GRASSAILLE, Charles de.

by Charles de Grassaille

£1,450 · Offered by Sokol Books

Second edition of this important political and legal treatise, one of a new generation of works, inspired by Jean Ferrault s Insignia peculiaria , that postulated Royal absolutism in France. Scholars have generally given only passing attention to a 24-folio booklet in Gothic characters entitled Insignia pecularia christianissimi Francorum regni numero viginti the work of an early sixteenth-century French writer, Jean Ferrault. Few books, however, are more important than Ferrault's for a clear understanding of the period of rising absolutism which extends from the first years of Francis I's reign to the beginning of the religious wars. Indeed, as Henri Hauser puts it, Insignia pecularia constitutes the point of departure of Gallican and royalist doctrine in France. After its first publication .. Insignia pecularia was the model that inspired the theorists of absolutism for over a quarter of a century. Barth él émy de Chasseneuz in his Catalogus gloriae mundi (1528) completes Ferrault's twenty privileges and enumerates 208 regalia, or cases, in which the king is sovereign. It is true, however, that he gives up Jean Ferrault's strict particularism. The privileges he enumerates do not belong solely to the king of France, but to all kings. However, Chasseneuz describes, as did Ferrault, the king's rights in dealing with the Gallican church as a delegation of the pope's supreme power. In 1538, Grassaille's Regalium Franciae libri duo further pursues the task undertaken by Ferrault.

• Binding: Hardcover

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