CONCORDAT OF AMBOISE
. In an ordinance issued at Amboise on October 13, 1472, Louis XI proclaimed in France
a concordat with Pope Sixtus IV that the pope had published two months earlier. Its
language closely resembled that of papal proposals in the years since 1438, when the
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges had sharply reduced the authority of the papacy over the
French church. The “Gallican liberties” embodied in the Pragmatic Sanction gave the
French church, particularly the episcopate, considerable independence from both the pope
and the king. It was strongly supported by the Parlement de Paris, but Louis XI, on
becoming king in 1461, had alternately canceled it, restored it, and ignored it. He
preferred to deal with the pope rather than to concede liberties to his own clergy.
The Concordat of 1472, which historians once thought was never enforced, prefigured
the more famous Concordat of Bologna (1516), in that the pope and the king arranged for
a joint hegemony over the French clergy, primarily with regard to episcopal
appointments. Although the relations between Louis XI and Sixtus IV often were bitter
during the succeeding decade, the Concordat of Amboise remained the de facto
arrangement for handling bishoprics, and it enabled the monarchy to strengthen its
control over the French church.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
[See also: GALLICANISM; PRAGMATIC SANCTION OF BOURGES]
Ourliac, Paul. “The Concordat of 1472: An Essay on the Relations Between Louis XI and Sixtus
IV.” In The Recovery of France in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Peter S.Lewis. New York: Harper
and Row, 1971, pp. 102–84.
CONDÉ, JEAN DE
(ca.1280–ca.1345). The son of poet Baudouin de Condé, Jean served in the court of the
counts of Hainaut. Seventy-seven of his poems are extant, mostly in octosyllabic
couplets. They comprise numerous didactic works, five fabliaux, and allegorical and
moral narratives. Didactic subjects include advice to rulers, the estates, death, reflections
on the nature of love, social and antifraternal satire, and religion and ethics. Several of the
narratives have love subjects, and there is a love debate in the most famous of Jean’s
works, the Messe des oisiaus et li plés des chanonesses et des grises nonnains. But he
was by no means a love poet and did not write lyrics. His several works called lais do not
use the lyric form.
James I.Wimsatt
[See also: DIT; FABLIAU]
Scheler, Auguste, ed. Dits et contes de Baudouin de Condé et de son fils Jean de Condé. 3 vols.
Brussels: Devaux, 1866–67. [Vols. 2–3 contain Jean’s poetry.]
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