LITMIR.BIZ

       General Editor’s Introduction

      If one stands by the west wall of the church at Penmarc’h, by the Atlantic coast in south-west Brittany, one sees how this building was intended to be on a grand scale. Founded in 1508, it was to be paid for by the shipbuilders and shipowners of the parish, a testimony to their wealth as well as to their faith. The heads of three of them are depicted on the wall. Penmarc’h was then one of the most important and flourishing ports of France, sending ships south to Portugal and north to Britain, trading in fish and wine. It was natural that carvings of ships, fish, seagulls and sailors should decorate the church walls. But the great tower which was to crown the west wall was never completed. No statues were erected. Penmarc’h’s prosperity rapidly disappeared as the discovery of Newfoundland brought activity to the Normandy coast and as larger ships, some as large as 300 tons, took over the trade. The flat-bottomed boats of Penmarc’h, which were beached on the sand and on the river-beds, could not compete. Penmarc’h fell into obscurity, its only fame being its legends. A sad song tells how at night its people used to set up decoy lights to lure ships on to the rocks. One night they wrecked a ship only to discover that it had on board their own children, who drowned before their eyes.

      Penmarc’h tells us about France in the early modern period. We see how people in a distant part of the country successfully organized an inland as well as an external trade, supplying fish and seaweed as well as wine. We see how they could move rapidly from prosperity to poverty. Penmarc’h had its own town council to look after its affairs. In 1508 their ambition was to build a monumental church which would rival that of Quimper. They used to meet in the south porch and discuss all matters that concerned their locality, a practice that was encouraged by the senior clergy. The cult of saints was very specific. The church was dedicated to St Nonna, who had been archbishop of Armagh in the sixth century, and nearby, within Penmarc’h, the sixteenth-century chapel of Kerity was dedicated to the obscure St Thumette, who was a follower of St Ursuline and was beheaded. Penmarc’h was by no means isolated from the rest of France. In 1595, Fontenelle and his followers broke into the church by the north door and massacred some 3000 people who had taken refuge there. Fonetenelle was an adventurer, fighting against Henry IV. Thus Penmarc’h was acquainted with the Wars of Religion.

      Sixteenth-century France has to be seen in the context of the world beyond its borders. But Michelet meant more than this when, lecturing at the collège de France in 1841, he said that at the beginning of the sixteenth century France discovered that she was essential to Europe. There could be no Europe without France. France was always young and modern, and by the middle of the century was the most populous country in Europe. Towards the end of the previous century observers had lamented the desolation of a deserted countryside; now everything changed. By the 1550s it was said in Languedoc that men were multiplying like mice in a barn. But this large population was encircled by foreign countries. The powerful Charles V, master of territories that surrounded France, sought to reduce her power and to seize Burgundy, the country of his ancestors. France could not accept these limitations imposed by the Habsburgs. For some eighteen years, from 1541 to 1559, France was at war with Charles V and his successor Philip II. National sentiment grew and by the time of Ronsard’s poetry, the evocation of the strength and virtues of France had become one of the great themes of its literature. This at a time when the French language was becoming the language of medicine, science and history.

      This was the time, too, when the Venetian ambassadors reported that while France was not necessarily the richest or the most powerful of countries, it was the easiest to govern. The strength of France lay in its unity and the obedience of its inhabitants, who had given all power to the throne. Professor Knecht shows how such a judgement was far from being accurate. But the most famous work of the Savoyard bishop Claude de Seyssel was entitled La Monarchie de France. The power of kings did increase. The monarch was the agent who would preserve the harmony of the kingdom. A series of kings who ruled majestically and responsibly acquired a reserve and a stock of power that even the most foolish ruler could not exhaust. Yet central government retained its uncertainties, as when Henry II was killed while jousting, or Henry IV, in August 1589, found himself without subjects, without an administration, without money, obliged to undertake the conquest of his kingdom. Central government retained its limitations, since while the territorial unity of the country made progress, certain provinces retained their institutions along with their traditions.

      The court was large and populous, even when it was itinerant. Sometimes as many as 16,000 required accommodation and the chateaux of Chambord, Fontainebleau and the Louvre were constructed. Francis I was the reflective patron of the arts; Henry II became the great bibliophile of his time; and Henry IV imposed a sense of order and design on the construction of Paris, replacing the restlessness of earlier design and ornament.

      The Wars of Religion made for a dramatic revision of nationalism. France was torn apart, and even though the Protestants rallied to the royalism of Navarre and allied with their Catholic associates, the relations of church and state could never be the same again. Francis I protected the humanists – Calvin had dedicated the Latin edition of his Christian Institutes to him – but he could not tolerate those who attacked the mass.

      Thus the history of Renaissance France is rich and varied. Henry IV is supposed to have said, once he had accepted the Catholic faith in 1593, ‘France and I both need time to draw breath.’ That he might well have said it is understandable. There are those students of French history who are loyal to certain individuals, such as Clovis, or St Louis or Joan of Arc. Others prefer the Age of Classicism or the Age of the Enlightenment. Still others believe that French history only began with the Revolution of 1789. But Renaissance France is perhaps the richest period in French history. We are fortunate that Professor Knecht, the biographer of Francis I and a great expert on these years, is our guide. In studying this history we are only following the precepts of Francis I himself, who in 1527 told Jacques Colin how he wished his subjects to read history books and learn from the past.

      DOUGLAS JOHNSON, November 1995