Power and Piety: The Religiosity of Michel de Marillac

Abstract

The religiosity of Louis XIII’s garde des sceaux is well known, and so too is the principal source for this knowledge, the biography written a decade or two after Marillac’s death by his colleague and close friend Nicolas Lefèvre, sieur de Lezeau (1581-1680). But the present article is the first to focus on presenting Lezeau’s description in summary detail, to criticize it through reference to other contemporary material, and to set it in its religious/political context. No one as prominently dévot achieved such high office as did Marillac, so an examination of his blending of power and piety cannot be without significance. En route, the tripartite nature of Marillac’s accomplishments are also presented in an integrated way: his long career as a royal servant and councillor, his life-long moral and financial support of reformed religious orders, and his scholarly activities as translator and as institutional historian. His codification of French law, the Ordonnance de 1629, was the largest and most comprehensive in French history. The article’s author has just brought to fruition the transcribing and editing of Lezeau’s 600-page Vie de Michel de Marillac, hitherto unpublished, which will be appearing this summer.