Notoriously, the French monarchy began to exchange judicial posts in its courts of law for cash to raise emergency funds in the early sixteenth century. The fact that all sorts of royal posts subsequently became venal or hereditary is a familiar aspect of ancien régime France, yet very little work exists on the genesis of this institution. This thesis traces the meanings, practices, and effects of 'venality' between 1490 and 1547. It does so by studying the relationship between the crown and the second most important law court of the kingdom, the Parlement of Toulouse. Traditional interpretations of office sale have tended to explain the phenomenon as a tale of royal hypocrisy, and have prioritised research on the Parlement of Paris. In contrast, this study argues that the study of a provincial court forces us to reconsider the chronology, techniques, and outcomes of early venality. A considerable amount of unexploited archival and printed material exists on office sale. By approaching it through the lens of legal culture, this thesis proposes an investigative model not only capable of explaining why venality emerged, but also why it was so vilified. Existing studies of office sale have tended to ignore legal talk and legislation as misleading or dissimulative. By paying particular attention to law and language, however, this study argues that the sale of judicial offices was a deeply ambiguous theme in the first half of the sixteenth-century that was open to constant interpretation. It was this very slipperiness that allowed a variety of actors to engage with it. Early office sale prolonged late medieval practices, but also heralded unprecedented changes, influencing the formation of the early-modern state. By studying the phenomenon, this thesis offers a rich and multifaceted picture of the relations and functioning of the crown and its tribunals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:729071 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Pollack, Samuel J. |
| Contributors | Sternberg, Giora ; Briggs, Robin |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:225316fd-9240-443f-b00f-ec6208171630 |
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