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Books by Tyler Lange

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Cambridge University Press, 2014

This new interpretation of the origins of French absolutism connects the fifteenth-century concil... more This new interpretation of the origins of French absolutism connects the fifteenth-century conciliar reform movement to the early modern practice of absolute monarchy. Church reform furnished a crucial motive and pretext for a definitive shift in the practice and conception of monarchy that merits the title of the First French Reformation. Reform delivered the Gallican Church and the task of its reform to the king, who promptly turned the Church into a useful deposit of funds and judicial power. The case of France, where the Protestant Reformation in France was in some sense a second-order consequence of political reform, demonstrates that the Protestant configuration of religious and political Reformations was not the only possible outcome, nor the most central one. The early modern absolute monarchy, the Old Regime which collapsed in 1789, was founded upon the royal conquest of the French church and upon the king’s preservation of orthodoxy.

Drafts by Tyler Lange

Publications by Tyler Lange

Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, 2022

This paper develops ideas sketched out provisionally in 2016 for the electronic journal ThéoRèmes... more This paper develops ideas sketched out provisionally in 2016 for the electronic journal ThéoRèmes and provides an alternate conclusion to my 2016 book, Excommunication for Debt in Late Medieval France. It will appear in March 2023 in the Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law.

Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Paris, 2016), 2022

This contribution sketches out a provisional history of the Faculty of Law at the University of P... more This contribution sketches out a provisional history of the Faculty of Law at the University of Paris over the sixteenth century. Relatively little has been written about the Law Faculty in this period or about the manner in which canon law was taught. The author starts from the historical periodization proposed by the Abbé Péries in 1890, examining the question of the ‘secularization’ and the ‘decline’ of the Faculty over the century by discussing i) the sources for the Faculty’s history, ii) the doctors and lecturers who taught there, and iii) the structures and the potential content of legal instruction.

ThéoRèmes. Enjeux des approches empiriques des religions, 2022

This preliminary exploration of the topic was written in 2016. Results of subsequent research wil... more This preliminary exploration of the topic was written in 2016. Results of subsequent research will appear in the Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law in March 2023.

A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages, 2019

Chapter 6 of Volume 2 of A Cultural History of Law, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic

Speculum 89:1, 128-147, Jan 2014

One of the most striking legal developments of the sixteenth century is the emergence of two rela... more One of the most striking legal developments of the sixteenth century is the emergence of two related challenges to the medieval ius commune. Their target, the pan-European Romano-canonical "common law," 1 was based on academic elaborations of Justinian's Corpus iuris civilis, Gratian's Decretum, and succeeding books of papal judgments or decretals. The ius commune offered a wealth of legal principles and models both of legislative sovereignty and of systematic law codes. In the sixteenth century, its primacy-indeed its coherence-was challenged by a humanist school of jurisprudence inspired by the philological criticism of humanist literary scholars. This movement to recover the original, that is, the classical Roman meaning of particular Roman-law provisions, was exemplified in France by the work of Guillaume Budé, Jacques Cujas, and their followers. A closely related movement challenged the medieval legal tradition by denying that Romano-canonical principles were universally applicable. This challenge, evident in the work of Charles Dumoulin, François Hotman, Jean Papon, and Antoine Loisel, and often tied to Protestant rejection of canon law, asserted that Roman laws were irrelevant to France and encouraged the search for the native, authentic principles of French law. These were to be found by synthesizing local customary law, decisions of the sovereign courts, and royal legislation.

Revue historique de droit français et étranger 91:2, Jun 2013

On débat habituellement la question de la romanité de l’ancien droit français. Cet article demand... more On débat habituellement la question de la romanité de l’ancien droit français. Cet article demande par contre combien l’ancien droit était canonique. Avant que les juristes et les magistrats de l’Ancien Régime ne l’aient romanisé en puisant directement aux sources romaines, les juristes et les magistrats l’avaient romano-canonisé. Je propose que le droit canon a eu un effet fondamental sur les conceptions de l’État, du droit et du monarque. À la fin du Moyen Âge, les juristes du roi ont réalisé ces potentialités canoniques par les moyens de l’appel comme d’abus et de la proposition que la juridiction du roi sur les matières réelles était exclusive et universelle. L’appel comme d’abus exprimait l’exigence de la réforme encodée dans le droit canonique. La territorialité de la justice du roi était la conséquence de sa maîtrise du possessoire, une maîtrise dérivante elle-même d’une distinction canonique. L’adoption des manières canoniques d’administrer et de penser la justice fit du roi de France un vrai souverain. Ses lois et ses cours étaient désormais supérieures à toutes autres du royaume. Autrement dit, le roi devint pape en matières temporelles.

This article contributes to debates on the influence of Roman law on French law by inquiring into the influence of canon law on French law. Before the jurists of the Old Regime drew directly on Roman law to reorganize the principles and forms of French law, magistrates and jurists drew instead on the medieval Romano-canonical ius commune. Their conceptions of the place of law and of the monarch were modeled after those created by canonists for the Church on Roman foundations. At the end of the Middle Ages, the king’s jurists realized the potential of these canonical foundations by generalizing the appel comme d’abus and by claiming an exclusive, universal competence over real matters for the king. The appel comme d’abus reflected the demand for reform embedded in canon law as the territoriality of royal justice reflected the extension of the royal mastery of possessory actions, a competence itself based on a canonical distinction. The adoption of canonical ways of imagining and administering justice made the king of France into a true sovereign, with his courts and his laws superior to all courts and laws in the kingdom. The king, so to speak, became pope in temporal matters.

Bulletin du centre d'études médiévales d'Auxerre

The Sixteenth century journal, Jan 1, 2011

This article revisits the contribution of Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies by examining ... more This article revisits the contribution of Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies by examining the site and tenor of political and constitutional thought in early sixteenth-century France. With the aid of recent French scholarship, it revises previous accounts by considering alternative sites of political thought and the doctrinal sources of constitutional practice. The commentaries of academic jurists offer a range of constitutional theories that informed quotidian litigation over royal power in the king's own courts. The constitutional history of early sixteenth-century France should be redirected away from spectacular public rituals and humanist treatises and towards dayto-day legal practice and its doctrinal basis.

Revue de l'histoire des religions, Jan 1, 2009

Book Reviews by Tyler Lange

Catholic Historical Review, 2024

H-France Forum 18, 2023

This prior version of the published review has references to both the English and the French vers... more This prior version of the published review has references to both the English and the French versions. Compare: https://h-france.net/h-france-forum-volume-18-2023/.