The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France

Francis and his ministers also began reforming the fiscal administration. The revenues most susceptible to corruption were the irregular ones, which were collected and handled in an ad hoc way by many officials. A measure of centralization was needed to ensure that they were properly collected, used and accounted for. The first step taken in this direction was the creation on 18 March of the Trésorier de l’Epargne with powers to collect and disburse all royal revenues save those from the demesne and from regular taxation. Alone among the fiscal officials, he was exempt from supervision by the trésoriers de France and généraux des finances. He took his oath of office to the king alone. The first man appointed to the post was Philibert Babou. In December his powers were considerably enlarged. He was now to receive all royal revenues after deduction of customary local expenses and authorized to make disbursements sanctioned only by royal warrants. This, however, was too heavy a burden. In June 1524, Babou was made responsible only for revenues from the demesne and taxation, while another official, called Receveur des parties casuelles, was put in charge of the rest.

In July 1524 an edict claimed that the new fiscal system had proved a success. The king had apparently been spared the need to cut back wages and pensions and had cleared many debts. Although part of his revenues continued to be spent locally, the fact that all payments now had to be authorized by a single official instead of a dozen meant that the king had a tighter control of expenditure. He was also better able to know how much cash he disposed of for emergencies. Another effect of the reforms was the destruction of the influence of the trésoriers de France and généraux des finances. Their offices survived, but their powers were drastically reduced: they continued to carry out inspections in their respective districts, but policy-making was left firmly in the hands of the king and his council.

The treason of Bourbon (1523)

Francis now prepared to lead a new invasion of Italy. On 23 July he went to Saint-Denis and, as was the custom, placed the relics of the patron saint on the high altar, where they were to remain for the duration of the military campaign. On 12 August, at Gien, he appointed his mother as regent for the second time. Four days later, however, he received a letter from Louis de Brézé, sénéchal of Normandy, warning him of a treason plot by the Constable of Bourbon.

Charles duc de Bourbon was Francis I’s most powerful vassal. He owned three duchies, seven counties, two vicomtés and seven seigneuries. All these territories, save three, formed a compact bloc in central France. In addition to his French fiefs, Bourbon also had three lordships within the Holy Roman Empire, making him the vassal of both the emperor and the king of France. Within his domain he was virtually all-powerful: he raised troops, levied taxes, dispensed justice and summoned the estates. His chateau at Moulins was one of the finest in France. As constable, Bourbon had charge of the king’s army in peacetime: he enforced discipline, supervised supplies, appointed commissioners of musters, authorized military expenditure and allocated troops to garrison towns. In wartime he commanded the army in the king’s absence or the vanguard in his presence. On ceremonial occasions he carried the king’s naked sword. Bourbon was also Grand chambrier, responsible for the smooth running of the king’s chamber, and governor of Languedoc, where he represented the king though he delegated his functions to a lieutenant. The duke was related to Francis by marriage, for his wife Suzanne was Louise of Savoy’s first cousin.

Relations between Francis and Charles de Bourbon were good, if not intimate, during the first five years of the reign. No special significance need be attached to the fact that Bourbon was recalled from Milan in 1516 and replaced as lieutenant-general by Marshal Lautrec. He continued to appear at court fairly often. In 1521, however, he was not chosen to lead the vanguard during the campaign in northern France, his rightful place being taken by the king’s brother-in-law, Alençon. This was a snub, which it is tempting to link to the death of Bourbon’s wife in April of that year. She had made a will in her husband’s favour, which was challenged by the king and his mother.

Charles de Bourbon belonged to the younger branch of the house founded in the fourteenth century by Robert de Clermont, sixth son of King Louis IX. In 1443 its lands were divided between the two sons of duc Jean I and it looked for a time as if the two branches would go their separate ways; but in 1488 the lands of the elder branch passed into the hands of Pierre de Beaujeu, who, having no son, bequeathed them to his daughter Suzanne. When she married Charles the lands of both branches were reunited. Even so, her inheritance comprised lands of three kinds: first, lands which had originally been detached from the royal demesne as apanages and which, in theory, were to revert to it on the extinction of the family for which they had been created; secondly, lands due to escheat to the crown in the event of a failure of the direct or male line; and thirdly, lands that could be passed on to heirs male or female, direct or collateral.

