Nomination of Protestantism in French Royal Decrees of the 16th Century
Abstract
DOI 10.18522/1995-0640-2021-3-39-49
The paper analyzes how Protestantism was denoted in French royal edicts of the 16th century. The social tension of the period of religious conflicts was unavoidably reflected in the Middle French language. Our task is to trace how it affected the language of law; in particular, what vocabulary was used in legal texts to denote the Reformation and whether it corresponded to the linguistic traditions of formulating legal issues that had developed by that time. We divide the royal statutes into two groups, representing two different legal and language policies applied to Protestantism. The first group includes royal edicts from the first half of the century, where derogatory vocabulary is used to denote the Reformation. The second group contains documents from the last third of the 16th century. They introduce newer, neutral terms for Protestantism, diametrically opposed to the earlier pejorative designations.
Key words: Reformation, 16th century, legal discourse, royal decree, law, canon law, nomination.
References
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
