4 Chapter 4: National Sovereignty~ Command, Control and Royal Absolutism

Religious Divide and Clear Borders

The Reformations, Protestant and Counter, created a religious divide throughout Europe.  The Christian experience had broadened, in a sense.  Protestants embraced the Lutheran ideas that allowed them to take a lead role in their own salvation and practice of their faith.  Catholics refused these new perspectives and instead found spiritual comfort in the history and traditions of the Catholic Church.  There was bound to be some political turmoil.  And indeed there was.  The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) resulted in a reshaping of European borders but also brought forth a degree of religious tolerance.

“The Thirty Years’ War, which raged from 1618 until 1648, embroiled most of Europe in a conflict that dramatically changed not only the map but also the balance of European power. By the end of the war much of Germany was in ruins, the Habsburgs were no longer masters of the continent, and the wars of religion which had ravaged Europe since the early 16th century were finally over. The immediate cause of the conflict was a crisis within the Habsburg family’s Bohemian branch, but the war also owed much to the religious and political crises caused by the Reformation and the competition between monarchs, particularly the Habsburgs of the Holy Roman Empire, various German princes, and the monarchs of Sweden and France.

One of the most significant issues that led to the Thirty Years’ War was the Protestant Reformation. That movement was both religiously divisive and politically destabilizing. It is difficult to separate religion and politics, for at the time they were intertwined. What began as an attempt to correct abuses within the Catholic Church eventually led to a number of violent conflicts within that institution as well as between nations. For example, among the various German principalities, many vied against their overlord, the Catholic Holy Roman
emperor, for control over religion. In September 1555, the contending parties met and concluded an agreement, the Peace of Augsburg. An important aspect of the peace was the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (Latin for “whose district, his religion”), which granted each state’s ruler religious freedom within his state. States that were Protestant would remain so, while states that were Catholic would likewise remain Catholic. Though that peace did much to reduce the warfare that had plagued Germany for nearly 50 years, it
sanctioned freedom of religion only for Catholics and Lutheran Protestants—any prince favoring such other Protestant sects as Calvinism did not enjoy similar freedom. …

With the Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648, the Thirty Years’ War came to an end. There were several outcomes of the war that forever changed Europe. First, the Peace of Westphalia brought to a close the wars of religion that had followed in the wake of the Reformation. Second, because Germany had served as the principal battleground of the war, it was devastated and even depopulated throughout much of its territory.  That widespread destruction affected Germany in a number of ways, but perhaps most significantly, it further
fragmented an already politically divided region. While other countries worked toward greater unification, the German states remained independent—they would not be united until some 200 years after the Thirty Years’ War. Third, the Habsburg dynasty, while it survived, no longer ruled as vast or powerful a territory as it had previously. New states, such as the Dutch Republic, and those that had weathered the war far more successfully, like France, came into new prominence. Exhausted by war and with agriculture, industry, and towns in ruins, most Europeans were disgusted with the cost of religious factionalism and began to embrace a new era of religious toleration.”

The above three paragraphs are taken from this online source.  If you would like to read the entire overview, it is attached here:

Thirty Years War

The principle of national sovereignty was firmly established in the Treaty of Westphalia, which laid out clear terms that European states had a sort of autonomy.  That is, the states and their leaders were able to exercise independent and supreme authority over their territories, their people, and their religious practice.  The outcome was that some countries chose a religious “majority” preference, but then also allowed for others.  A good example is France, which maintained Catholicism as the “official” Christian faith of the realm, but also allowed for Protestant factions to practice.

And it was difficult to keep track of the Protestant factions that arose during the 17th century.  The very basis of Protestantism, as put forth in Luther’s teachings, was that the individual was in charge of his/her own salvation.  A Christian did not need an institution, a priest, a pope, a prescribed set of sacraments, tithing, or any other practice that is not clearly written out in the scriptures.  A Christian simply needed to read the bible and adhere to its message.  Well, this just opens the doors to a multitude of interpretations of Christian experience and dogma.  Lutheranism, Calvinism, Baptists, Anabaptists, …. there arose many factions of Protestant Christianity.  (Note: to this day there are well over a thousand Christian “churches” or practices. And, of course, on the other hand, just ONE Catholic Church.  Because as we saw in the Counter Reformation, the Church really did not budge.)

