The Nobility and the Grand Jours: Some Questions
In reading “Reforming the Provinces: The Grand Jours d’Auvergne,” two things plague me: historical credibility and modern perspective. I have neither the time nor desire to go into these things in any kind of broad sense that could be applied to any area of academia. Rather, I would like to point to why this is a problem for me with this particular area of history we are studying.When I speak of historical credibility, I mean just that. I became aware that Flechier’s excerpts could have had a biased bent from the start when he mocked the people of the countryside and suggested the women found in these parts were homely at best. I knew from the outset I was reading at least semi-subjective material. The framing argument around the Flechier pieces, however is the main thing that perturbs me. Specifically, I am interested in the statistics that while 87 members of the nobility were tried, 574 commoners were tried as well. I would not have assumed such a ratio while reading Flechier. His focus is specifically on nobles and gives the impression that they alone were the focal point of the Grand Jours. Clearly this was not the case. Primary and secondary sources are always of vital use in researching a particular event, but in this case I find Flechier’s input to be more confusing than beneficial to my understanding of this court. I understand that the point was to make tangible again the hand of Louis XIV that was not being felt in the countryside and remoter areas. I also understand that class distinction aside, commoner or noble, all people are fallible and capable of criminal activities and should suffer the consequences of such activities. The main problem for me arises when historical sources such as Flechier skew things in such a way that it is difficult to make out the big picture, which leads to my question of modern perspective.
From the vantage point of several centuries into the future, historical sources are all one has to go on in many cases. While there are many questions that are of interest from a scholarly stand point, the most basic so far as the Grand Jours goes, is ascertaining exactly what the point of it was. If Louis XIV was interested in making his power felt where it was dwindling in the conscious of the people, it makes sense that he would go for the nobility: they were the powerhouses of such areas, exerted the most influence, and had the best leverage for misconduct. A source such as Flechier backs this up, but the statistics that follow bring his pieces into question for me. Objectively, I want to know how the nobility fit into Louis XIV’s plans for the Grand Jours and why the statistics for the commoners was so much higher (regular criminality aside, that is still a significantly higher number of common people than nobles). From a modern perspective, at least from these pages, I find myself unable to piece these numbers with a motive that satisfactorily matches them.
McKenzie, I can empathize with you on this one. The subjectivity of perspective is something makes studying History kind of problematic. Flechier's account is necessarily biased; it was written by a human being with a limited view of the world. But even if his document were more broad, covering all social classes, with highly accurate figures, it would still leave some things out. If we had a thousand such documents, our notion of "what really happened" during the time period would still just be a finely crafted story, albeit with more interesting details.
ReplyDeleteA society's attempts at conceptualizing its past probably say more about their present state than about the truth of what may have happened.
Your post raises some important questions, some of which (such as the higher number of commoners punished) also disturbed me a bit as well. I will try to suggest a few answers. First, we read an excerpt, not the entirety of Flechier's journal, edited by Beik to illustrate his larger point of Louis XIV sought to reassert his power and authority in the countryside, especially vis-a-vis the nobility, hence the emphasis on their trials. Perhaps if we had read the whole of Flechier's journal, we might also see the crimes of commoners described and punished.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I think Beik also intended that the reader understand Flechier's bias since it conveys how the people in Paris viewed the people in the provinces. Even if their perception is skewered, it is important to understand it because it affected how they treated and thought about these people.
As far as the punishments, the figures I would actually like to see would be ratios or percentages. Did the 87 members of nobility punished represent a significant portion of the nobility in the region (75%? 50%?) Such information would help us better process and understand the raw numbers. I would also suggest that the small size of the nobility versus the greater numbers of commoners account for some of the disparity. Furthermore, commoners (which simply means that they lack a title of nobility) may well have participated in the crimes of nobility (remember the one evil noble who kept the 12 Apostles of evil-- I bet those 12 guys were not members of the nobility but they should still be punished for perpetrating the nobleman's crimes.)
I hope this helps clear a few things up but I think you are right to question the validity and usefulness of your sources.