Legal culture, municipal politics and royal absolutism in seventeenth-century France: The avocats of Dijon (1595--1715)

This dissertation explores how a group of provincial lawyers experienced the growth of royal authority during the seventeenth century. Dijon's avocats believed their legal and rhetorical expertise made them "political men" and realized this self-perception by dominating Dijon's powerful city council. Beginning with Henry IV, repeated royal efforts to curb municipal autonomy threatened their status. My research into institutional archives, personal papers, manuscripts and printed works shows how the avocats responded by developing concepts of local privilege to justify Dijon's liberties. They also exploited legal and institutional ambiguities to protect local interests. Only under Louis XIV did the crown reduce the mairie to a small, supervised arm of royal administration. The resulting loss of opportunities forced avocats to reshape their careers and their attitudes towards the monarchy.; The first chapter focuses on elements of the avocats' self-identity. The next two chapters show how they used their legal and rhetorical prowess to defend Dijon's privileges. Chapter Four draws on legal and non-legal works to explain how barristers defended local privileges by appealing to legal, customary and contractual limits on royal power. Chapter Five shows how Louis XIV's 1668 reorganization of municipal government greatly reduced the availability of city offices and converted the mairie into an arm of royal administration. Chapter Six explores the social, economic and professional consequences of these changes for Dijon's avocats, many of whom were excluded from political life. The final chapter looks at the effects of these changes on their political thought, arguing that many clung to the constitutionalist ideas of their forerunners. Others looked to new philosophical currents to voice their opposition.; By concentrating on a politically-conscious, socially intermediate group, my research challenges the revisionist consensus minimizing political change during the seventeenth century. I conclude that theoretical and institutional changes in government destroyed long-standing bonds between monarchy and populace. As royal government became more impersonal, influential local groups such as Dijon's avocats lost their attachment to the crown. This resulted in the transformation of the legalistic early modern "public sphere" of political discourse into the Habermasian "autonomous public sphere" of the eighteenth century.