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The Political Laicization in the Early Modern France: From the Religious Wars to the Rise of Reason of State

  • Korean Review of French History
  • Abbr : KRFH
  • 2012, (26), pp.93~116
  • Publisher : KOREAN SOCIETY FOR FRENCH HISTORY
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

LIM Seung Hwi 1

1선문대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

After the Day of Dupes in 1630, Mathieu de Morgues, vehement writer anti-cardinal, bemoaned that “The France had no religion except the religion of State.” What does it mean? A pamphet written by a man of Richelieu, the Catholique d’Etat, provides the identity of this new religion. The argument of the Catholique d’Etat starts with a religious conception of the royal power in order to develop the ultimate principle of the separation between politic et religion. The “divine right” was the key weapon to assure the independence of the king’s power against the Church. The Catholique d’Etat, which presumed the State as the supreme law, asserts the inevitable political laicization. The State, armed with an autonomy and the sovereignty, became the public power running by political rationalism and realism. This political laicization in the French absolute monarchy probably began by the Religious War from 1562 to 1598, which was in effect the matrix of the french political culture. From this war emerged one arbitrary: the sovereign State of divine right. At the very moment, the State of France began to reign as the pacifier capable of imposing the public order to the different confessions which were antagonistic, because the state had the religious legitimacy, superior to the Church. This concept implies a theological revolution which enhanced the royal authority higher than the religious faith. The State separated from the religion was endowed with its proper religious authority, since then the religious was subordinated to the politic by the name of the public religiosity. It was this theological/political matrix where began the political laicization in France. However this laicization does not mean the laicization of the society, in other words, the end of the religion itself. In effect, the French monarchy pursued the political laicization, but, being not capable of dispeling completely the traditional logic of catholicism, it could not help appearing as an innovative reinterpretation of the traditional theology.

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