In April 1522, Louise of Savoy claimed Suzanne’s inheritance as her first cousin and nearest blood relative. At the same time Francis claimed the return to the crown of all her fiefs that were only transmissible to male heirs. The two claims were contradictory, but Francis and his mother were obviously working towards the same end: the dismantling of the Bourbon demesne. As the duke was a peer of the realm, it was up to the parlement to decide the rights and wrongs of the various claims, but on 7 October, before it could pass judgement, Louise paid homage to the king for most of the disputed lands. By accepting her oath, he implicitly recognized her claim, and soon afterwards he gave her lands and revenues pertaining to the inheritance of Suzanne’s mother, Anne de France, who had died in November. On 6 August 1523 the parlement ordered the sequestration of Bourbon’s lands.

The death of Suzanne had also created another problem. As her only son had died, Charles needed to remarry in order to perpetuate his line. At thirty-one he was a most eligible widower. Even in Suzanne’s lifetime he had been offered the hand of one of the emperor’s sisters, an offer that was now renewed. Such a marriage would seriously threaten the territorial integrity of France. At the same time, it seems, Bourbon found himself under pressure to marry a French princess of royal blood. Louise herself may have been a suitor. Be that as it may, the duke grew increasingly restless. Early in 1523, during a visit to Paris, he allegedly quarrelled with the king, who had accused him of planning a secret marriage. In fact, Bourbon had been dabbling in treason for some time.

In August 1522 the imperial chamberlain, Beaurain, was informed that Bourbon was prepared to lead a rebellion and eight months later was empowered to negotiate with him on behalf of Charles V and Henry VIII. He met the constable secretly at Montbrison on 11 July and signed a treaty. Bourbon was promised the hand of one of Charles’s sisters and a dowry of 100,000 écus. The emperor was to invade Languedoc from Spain and place 10,000 landsknechts at Bourbon’s disposal. Henry was to invade Normandy and subsidize the constable to the tune of 100,000 écus. Bourbon’s plan was to wait for Francis to invade Italy, then to rise in his rear, using the emperor’s landsknechts. But news of the plot soon leaked out. Two noblemen informed their confessor, the bishop of Lisieux, who passed the information to Louis de Brézé. On 10 August he wrote the letter which Francis received as he was travelling south to join his army.

The king’s reaction to the disclosure of Bourbon’s plot was remarkably cool. He went to Moulins with an armed escort and, finding the duke ill in bed, told him of the warning he had received. Pretending not to believe it, he made various promises to Bourbon on condition that he accompanied him to Italy. The constable agreed, but asked for time to recover from his illness. This was granted and the king continued his journey to Lyon. A few days later Bourbon left Moulins, only to turn back almost at once. On 6 September he met Henry VIII’s envoy, Sir John Russell, at Gayette and formalized his relations with England. By now Francis was convinced of the duke’s treason. On 5 September three of Bourbon’s accomplices – Jean de Poitiers, seigneur de Saint-Vallier, Antoine de Chabannes, bishop of Le Puy, and Aymar de Prie – were arrested. Two days later Bourbon, who had retired to the fortress of Chantelle, severed his allegiance. Next day he fled with a few companions and, after wandering through the mountains of Auvergne, crossed the Rhône into imperial territory.

The plot had failed, but Francis was unsure of its extent. He decided to remain in France to face developments and handed over his command in Italy to Bonnivet. The wisdom of his change of plan was soon demonstrated when a large English army under the duke of Suffolk invaded Picardy on 19 September. Suffolk’s initial objective was Boulogne, but he was persuaded to march on Paris instead. By late October he was only fifty miles from the capital. Francis dispatched Philippe Chabot to reassure the panic-stricken population, but the English withdrew of their own accord. By mid-December they were back in Calais. Bourbon, meanwhile, prepared to invade Franche-Comté, but he failed to receive the landsknechts he had been promised by Charles V. So he retired to Italy, hoping eventually to join the emperor in Spain.

