Herrschaft und Reziprozität: Vom Sichtbarwerden der Gegenseitigkeit in Krieg und Konflikt (Paris – Rom 1589)

Abstract

Rule and Reciprocity. The Dependencies between Sovereign andSubjects becoming visible in War and Conflict (Paris - Rome 1589). Political crises in Early Modern Times made the reciprocity visible of both, the relationship between rulers and ruled, as well as that between the ecclesiastical and secular powers. This is demonstrated regarding the culmination of the confrontation between King, Catholic League and Huguenots in France in 1589 after the murder of the duke and cardinal Guise by king Henri III (reg. 1574-1589) in 1588 and how the French negotiated that case at the Roman curia before Sixtus V and the special congregation of French affairs, chaired by the great inquisitor Giulio Antonio Santori cardinal of Santa Severina. The major catholic monarchomach treatise De justa Henrici tertii abdicatione, attributed to Jean Boucher, is shown not to be a plagiarism of the Calvinist monarchomachs and not to post-date the murder of Henri III - as research assumes since the nineteenth century. It rather continued the teaching of the school of Salamanca, and it served as expression of the League's constitutional thought in that Roman context. New archival findings help to understand how this case can be understood as a part of a possibly larger approach to historicize 'reciprocity'.