French Cafe » French History

The Efflorescence of Caricature, 1759-1838

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:50:11 +0000

The English Republican Tradition and Eighteenth-Century France * De la souverainete du people, et de l’excellence d’un etat libre

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The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance

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Why the Dreyfus Affair matters * For the soul of France: culture wars in the age of Dreyfus * The man on Devil’s Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the affair that divided France * Les artistes et l’affaire Dreyfus: 1898-1908

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:50:11 +0000

Moving Mars: The Logistical Geography of Louis XIV’S France

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:50:11 +0000

This article considers France’s military potential in the later seventeenth century through an examination of logistical resources and the communication systems that could link these resources to military operations. It challenges the assumption that France possessed a military advantage as a geographically contiguous and resource-rich territory apparently able to sustain military operations on interior lines. It shows how both natural and institutional barriers handicapped France’s efforts to support military operations, despite the impressive levels of military mobilization achieved under Louis XIV.

A godly Fronde? Jansenism and the mid-seventeenth-century crisis of the French monarchy

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:50:11 +0000

This article gives sceptical attention to claims made by both contemporaries and subsequent historians about the involvement of Jansenists in the Fronde and subsequent resistance to royal government in the 1650s. It explores both the difficulties of separating Jansenists from a wider group of reforming rigorists within the Catholic Church, and the dangers of accepting positions and assertions that were the result of polemical debate and later religious and political antagonisms. The author finds little or no evidence for the direct involvement of Jansenists in revolt, whether in Paris or in the provincial risings, and argues that the motives of those, whether religious or secular, who continued resistance to Cardinal Mazarin in the later 1650s had little or nothing to do with adherence to Jansenist principles. There is a clear discontinuity between the Jansenist-inspired resistance to royal government in the eighteenth century and the roles played by Jansenists in the events of the 1650s.

Rendering justice in witch trials: the case of the val de Liepvre

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:50:11 +0000

The borderland of the val de Lièpvre, with lands in Alsace and in the Duchy of Lorraine, and divided by religion and language, offers a rich collection of sources for the history of witchcraft persecution. The territory sharply reveals what was undoubtedly characteristic of witchcraft trials more widely. The crime of witchcraft was considered abominable before the Christian community and God, and its prosecution justified abandoning many of the safeguards and constraints in legal procedure, whether restrictions on the use of torture, the reliance on dubious testimony or even denial of advocacy to the witches. The action of the judges was nonetheless, as they understood it, the rendering of true justice, by punishing the culprits with a harshness that would expiate their crimes before the community and preserve them from damnation in the face of God’s judgment.

Thinking with Montaigne: Evidence, scepticism and meaning in early modern demonology

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In 1612 the Bordeaux witchcraft inquisitor Pierre de Lancre (1556–1631), himself linked by marriage to Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), revealed that the essayist and sceptic was related on his mother’s side to a leading authority on magic and superstition, the Flemish-Spanish Jesuit Martin Delrio (1551–1608). De Lancre confounded historians’ expectations by using the revelation to defend Montaigne against his cousin’s criticism. This article re-evaluates the relationships of De Lancre, Delrio and Montaigne in the light of recent scholarship, which casts demonology as a form of ‘resistance to scepticism’ that conceals deep anxiety about the existence of the supernatural. It explores De Lancre’s and Delrio’s very different attitudes towards Montaigne and towards evidence and scepticism. This, in turn, reveals the different underlying preoccupations of their witchcraft treatises. It hence argues that no monocausal explanation linking scepticism to witchcraft belief is plausible.

Crossing boundaries: women’s gossip, insults and violence in sixteenth-century France

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Using evidence from cases recorded in the registers of the consistories of southern France, the author investigates the way in which Languedocian women policed each other’s behaviour, enforcing a collective morality through gossip, sexual insult and physical confrontation. In contrast to case studies by other historians, it is argued here that gossip does appear to have been a peculiarly female activity, but far more than simply being an outlet for malice or prurience, it gave women a distinctive social role in the town. No less evident is the involvement of women in physical violence both against each other and against men, violence which, though less extreme than its male counterpart, nonetheless occupies a significant role in the proceedings of the consistories.

Robin Briggs–Historian

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:50:11 +0000