In the meantime, a special commission was set up by Francis to try Bourbon’s accomplices. The four judges were ordered to use torture if necessary to gain information and to mete out exemplary punishments to all the plotters save the constable, whose fate was reserved to the king’s judgement. The commissioners thought the parlement was the appropriate tribunal, and Francis eventually deferred to their wishes. In December, Bourbon’s accomplices were moved from their prison at Loches to Paris for trial. Saint-Vallier was sentenced to death on 16 January, but was reprieved just as he was about to be beheaded and remained a prisoner at Loches until his release in 1526. Legend has it that his daughter, Diane de Poitiers, had given her favours to the king in return for her father’s life. Other plotters were treated even more leniently, presumably because they incriminated friends who had fled abroad.

Francis needed to regain the confidence of Parisians, who felt that he had left them defenceless while pursuing his Italian adventures. On 6 March, at the Hôtel de Ville, he presented himself as the innocent victim of Bourbon’s treachery. Many Parisians, it seems, sympathized with the constable, whose trial in absentia opened in the parlement on 8 March. Pierre Lizet, the avocat du roi, demanded that he be sentenced to death and all his property confiscated, but the parlement merely ordered his arrest and imprisonment along with the seizure of his property. At a lit de justice on 9 March, Francis expressed dismay that the property of Bourbon’s accomplices had not been seized. Their crime, he said, ought not to be treated merely as a civil case. On 16 May he ordered a retrial and appointed nineteen new judges to sit alongside the original ones. Yet Bourbon’s accomplices were not sentenced till July. While De Prie, Popillon and d’Escars were lightly punished, savage, albeit unenforceable, sentences were passed on the constable’s men who had fled abroad. The only sentence left outstanding was Bourbon’s own which had to await the king’s pleasure.

Meanwhile, Bonnivet made some headway in northern Italy: after crossing the Ticino on 14 September, he forced the imperialists under Colonna to fall back on Milan. But, failing to press home his advantage, he allowed Colonna time to prepare Milan’s defences. When Bonnivet resumed his advance, the city was too strong to be stormed; he tried to starve it out, but, as winter closed in, he withdrew to Abbiategrasso. In March 1524, Charles de Lannoy, viceroy of Naples, launched a powerful counteroffensive. After suffering terrible hardship during the winter, Bonnivet’s army lacked food and ammunition; so many horses had died that the men-at-arms were reduced to riding ponies. As Bonnivet retreated across the River Sesia, he was badly wounded by a sniper’s bullet and had to hand over his command to the comte de Saint-Pol. On 30 April, Bayard, the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, was fatally wounded. On reaching the Alps, the French and the Swiss parted on the worst possible terms. Their defeat had been truly crushing.

In May 1524, Henry VIII and Charles V signed a new treaty. Each agreed to contribute 100,000 crowns towards an invasion of France led by Bourbon, who somewhat reluctantly agreed to put the crown of France on Henry’s head. On 1 July, acting as the emperor’s lieutenant-general, he invaded Provence from Italy. The French under Lapalice were too weak to offer resistance. Town after town fell to the invaders. Bourbon entered Aix on 9 August and declared himself count of Provence. Ten days later he laid siege to Marseille as Francis brought an army to Avignon. On 21 September the constable ordered his men to storm Marseille through a breach in its wall which his guns had opened up, but, seeing the obstacles that awaited them beyond, they refused. On the brink of despair, Bourbon thought of engaging Francis in battle, but was persuaded by his captains not to be so reckless. So, lifting the siege of Marseille, he retreated along the coast towards Italy, leaving the way clear for Francis to cross the Alps once more.

