Voices of Conscience

Royal Confessors and Political Counsel in Seventeenth-Century Spain and France

Nicole Reinhardt

The first in-depth analysis of the role of royal confessors as political counsellors in seventeenth-century Spain and France
Uncovers the intellectual framework and institutional mechanisms of seventeenth century politics, and the dramatic decline of the role of the royal confessor around 1700
Asks vital questions of conscience against the backdrop of the momentous intellectual, theological, and political shifts of the time
Contributes to the 'modern' debate on the relationship between Church and State
Uses a wide variety of sources from theological and political treatises to popular pamphlets

Voices of Conscience

Royal Confessors and Political Counsel in Seventeenth-Century Spain and France

Nicole Reinhardt

Description

Voices of Conscience analyzes how the link between politics and conscience was articulated and shaped throughout the seventeenth century by confessors who acted as counsellors to monarchs. Against the backdrop of the momentous intellectual, theological, and political shifts that marked this period, the study examines comparatively how the ethical challenges of political action were confronted in Spain and France and how questions of conscience became a major argument in the hegemonic struggle between the two competing Catholic powers.

As Nicole Reinhardt demonstrates, 'counsel of conscience' was not a peripheral feature of early-modern political culture, but fundamental for the definition of politics and conscience. Tracing the rise and fall of confessors as counsellors reveals the parallel transformation of both, approaching a historical understanding of the modernisation of politics with the idea of an 'individual conscience' at its heart. Placed at the junction of norms and practices, royal confessors, directly or in oblique reflection, shaped the ways in which the royal conscience was identified and scrutinized. By the same token, the royal confessors' expertise and activities remained a source of anxiety and conflict that triggered wide debate on the relationship between State and Church, religion and politics.

The notion of 'counsel of conscience', of which this book provides the first in-depth analysis, allows the reader to re-examine and challenge fundamental historical paradigms such as the emergence of 'absolutism', individualisation, and the division of public and private. Putting theological concepts and religious dimensions back into political theory and practice sheds new light, not only on the importance of counselling for early modern statecraft, but also on the reconfiguration of the normative frameworks underlying it.

Voices of Conscience

Royal Confessors and Political Counsel in Seventeenth-Century Spain and France

Nicole Reinhardt

Introduction
Part I: Christian princes, counsellors, and confessors
1. Councils and counselling: Institutions
2. Counsel and councillors: Debates
3. Royal confessors as counsellors: role and expertise
Part II: Royal Sins: definitions and transformations (ca. 1550-1650)
4. Identifying Royal sins
5. The end of just war as we know it?
6. Taxes - old and new
7. Acceptio personarum: justice, favours, and merit
Part III: Counsels of Conscience
8. Confessors at work
9. A case study: The Expulsion of the Moriscos
10. Favourites and confessors
Part IV: How to be a Royal Confessor: from prophecy to ecclesiastical history
11. Confessors: courtiers and prophets?
12. Being Seneca - Stoic Lessons
13. The confessor's paradox
Part V: The Eloquence of Silence
14. The crisis of counsel of conscience
15. The scandalous confessor
16. Privatizing royal conscience
Epilogue: the politics of private sins - the 'privatisation' of politics
Sources and Bibliography

Voices of Conscience

Royal Confessors and Political Counsel in Seventeenth-Century Spain and France

Nicole Reinhardt

Author Information

Nicole Reinhardt studied History and Romance Languages at the universities of Heidelberg, Coimbra, and Freiburg i.Br. She holds a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute in Florence. Before taking up the post at Durham University in 2009 she taught early modern history at the universities of Rostock and Lyon 2 and worked as a DAAD-Lecturer at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris.

Voices of Conscience

Royal Confessors and Political Counsel in Seventeenth-Century Spain and France

Nicole Reinhardt

Reviews and Awards

"This is an ambitious book that draws together topics that, though related, are often treated separately or secondarily in the existing literature ... On the whole, the comparative approach that Reinhardt has taken in Voices of Conscience enables her to make an effective case for the steady divergence of politics from royal conscience over the seventeenth century, and for the slow retreat of the confessor to the private sins of the king and the political margins ... the breadth of the author's source work and her commitment to the fullest possible study of conscience counselling, the seal of the confessional notwithstanding, is admirable. Offering numerous insights into the power, potential, and limits of religious counsel. Voices of Conscience is a learned book and an absorbing read." -- Alison Forrestal, H- France

"Nicole Reinhardt ... has written an impressive book." Luise Schorn- Schutte, Goethe University Frankfurt

"Voices of Conscience is a wide- ranging, exhaustively researched, and complexly argued work." --Miriam Bodiam, University of Texas

"This important work broadens our understanding of political and religious history and is another puzzle piece to the recovery of probabilism's influence in the seventeenth century." --Ulrich Lehner, Regensburg Forum

"Voices of Conscience: ... makes a significant contribution to political theory and to the history of early modern European political culture by demonstrating the entanglement of relgion and royal politics in early modern states and court societies." --Brian Sandberg, Northern Illinois University

"Reinhardt's work is formidable both for its erudition and its wide horizon. ... Anybody seeking to understand the political culture of Habsburg Spain as well as the religious life at the French court under the Bourbon dynasty will have to consult this impressive and elegantly written study." --Ronald G. Asch, University of Freiburg

"This important work broadens our understanding of political and religious history and is another puzzle piece to the recovery of probabilism's influence in the seventeenth century."--Ulrich L. Lehner, The Regensburg Forum

"Reinhardt successfully uses royal confessors as a way of exploring wider intellectual and institutional change...[T]his is an impressive and surely definitive survey of French and Spanish royal confessors in the period, from which scholars of other governments may learn much--while also sharpening their awareness of the importance of understanding the particularities of each system. The attention to both theory and practice is pleasing..."--Jacqueline Rose, History

"Reinhardt has illuminated some of the basic realities of early modern political life."--Jonathan Dewald, Reviews in History

"This beautiful erudite book on the practices of counsel of conscience in politics prooves that the author is a true European and an accomplished practicioner of comparative history, especially of France and Spain, as well as of interdisciplinarity, the most challenging of all disciplines. Without any national bias the secondary reading draws on the best works by French, Spanish, Italian, American and English authors and transcends the disciplinary boundaries between history, poltical theory,theology and even philosophy and anthropology."--Catherine Maire, Francia-Recensio [translated]

"Voices of Conscience is a learned book and an absorbing read."--Alison Forrestal, H-FRANCE