Mazarin

Mazarin
Author: Geoffrey Treasure
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2006-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134980590

Mazarin was the model statesman of the early modern period in French history. This book follows his career from pupil of the Jesuits, through legate in Paris and Avignon, to service for Louis XIII and beyond. Mazarin's role in the survival of absolute monarchy during the upheavals of the Fronde and his guidance of the young Louis XIV are given full weight. His crucial part in many diplomatic exchanges, and in particular those which brought an end to the Thirty Years War and the Franco-Spanish War, is examined in detail. His life is placed in the context of a study of the times, highlighting the rapidly changing nature of government.

Science and the State

Science and the State
Author: John Gascoigne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019-03-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107155673

The first historical overview of the partnership between science and the state from the Scientific Revolution to World War II.

Paris in the Age of Absolutism

Paris in the Age of Absolutism
Author: Orest A. Ranum
Publisher: Midland Books
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1979
Genre: History
ISBN:

By the eighteenth century, Paris was one of the great wonders of Europe, renowned for its magnificent royal monuments and as a center for science, literature, and the arts. More so than any other European city, Paris reflected the spirit of an age -- an age that reached its zenith with the reign of France's Sun King, Louis XIV. No book better captures that spirit than Orest Ranum's Paris in the Age of Absolutism. first published in 1968 and now reissued in a revised and expanded edition. Ranum's tour of Paris begins in the late 1500s with a French capital city exhausted by the violence of the Wars of Religion and proceeds through the long century that ends with the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Henry IV (1589-1610), head of the Bourbon branch of the royal family, laid the foundations of modern Paris, but it was during the mature years of his grandson, Louis XIV, and during the service of his visionary minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, that a New Rome was created. By 1715 the city was far different from what it had been in 1590. There were now large geometrical public squares with statues of the king at their focal point. There were arches of triumph, hospital-prisons, a new and gigantic wing on the Louvre, handsome stone bridges, streetlights, and massive stone quays along the Seine.

Laughing Matters

Laughing Matters
Author: Sara Beam
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501732374

Bawdy satirical plays—many starring law clerks and seminarians—savaged corrupt officials and royal policies in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century France. The Church and the royal court tolerated—and even commissioned—such performances, the audiences for which included men and women from every social class. From the mid-sixteenth century, however, local authorities began to temper and in some cases ban such performances. Sara Beam, in revealing how theater and politics were intimately intertwined, shows how the topics we joke about in public reflect and shape larger religious and political developments. For Beam, the eclipse of the vital tradition of satirical farce in late medieval and early modern France is a key aspect of the complex political and cultural factors that prepared the way for the emergence of the absolutist state. In her view, the Wars of Religion were the major reason attitudes toward the farceurs changed; local officials feared that satirical theater would stir up violence, and Counter-Reformation Catholicism proved hostile to the bawdiness that the clergy had earlier tolerated. In demonstrating that the efforts of provincial urban officials prepared the way for the taming of popular culture throughout France, Laughing Matters provides a compelling alternative to Norbert Elias's influential notion of the "civilizing process," which assigns to the royal court at Versailles the decisive role in the shift toward absolutism.

The True Law of Free Monarchies

The True Law of Free Monarchies
Author: James I (King of England)
Publisher: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1996
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780969751267

The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy

The Crisis of the Absolute Monarchy
Author: Julian Swann
Publisher: OUP/British Academy
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780197265383

This book brings together an international team of scholars from Britain, France and North America to examine the causes of the breakdown of the absolute monarchy in eighteenth-century France and offers a new interpretation of the origins of the Revolution of 1789.

A History of Law in Europe

A History of Law in Europe
Author: Antonio Padoa-Schioppa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 823
Release: 2017-08-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107180694

The first English translation of a comprehensive legal history of Europe from the early middle ages to the twentieth century, encompassing both the common aspects and the original developments of different countries. As well as legal scholars and professionals, it will appeal to those interested in the general history of European civilisation.

The Louvre and Versailles

The Louvre and Versailles
Author: Christopher Tadgell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 642
Release: 2020-05-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0429534167

This book traces the evolution of the great palaces of the Louvre and Versailles, from Pierre Lescot’s designs for expanding the former in the mid-16th century to the successive grands projets for the transformation of the latter over the course of the 18th century. Detailed architectural analysis is set in the context of the development of the medieval monarchy towards absolutism, the significance of Hispano-Burgundian court etiquette as a formative influence on planning, and the effect of the French monarchy’s financial incontinence on royal building ambitions. On the basis of exhaustive original research, recalling contemporary testimony and re-examining the works themselves, the book challenges recent scholarly accounts of the contributions of Claude Perrault and François Mansart to the Louvre and demonstrates the influence of schemes by Italian masters Pietro Cortona and Bernini on Ange-Jacques Gabriel’s designs for rebuilding Versailles. Finally, the book looks at the influence of the great French palaces on those seeking to emulate their ambition, from Stockholm in the late-17th century to the deliriously opulent late-19th century palace of Ludwig II of Bavaria at Herrenchiemsee. The book includes a wealth of illustrative material and supporting documents, which bring this comprehensive and authoritative text to life.