Success can smile on a monarch too soon. The victory Francis had won at Marignano in 1515 had given him an inflated view of his generalship. Believing that only the incompetence of his lieutenants had lost him Milan, he now imagined that he would only need to reappear in Italy at the head of his troops to win back all the lost ground. Events were to prove him wrong.

SEVEN The New Learning and heresy(1483–1525)

The late fifteenth century was marked by a deep spiritual malaise throughout Christendom. It would be wrong, however, to imagine that the Renaissance had created a mood of scepticism among the laity in respect of the traditional teachings of the church. Piety still flourished. Pilgrimages and the cult of saints were as popular as ever. However, on a more sophisticated level, that of the theologians in the universities, sharp differences existed regarding the philosophical foundations of Christian belief. Three currents of thought existed simultaneously: scholasticism, mysticism and humanism.

The University of Paris on the eve of the Reformation

The University of Paris comprised four faculties: Theology, Canon Law, Medicine and Arts. The first three were graduate faculties, whose members had to be doctors. The Faculty of Arts was made up of those who had obtained the degree of Master of Arts, a prerequisite for doctoral study in the other faculties. The beginner in arts was usually about fifteen years old. He attached himself to a master, registered with one of four ‘nations’ and paid a means-tested fee. By 1500 nearly all the teaching took place in one of about forty secular colleges. The mendicants were taught in their own convents, while other religious orders maintained residential colleges (studia) where their members lived while pursuing the arts course. The usual period of study in arts was three and a half years, which was commonly followed by a trial regency of a year and a half, making five in all. Following this quinquennium, the student became a regent master. A Master of Arts who wished to become a doctor of theology had to study for another thirteen or fifteen years. The Bible and the Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1100–64) formed the core of the long curriculum. Lectures took place in several colleges and in the studia of the religious orders. Each bachelor lectured in the college or convent to which he was affiliated.

In theory, doctors of theology were licensed to ‘read, dispute, deliberate, and teach’ in the faculty; in practice, few did all of these things. Many were content to give simply one annual lecture on the feast of St Euphemia. Their main function was to preside over the disputations and inaugural lectures of students. Another major duty was attendance at regular meetings of the faculty, especially those called to deal with important matters. From 1506 to 1520 the average number of meetings was 27 per annum and they normally took place in the chapel or refectory of the convent of Saint Mathurin. A doctor’s income, made up of fees from students and fringe benefits, barely compensated for his long years of training. The main attraction of the doctorate in theology was prestige: it enabled the holder to deliberate on the highest matters of faith and to help decide matters of religious and political significance. Both church and state were in the habit of consulting the university’s theologians on various issues. They were consulted about 70 times on matters of doctrine or morals between 1500 and 1542 and such deliberations sometimes led the doctors to challenge papal authority.

Scholasticism

The Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris was, by virtue of its teaching, the preaching of its masters and the doctrinal judgements of its assembly, the sovereign interpreter of dogma. All its learning was drawn from the Bible, the only source of divine knowledge, and Lombard’s Book of Sentences. However in the fifteenth century all notion of a critical study of Scripture had been lost. A decision of the council of Vienne of 1311 that oriental languages should be taught in the principal European universities had been ignored, so theologians were unable to read the Old Testament in the original Hebrew or the New in the original Greek. They were content instead with the quadruple method of exegesis: historical, allegorical, analogical and tropological. In applying this method they preferred the interpretations of medieval scholars, like Nicholas of Lyra, to those of the early church fathers. Above all they relied on the Book of Sentences, a compendium of answers to metaphysical and ethical problems written in the twelfth century.

The Faculty of Arts regarded Aristotle’s writings as the fount of all knowledge, but, as the Parisian masters knew no Greek, they had to rely on mediocre Latin versions. They used the gloss by Averroes, the twelfth-century Arab philosopher, to build up their own theories on the world and on man. Outstanding among thirteenth-century doctors at the university was St Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophy was largely shaped by Aristotle’s metaphysical writings. In his judgement, knowledge of God was attainable through reason with the assistance of Scripture and the traditional teaching of the church. However, the certainties inherent in his teaching were challenged by Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) and, more recently, by William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347). The latter denied that spiritual concepts could be grasped merely through reason. Divine truth, in his opinion, lay beyond the reach of the human intellect; obscurely expressed in Scripture, it was held in trust by the church and could only be apprehended through its teaching.

