Social Crises, War, and Rebellions FOCUS QUESTION: What economic, social, and political crises did Europe experience in the first half of the seventeenth century? Absolute and limited monarchy were the two poles of seventeenth-century state building. Other states, such as England, reacted differently to domestic crisis, and another very different system emerged in which monarchs were limited by the power of their representative assemblies. “Nothing could be regulated with greater exactitude than were his days and hours.” His self-control was impeccable: “He did not lose control of himself ten times in his whole life, and then only with inferior persons.” But even absolute monarchs had imperfections, and Saint-Simon had the courage to point them out: “Louis XIV’s vanity was without limit or restraint,” which led to his “distaste for all merit, intelligence, education, and, most of all, for all independence of character and sentiment in others,” as well as “to mistakes of judgment in matters of importance.”īut absolutism was not the only response to the search for order in the seventeenth century. He was naturally kind and “loved truth, justice, order, and reason.” His life was orderly:
In his memoirs, the Duc de Saint-Simon (dook duh san-see-MOHN), who had firsthand experience of French court life, said that Louis was “the very figure of a hero, so imbued with a natural but most imposing majesty that it appeared even in his most insignificant gestures and movements.” The king’s natural grace gave him a special charm as well: “He was as dignified and majestic in his dressing gown as when dressed in robes of state, or on horseback at the head of his troops.” He spoke well and learned quickly. This development, which historians have called absolute monarchy or absolutism, was most evident in France during the flamboyant reign of Louis XIV, regarded by some as the perfect embodiment of an absolute monarch. The most general trend saw an extension of monarchical power as a stabilizing force. As the internal social and political rebellions and revolts died down, it became apparent that the privileged classes of society - the aristocrats - remained in control, although the various states exhibited important differences in political forms. One response to the religious wars and other crises of the time was a yearning for order. By the seventeenth century, the credibility of Christianity had been so weakened through religious wars that more and more Europeans came to think of politics in secular terms. The ideal of a united Christian Europe gave way to the practical realities of a system of secular states in which matters of state took precedence over the salvation of subjects’ souls. Some historians like to speak of the seventeenth century as a turning point in the evolution of a modern state system in Europe. BY THE END of the sixteenth century, Europe was beginning to experience a decline in religious passions and a growing secularization that affected both the political and the intellectual worlds (on the intellectual effects, see Chapter 16).
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