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State Prelates in Renaissance France and England: New Light on the Formation of Early Modern States 1
Author(s) -
Michon Cédric
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2011.00809.x
Subject(s) - nobility , clan , opposition (politics) , politics , state (computer science) , the renaissance , ruler , bishops , holy see , ancient history , civil servants , history , law , political science , art history , mathematics , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics
This paper analyses the genesis of the Modern State in France and England through one of its components. It shows how bishops and other church leaders played a considerable role in both governments, being something like the ‘third pillar’ of government, but to different effect. While French prelates were of noble birth and shared values and attitudes of the nobility, their English counterparts were nearly all social upstarts, shaped by the universities they had attended rather than by the clans into which they had been born. So, while the church constituted yet another avenue by which aristocratic values permeated French political life, in England, State prelates used their university contacts – the ‘Cambridge Connection’– as a kind of extended family to face the aristocratic opposition. State prelates were a special instance of the growth of the Renaissance state, and in England as in France, specialization ultimately diminished the value of multi‐purpose state servants learned in canon and civil law. That is the reason why state prelates disappeared from their political role after 1560 in England and after 1600 in France.