniqueness, antiquity, and continuity (sometimes straining this last to make a case). Coincident with the civil wars and certainly not by chance, fresh works on French history and politics poured from the presses. Du Moulin was a major contributor to the argument that the legal independence and individuality of the French monarchy was expressed not only in the Gallican liberties but also in the customary law, the fundamental laws, the Estates General, and the Parlement. Anything that diminished French unity or infringed upon its integrity—cultural or institutional—was interpreted as a violation of history and of the nation. The needs of a nation torn by civil war for something to bolster national pride were met by recourse to history—sometimes "edited" to make a point. The French monarchy was held to be "bound by no past but its own . . . the product of a unique historical experience," as Kelley puts it. Commenting on the contribution of feudal law to the development of historiography, he notes that the insistence of the "school of French historical law" (mos gallicus ) on French legal independence was both a manifestation of Renaissance scholarship and an anticipation of sociology, by placing political institutions in the context of geographical and economic conditions—a fresh approach often attributed to Jean Bodin. Handbooks on French institutions, usually comparing them to Roman, constituted a new genre of historical writing in the second half of the century. Kelley considers Du Haillan's Histoire de France (1576) the best example because it summarizes the state of scholarship and draws on Du Tillet as well as the legists.^[62]

The climax of juridical nationalism was reached by the scholarly Pléiade, whose members showed greater intellectual sophistication and whose examination of the national heritage was more critical—but they more than ever spoke for the Parlement. Antoine Loisel's "Dialogue des Avocats du Parlement de Paris," the most self-conscious expression of parlementaire mentalité (to be discussed in chapter 4), honors Pasquier with the role of Plato's Socrates. Loisel glorifies the "historical school of the Parlement of Paris," tracing its traditions from the great parlementaires of the late medieval period. Pasquier himself regarded the Parlement as the meeting place of king and people, "the basis of all the grandeur of France."^[63]

This group had much in common with the better-known Pléiade; both

[62] . Kelley, Foundations , 179, 181, 199, 196, 212-214.

[63] . Pasquier cited by Kelley, Foundations , 274; Loisel, "Dialogue des Avocats."

were champions of the vernacular and partners in the first of many waves of French cultural nationalism. Du Bellay's Deffense et Illustration de la langue françoise was published in 1549, the early edition of Pasquier's Recherches de la France about a dozen years later. Yardeni devotes a chapter to the role of language in the inclusive scope of national and patriotic sentiment in the sixteenth century. "La langue est le patrimoine de tous . . . l'élément de base de toute propagande."^[64]