Absolutism: The Rise of Divine-Right Rulers

As mentioned in the previous section, some countries rose out of the devastation of the Thirty Years War reinvigorated.  France was one of them.  King Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643 to his death in 1715 (72 years!), apparently had all the leadership qualities necessary.  On the other hand, maybe it was not a case of leadership qualities at all!  Rather, it was a case of Divine Right rule.  The essence of Divine Right rule is the belief that one becomes God’s representative on earth.  King Louis XIV was believed to have decreed “L’etat c’est moi!”  That is, “I AM the STATE!”  And true to his command, he was in charge of everything: government, the Court, economics, the Church, and in many interesting ways, the arts.

Here is a famous portrait of him, looking glorious, by Hyacinthe Rigaud, circa 1701.  The online source for the photo is below.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyacinthe_Rigaud_-_Louis_XIV,_roi_de_France_(1638-1715)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

King Louis XIV was quite a strategist and his reign was very successful on all fronts.  The Wikipedia page offers a solid overview of his life and reign, but here is just a sampling:

Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin.^[3] An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors’ work of creating a centralised state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis’ minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.

Louis also enforced uniformity of religion under the Gallican Catholic Church. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, and virtually destroying the French Protestant community.

The Sun King surrounded himself with a dazzling constellation of political, military, and cultural figures such as Mazarin, Colbert, Louvois, the Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Boulle, Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Charpentier, Marais, Le Brun, Rigaud, Bossuet, Le Vau, Mansart, Charles, Claude Perrault, and Le Nôtre.

During Louis’ long reign, France was the leading European power, and it fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession. There were also two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined the foreign policy of Louis XIV, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled “by a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique”, Louis sensed that warfare was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military.^[4]

Source:    Louis XIV

Classical Ballet~ The King Dances!

My lecture here will give you a quick overview of the early history of Classical ballet and its origins in Louis XIV’s court:

Louis XIV understood that the arts were powerful.  Dance, literature, sculpture, architecture, painting …. these were all forms of human expression, true.  But they could also be used to express power and control.  Controlling what is seen is also, in a way, controlling thought.  At least that was one of the principles that drove Louis’ quest for dominion over the arts.

One of the outcomes of Louis’ strict ideas about dance became what is referred to as Classical ballet.  Here it is in its purest form, in the ballet Les Sylphides:

Louis XIV was a grand patron of the arts!  Within the sphere of the Court, he was a true arbiter of fashion, manners, style, and even cuisine.  He loved all these elite delights and within his Court, they all evolved in interesting ways.  But again, Louis’ firm grip of control was on them all.  Visual art, namely painting, would experience an intriguing ‘choke hold’ that would last well into the 19th century.

Academic Art~ Poussin, Lorrain, and Aristocratic Portraiture

Louis XIV dictated standards.  In order to ensure that those standards were consistently met, he established government-sponsored institutes who job it was to oversee artistic endeavors and make sure that no artist was thinking outside the box or coloring outside the lines 🙂

At the beginning of his reign, Louis took over the helm of the French Royal Academy of Language and Literature (this had been established in 1635 by his father, Louis XIII).  Louis founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648.  In 1661, he initiated the Academy of Dance (as you saw in the previous lecture).  The Academy of Sciences was born in 1666.  The Academy of Music was established in 1669.  The Academy of Architecture in 1671.  All of these “academies” functioned to patronize the arts but also to control them.  Where did these ‘standards of beauty and excellence’ come from?  They came from a 17th century understanding of ancient Greece and Rome, the “Classical period.”  Thus a new term was born as well: Neoclassicism.

Neoclassical art hearkened to the Classical world by use of visual references.  Neoclassical style revels in the aesthetics of Classical art.  The clear and accurate proportion of the human body, the fashions, the sense of civic duty and higher ethical aspirations.  Neoclassical art often took contemporary persons and placed them in anachronistic settings.  A great example of this is Francois Girardon’s Apollo Attended by the Nymphs (ca. 1666-1672).  This was commissioned by Louis XIV for the Versailles grounds.  And it features himself as Apollo, the Sun King.

For a larger view of this sculpture, go HERE

Two artists’ works embrace these components:  Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Lorrain (1600-1682).

Please read these two sections from theartstory.org to give you some background and a look at key paintings by these two artists:

Poussin

Lorrain

Absolute Power Beyond Europe: Art as Rhetoric

Power…

Power: comparisons and connections

This article by Smarthistory offers some very intriguing parallels for our consideration.