Spiritual Reform, Mendicant Autonomy, and State Formation: French Franciscan Disputes before the Parlement of Paris, 1500-1600

Abstract

During the sixteenth century, more and more disputes between the four orders of mendicant clergy (Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite, and Augustinian) and their superiors were making their way before the courts of parlement, even though jurisdiction in such cases legally belonged to the Catholic Church. As angry as church authorities were that the parlement was hearing these cases, they were even more perturbed to find the mendicant clergy were willfully complicit in this transfer of juridical authority. The appeal of the friars to the secular authority of the parlement violated centuries of ecclesiastic tradition. One obvious question to ask as a historian is why. Examination of disputes between the Franciscan friars and their generals in the registers of the parlement between 1500 and 1600 suggests that the explanation lies in the reform movements sweeping through the four orders of mendicant clergy from the fifteenth century onward. Study of Franciscan legal cases shows that these religious were turning to the parlement in increasing numbers after 1500 as a buffer against the reforming and centralizing tendencies of their generals and other ecclesiastic superiors. On a case-by-case basis, the friars encouraged the parlement to extend its authority further into a matter traditionally regarded as the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church: ecclesiastic discipline. In doing so, I will argue, the Franciscans and other mendicant clergy transformed not only relations between the parlement and French religious institutions but also their own place in the juridical structure of France.