Chapter 5 - ‘Brutish Thunderbolts’: Papal Power and the League

Summary

Chapter Five focusses specifically on the issue of papal power, and particularly the heightening of tensions brought about by the question of receiving the Tridentine decrees in France. It aims both to contextualise the League debates, and to position them in relation to the ongoing question of the precise content of the Gallican liberties. In the work of lawyers, such as Antoine Hotman and Louis Dorléans, and theologians such as Gilbert Génébrard, Jean Porthaise and Jean Boucher, the deliberations over the Tridentine decrees are shown to be anchored in the context of a revival of late medieval conciliarism, and the still-resonant clash between royal and papal power embodied in the disputes between Boniface VIII and Phillip IV (1296–1303). From the problem of Sixtus V’s power of excommunication, to the troubled issue of Henri IV’s abjuration of Protestantism, this chapter further indicates that these debates, transformed and adapted from the medieval era, would go on to define Henri IV’s reign after 1594 and last well beyond the life span of the League itself.