histofthought1

200 Economic thought before Adam Smithwithin his own sphere, but that sphere is severely delimited by a network ofrights held by others in accordance with customary, natural, and divine law.In contrast, the lengthy reign of Francis I (1515-47) saw the beginning ofthe triumph of absolutism in French political thought. This new trend waslaunched by the leading humanist in France, Guillaume Bude (1467-1540).A highly erudite classical and legal scholar, Bude travelled in Italy in theearly 1500s, imbibed humanism there, and returned to write a bitter attack onscholastic jurisprudence in his Annotations on the Pandects in 1508. Theadvent of Francis I in 1515 had characteristically contrasting effects on theveteran de Seyssel and on the younger Bude. De Seyssel wrote his magnumopus to instruct the young king on the greatness of what he believed to be theold king's constitutionalist regime. Bude was inspired by the advent of thenew prince to write The Institution ofa Prince in 1519, celebrating the king'spotentially absolute greatness and power.In this French form of advice-book to the king, Bude developed the idea,then new in France, of the prince as totally and absolutely sovereign, whosepower and every whim must never be limited or questioned. The prince,intoned Bude, was a quasi-divine person, a man necessarily superior to allothers. Laws that bind the prince's subjects do not bind or apply to him; forlaws apply only to the average and the equal, not to the prince who closelyapproaches the perfect ideal of mankind. The prince, in short, was a godamong men and a law unto himself. The monarch, therefore, was superhuman,himself the source and the criterion of all justice.For Bude, the king's actions are always right because 'the heart of the kingmoves by instinct and by impulsion of God, who controls and attracts itaccording to his pleasure, to undertake enterprises that are praiseworthy andhonest and useful to his people and himself...'. Ruling by divine right andinspired directly by God, the king needs only the advice of philosophers ­and it did not take much imagination to see who the great Bude had in mindas philosophic counsellor to Francis I.Bude's work was carried on and developed by succeeding decades ofhumanists and particularly legists. The French kings were delighted at thesedominant theories of their age, and proceeded happily to put them intopractice. In this they were greatly aided by the absolutist jurists being themselves top bureaucrats in the service of the king. Two of the leading juristswrote in the reign of Francis I: Barthelemy de Chasseneux (1480-1541),whose Catalogue of the Glory of the World was published in 1529, andCharles de Grassaille, whose Regale ofFrance was written in 1538. Grassailledeclared that the king of France was God in the flesh, that all his actions wereinspired and brought about by God operating through the person of the king.The king was therefore God's vicar on earth and a living law. In a sense, then,Charles de Grassaille said it all: the king is God on earth.