Early modern France, that is, France of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, experienced two waves of reform directly related to the birth of the modern state, the reform of the Church, and the experience of long and bloody religious wars. The ideals of the first were steeped in the late medieval devotio moderna, characterized by the rise in importance of the individual and the individual’s inner life, as well as by the necessity of integrating that individualism into a community’s spirituality and its spiritual life. The second wave of reforms drew its energies from the first and took from them its energies and models: amalgamation and centralization, oversight of revenues and accounts, a rededication to the Benedictine Rule, and the rediscovery of medieval monastic structures.
Vengeance, Kinship Solidarity and Affinity in Late-Medieval and Early Modern France
