Loyalty in the French 17th Century Erudite Discourse

The formation of new bonds of loyalty in early Modern France, which were supposed to connect representatives of the noble estate of the kingdom directly to the figure of the monarch, bypassing traditional patron-client ties, reflected itself in the writings of French scholars. Institutionally connected with the French crown through the positions of historiographers and geographers at the royal court, as well as by their positions in the public service as officials and lawyers, the French erudites bore and expressed the ideology of the strengthening the French absolutism. Various genealogies and extensive genealogical histories of French noble families composed by the erudites were connected with the process of clarifying the boundaries of the noble estate, as well as with promoting an idea of loyalty to the crown as a highest value. Since the turn of the sixteenth and 17th centuries, the figure of the monarch in erudite treatises within the context of the idea of loyalty became increasingly abstract,  names of the particular kings having almost completely disappeared from the dedications of erudite works. At the same time, the idea of loyalty to France as a whole was gaining strength, while France in itself was also designated as the “fatherland” (patrie) and was perceived not only as a unity of territories, but above all as a set of institutions and people. In addition to loyalty to a depersonalized homeland and  to the more and more abstract figure of French monarch, a different kind of loyalty emerged in the 17th century erudite discourse, as the one which focused on the personalities of statesmen who often headed the institutions to which the authors of the corresponding works belonged. The service of these persons for the glory of France and the French crown was particularly emphasized. The topics of erudite writings ranging from the history of the various French institutions,  the French monarchy and the French church to positions, dignities and titles, from the French language to the material remnants of French history (“antiquities”) also directed the reader’s mind to the idea of  service and loyalty towards France. However, the formation of the idea of loyalty in the French erudite discourse was of dual and ambivalent nature. On the one hand, it is impossible to deny the trend of developing loyalty of a depersonalized nature, focused primarily on France and the French monarchy. On the other hand, the dedications of the erudite writings make it obvious that there was a network of personal connections of the erudites with leading statesmen of the era, who were often at the same time both their superiors in the service and patrons of their intellectual pursuits. These statesmen may be considered as personifications of the institutions of the same extraterritorial France, to which the loyalty of the French scholars has largely belonged.