The new doctrine, called Nominalism as distinct from the Realism of Aquinas, seemed to demote knowledge into a mere study of ideas and for this reason it was twice condemned by the University of Paris, but during the second half of the fourteenth century it managed to gain dominance. The Nominalists, instead of building on Ockham’s ideas, were content merely to repeat them. They even narrowed their scope, withdrawing into a study of formal logic that was both abstract and sterile. They created a new philosophy, called Terminism, which became for the sixteenth-century humanists the epitome of intellectual backwardness and confusion. The triumph of Nominalism effectively paralysed the study of theology in the university. Christianity was reduced to a collection of affirmations that had to be accepted without thought or love, and the Christian life to the observance of formal practices and performance of good works.

By the second half of the fifteenth century the University of Paris no longer had the philosophical mastery which for three centuries had been its glory and pride. It seemed uninterested even in publishing the works of its greatest doctors. Scholars who wanted them had to turn to printers outside France. Biblical studies also languished. The first Bible to be printed in Paris appeared in 1476, twenty-five years after Gutenberg’s Mainz edition. Studying the Bible occupied less of the working time of teachers and students of theology than debating Lombard’s Sentences. Nor did patristic studies make up for the poverty of speculation. The Parisian presses largely neglected the writings of the Fathers. Theologians seemed interested only in the Immaculate Conception, a doctrine that had gained wide popular currency since the thirteenth century.

Mysticism

Terminism was too dry and formal a doctrine to satisfy many Christians; sooner or later it was bound to provoke a reaction. A strong mystical tradition existed in Paris, reaching back to such fourteenth-century teachers as Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, but it was in the Low Countries that late medieval mysticism underwent a remarkable flowering. A major ascetic movement which drew large numbers of laity was the Devotio Modema. Its followers, the Brethren of the Common Life, avoided formal vows while sharing a life in common dedicated to poverty, chastity and obedience. Their founder, Geert Groote (1340–84), wanted religion to be simple, devout and charitable. By the early fifteenth century the Brethren had numerous houses in the Low Countries, Germany and the Rhineland. Their ideals were best expressed in the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. The Brethren were closely associated with a house of Canons Regular founded at Windesheim in 1387. Rejecting the Nominalists’ dumb acceptance of the church’s teaching, they found the truth of Christianity in the Bible and liked to read St Augustine and St Bernard, the two great exponents of the inner life and divine love.

An important link between the mysticism of the Low Countries and France was Jean Standonck, a pupil of the Brethren who eventually settled in Paris. After completing the arts course, he entered the collège de Montaigu to study theology and in 1483 became its principal. Though French was not his native tongue, he became a popular preacher. He relinquished the personal use of money and, chastising his body relentlessly, gave all he had to the poor. At Montaigu he imposed a harsh discipline on the students, hoping to develop among them an active and mystical piety. The rule he drew up for a college of poor students which he set up alongside Montaigu has been described as ‘one of the capital monuments of the Catholic reformation at the start of the sixteenth century’.

While the Faculty of Theology continued its arid Nominalist teaching, many Parisian clergy turned to St Bernard and St Augustine for spiritual comfort. The mystical writings of d’Ailly and Gerson were also popular, as were books produced by the Brethren of the Common Life and the canons of Windesheim. However, it was mainly through the Imitation of Christ that theologians in Paris were influenced by Dutch religious thought. Many editions were available after 1490: a partial French version was printed in 1484 and a full translation in 1493. It was the antidote to the arid discipline of the the Terminists and Scotists; it sustained and satisfied the desire for a more personal faith which scholastic teaching threatened to stifle.