Europe, never dies. When the story of the painting, she operates a strategic retreat in order to lead, a few centuries later, a counter-offensive triumphal. The epidemic of the Covid-19 has revealed not only the inability of the european Union to cope with a health crisis, but again, and it is more serious, to get out of it, taking joint decisions, that is to say, solidarity. The refusal of several States (among other Countries-the netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark) to award “grants” to the most affected countries reveals a pettiness of greed ; it also symbolizes the laid-back embarrassing with which of the nations will brush it away from their allies. Alas, the gold coins are not enough to sustain a continent.
the nature above the law, the history precedes the institutions ; and the prestesse of the peoples in the realization of their own destiny is superior to that of the treaties. And if the year 1520 was one of the acts of birth of modern Europe ? It is the idea of a young historian, William Frantzwa, which, in a first book, ambitious and tenuous, 1520, examines the upheavals in the work at the beginning of the Sixteenth century. It takes the pretext of a year in which the occurrence of important events, the glitzy summit diplomatic relations between François I and Henri VIII at the field of the Cloth of Gold, for example, to lead a reflection unexpectedly, cultured and, most unusual, courageous, on the Renaissance. While christianity was, since the end of Antiquity, the common denominator of the countries of the Western Europe, the ambitions of imperialism, the crisis of roman catholicism and the advent of humanism cause an upheaval slow but some of the collective order. Thus the christian world disappears in favor of what we might call ” the Europe “, a civilisation where absolute monarchies are still christian, of course, but where religion is now the case of the prince, only that of the pope.
Rigor, discipline, authority
The rest, how do you continue to speak of catholic unity when one half of the continent will adopt protestantism ? It is not the building that is changing, but its foundations, which now become the Greek culture and, more widely, the Ancient world. As was brilliantly shown Didier Le Fur, Louis XII had initiated this movement in “important” the romanity of the César in France. Despite these changes, the medieval culture continues. The Renaissance is less an event than a trend. As usual, what we call, a posteriori, the modernity is in fact the result of a form of conservatism. The society of the beginning of the Sixteenth century did not dream of the future, but of past. More precisely, an age of gold with which to reconnect. For example, the ideas of Luther are popular because radical are the result of a design primitive and rigorist of a catholicism allegedly abused by a senior clergy at the time lax, conceited and remote. In other words, one does not ask less, but more. Rigour, discipline, authority.
The reason of State is the notion that emerges in 1520. It excludes the concerns of christian morality for not to judge of the interest of a given country.
The Church in the institutional sense of the term, sometimes accused of having paid for his dilettantism authoritarian, has in fact shown the most sympathetic to the aspirations of the reformers. Instead of neutralizing Luther, pope Leo X negotiates. Guillaume Frantzwa writes : “The emissary of Leo X, succeeded him for two years to try to find a middle ground that paper was respecting the official positions of the Church and the call for the Reform of Luther, in vain. […] In 1520, Rome no longer knows how to handle a case that is beyond his control, where neither the intimidation nor the conciliation were able to reach the goal. […] Two years of debates and dilly-dallying would have been enough to of pontiffs more radical to enter into a frank rupture. “That’s the first and last time that Rome loses his bet perpetually a winner, that of eternity.
The decrease of the influence of the Church is both the cause and the consequence of the emergence of nationalism (even if the word is anachronistic). Now, Europe is no longer one but many. Christians are not brothers, but cousins, sometimes allies or opponents. “The reason of State is the notion that emerges in 1520. It excludes the concerns of christian morality for not to judge of the interest of a given country. Of a kingdom to the other, the reason State dictates so now individualism, the successor to the collective vision of the papacy. “
christianity was not the european Union. This being the case, she fulfilled the role of arbitrator, of shelter, of centre that is at once political, moral and strategic, of a continent bound by what we might call a common life : quarrels, reconciliations, strokes, injuries, no confidence, protection, forgiveness. Of the rest, the Church has not disappeared, and no European, believer or not, cannot cross the place Saint-Pierre of Rome, without perceiving, beyond the majesty of the basilica, a wave, powerful and breathtaking, a thrilling silent and yet obvious, the obvious intimacy of a place yet glossy. The european Union, of which the project is commendable, repeats that it is a condition of Europe to ensure its survival. It is to mention the temperament harum-scarum of the story, which does not swear loyalty to anyone, turns around without a glance towards that ignores it.
Reference book
Guillaume Frantzwa, 1520, At the threshold of a new world, Paris, Perrin, 2020.
Didier Le Fur, Louis XII, Paris, Perrin, 2001.
*Arthur Chevallier is the publisher in the Past compounds. His last essay, “Napoleon without napoleon Bonaparte” (editions du Cerf), is published in January 2019. The 12 September is out “The Taste of Napoleon” (editions Le Petit Mercure), a collection of texts on the Emperor.
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