Michel de L'Hospital

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Michel de l'Hospital

Michel de L'Hospital (also L'Hôpital , Latinized Michael Hospitalius ; * around 1505 in Aigueperse in Auvergne ; † March 13, 1573 at Château Bélesbat near Étampes ) was a French statesman, lawyer and humanistic writer.

Life

Education and advancement

Michel de L'Hospital was the son of an exiled doctor who studied law in Toulouse . However, for financial or political reasons, he had to continue his studies abroad ( Padua , later Bologna ). He served Emperor Charles V and the papal court before returning to France in 1534 , where he became a lawyer. Three years later he became a councilor at the Parlement of Paris and earned the trust of several members of the royal family.

In 1547 King Henry II sent him on a diplomatic mission to the Council of Trent in Bologna. After having been Chancellor of Margaret , sister of the king and (then) Duchess of Berry , in 1553, on the recommendation of Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, he became responsible for petitions addressed to the king, and two years later he became the first President of the Treasury appointed.

Chancellor

During the short reign of the ailing King Francis II , the two uncles of Queen Maria Stuart , the Guisen François and the aforementioned Cardinal Charles gained a lot of influence. To counter this, the Queen Mother Catherine de Medici ensured that the neutral l'Hospital was named Chancelier de France in 1560 .

He had the Parlement of Paris put the Huguenot-friendly edict of Romorantin into effect; all heretic trials - up to a planned church reform - were also interrupted. The attempt by Huguenot conspirators to kidnap the king (the Amboise conspiracy ) did nothing to change this policy . Even during the reign of the Queen Mother for King Charles IX. he remained chancellor (until 1562).

Tolerance towards dissenters and moderation were characteristic of his entire policy; he tried to spread it in innumerable speeches and in writings. The Traité de la reformation de la justice and the Mémoire sur la nécessité de mettre un terme à la guerre civile are particularly worth mentioning here. L'Hospital pursued a balancing act between the two warring parties (the Old Believer Catholics and the Calvinist Huguenots).

The meeting of the Estates General (December 1560) was soon followed by the Edict of Orléans , and after the - unsuccessful - religious discussion of Poissy in January 1562 came the Edict of Saint-Germain . It was the most liberal edict the Huguenots had ever achieved. However, it was not actually implemented, but largely watered down by implementing provisions. With the massacre of Huguenots at Vassy (1562), Duke François von Guise then torpedoed the Chancellor's policy; the bloodbath sparked the First Huguenot War .

resignation

L'Hospital, whose dismissal the papal legate Hippolytus had requested for some time, finally resigned from his office and retired to his estate at Bélesbat near Vignay (near Étampes ). His philosophy of tolerance and the politics of compromise were the reason why he was said to have co-founded the Politiques , a group of moderate Catholics in France who advocated peaceful solutions during the subsequent religious wars.

After the peace treaty of Amboise (1563), l'Hospital returned to the royal court. On his advice, the 13-year-old Karl IX. Declared of legal age by the Parlement of Rouen in August 1563 . It is also due to his influence that the following year the royal council refused to publish the decisions of the Tridentine Council . He accompanied the young king and his mother on their tour of the French provinces from April 1564 to January 1566. In that year, his efforts to implement a judicial and administrative reform in France finally bore fruit: the Ordonnance de Moulins .

Discharge

Since l'Hospital placed the public interest above that of the religious parties, he was violently attacked by the Catholic side. The Queen Mother tried to use the religious tensions for her power politics and to pit the parties against each other, but the situation got increasingly out of control. The Second Huguenot War broke out in September 1567 and L'Hospital demanded that he be released in February 1568; his title and remuneration remained with him.

It is not certain that he ever became a Protestant (his wife was a Calvinist). Although some thought he was a Huguenot, he went to mass regularly (according to the Catholic rite). L'Hospital can be described as a liberal skeptic to whom - like Michel de Montaigne , who also acted as a moderator - the differences between denominations seemed less important. He survived the persecutions after the Bartholomew Night unscathed. He had retired to his estate at Bélesbat, where he devoted himself to writing and lived until his death in 1573.

Politiques

The Politiques formed the middle party that tried to find a balance during the French wars of religion . As early as the early 60s of the 16th century, this expression was used to refer to the politics of Catherine de Medici and her Chancellor Michel de l'Hospital. The Party of Politiques stood for strong monarchical power, but accepted the idea of ​​tolerance towards the Huguenots. She insisted that it was not the government's job to suppress heresy, but rather to maintain peace and order. In a later phase, many representatives of the Politiques made common cause with the Huguenots against the Holy League .

Works (selection)

  • Traité de la reformation de la justice
  • Mémoire sur la nécessité de mettre un terme à la guerre civile
  • Le but de la guerre et de la paix, ou discours pour exhorter Charles IX à thunder la paix à ses sujets (1570)

Editions and translations

  • Perrine Galand, Loris Petris (Ed.): Michel de L'Hospital: Carmina. Droz, Genève 2014 ff. (Critical edition of the Latin poems with French translation)

literature

  • Jean Héritier: Michel de L'Hospital. Flammarion, Paris 1943.
  • Albert Buisson: Michel de L'Hospital (1503-1573) . Hachette, Paris 1950.
  • Denis Crouzet: La sagesse et le malheur. Michel de L'Hospital, chancelier de France . Champ Vallon, Seyssel 1998, ISBN 2-87673-276-9 .
  • Seong-Hak Kim: Michel de L'Hôpital. The vision of a reformist chancellor during the French religious wars (= Sixteenth century essays & studies 36). Sixteenth Century Journal Publ., Kirksville 1997, ISBN 0-940474-38-7 .
  • Loris Petris: La plume et la tribune: Michel de L'Hospital et ses discours (1559 - 1562) (= Travaux d'humanisme et renaissance 360). Droz, Genève 2002, ISBN 2-600-00646-X .

Web links

Commons : Michel de l'Hospital  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files