Cardinal De LA Rochefoucauld: Leadership and Reform in the French Church

by Joseph Bergin

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) did more than anyone else to lay the foundations of French hegemony in Europe and of absolute monarchy in his own country. He was a spokesman for power politics, the idea of raison d'etat, and the right of rulers to the unquestioning obedience of their subjects. He was, in addition, one of the richest men in the entire history of France. Joseph Bergin's study of his wealth-the first full-scale analysis of the fortune of a leading political figure of the ancien regime-reveals the multiple connections that existed at that time between the tenure of political office and the accumulation of individual and family wealth. "Bergin's study of Richelieu's fortune achieves the unexpected feat of adding substantially to our knowledge of one of the most important figures in French history, largely through the exploitation of a group of hitherto unused documents...Well-constructed and elegantly written...The book's great virtue is ...that it places Richelieu within the social and economic context of his time." -Times Literary Supplement "Here is a vivid and fascinating guide to the financial basis of high society in Louis XIII's France, and a precise account of how Richelieu gained and maintained his position in government...A meticulous and scholarly examination of the fortune accumulated by one man, it sheds much light on the more general topic of the nature and means of noble wealth and influence in the early seventeenth century."-Roger Mettam, History Today "A brilliant, fascinating, and elegantly written book."-American Historical Review

Genres: History, Politics, France

316 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Joseph Bergin has been teaching at Manchester since 1978, and is an internationally recognised expert on the history of early modern France, especially the seventeenth century. He has written six major books, one of which was awarded the Prix Richelieu in 1995, and edited a number of others. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996 and has frequently been a visiting professor to French universities.

Reviews

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was extremely dry. It exhaustively details the finances and investments of Cardinal Richelieu. I did not enjoy this book at all. I was looking for a biography of Richelieu and I didn't realize that this book covers his finances and investments and little else. If financial history is your thing, you will love this book. However, if you are looking for a biography of Richelieu, look elsewhere. This book is well researched and very thurough, but extremely boring. I want to give it one star, but I feel that is unfair because it really is a well researched book, and if you are looking for a book on the financial history of Richelieu I'm sure you'd love it, so I am going to split the difference and give it 3 stars.