Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:13:34.055Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The chose publique and Urban Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

James B. Collins
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

Medieval municipal deliberations survive from towns such as Lyon and Toulouse; after 1500, even more records can be searched. Using deliberations from twenty towns around France, and documentation such as guild statutes and grievances sent to the king, this chapter examines urban and local politics. The guild statutes invariably cited the “bien public” or the “bien de la chose publique” in their opening justifications. Dijon’s long record of such statutes, enables us to see their evolution over time. Even princes maintained a steady usage of “bien public” with respect to economic matters. This chapter also examines the considerable regional differences in political rhetoric: the Paris region, the Loire Valley, Normandy, and Brittany became early strongholds of the “bien de la chose publique.” Flanders and southern France held out against this new vocabulary until well into the fifteenth century. In the early sixteenth century, especially in Paris and other cities with Parlements, the legal elite began to shift away from the crudely vernacular “chose publique” to the Latinizing “respublique” as the French term of choice for the Latin res publica, presaging a rift between the Parisian legal elite and regional elites, with respect to the definition of a monarchical commonwealth.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×