Domestic Politics under François I and Henri II

Abstract

The causes of the process of centralisation that took place under François I and Henri II are found in the earlier history of the French monarchy. The emergence of lay elites, which we have already observed, lent it strong support. These men, brought up of necessity on Roman Law, were infused from an early age with the sense of royal prerogative enshrined in the dictum ‘rex in regno suo est imperator’ (‘a king is an emperor in his kingdom’). It was no coincidence that in 1461 Louis XI founded a law school at Bourges, which was to produce some of the greatest jurists of the following century, such as Cujas, Hotman and Doneau; nor that François I took such an interest in the law school at Poitiers. Oddly enough, in this age of secularisation of royal government, the teaching of canon law in the schools and universities (especially that of Paris) harmonised with that of the civilians in the writings of the theoreticians of monarchical authority. In his Insignia peculiaria Christianissimi Francorum regni (1520), Jean Ferrault derived his absolutist theory from that of the papal theocracy, enumerating twenty royal prerogatives. Charles de Grassaille took a similar approach in his Regalium Franciae libri duo (1538). Guillaume Budé, whose education at Paris had included studying canon law at the Sorbonne, composed a treatise for François I (perhaps in 1518) entitled L’Institution du Prince, in which he expounded the merits of a monarchy exempt from any accountability to clergy, aristocracy, or people. As the king held his power from God alone, God alone could call him to account.¹