Michel de Marillac

Michel de Marillac , born in October 1563 with Paris and dead on August 7th, 1632 with Châteaudun. Minister of Justice during the Regency of Marie de Médicis, he is the author of the Code Michau, published in 1629, prefigurator of the great jurdic and social reforms of the 17th French century. Ligueur, then chief of the devout Parti following the Cardinal Bérulle, it became one of the opponents with Richelieu, which precipitated its fall in 1630.

Years of training

Heir to a family to old nobility of Auvergne traditionally to the service to the Dukes to Bourbon and French monarchy, Marillac was born with the day before from the wars of religion. His/her father, superintendent of Finances in 1569, died in 1573, and it was raised by an uncle. He married Nicola (Marguerite) Beard of the Fortune in 1587 of which he had six children. Widower in 1600, it remarria with Marie of Saint-Germain in 1601.

a career of lawyer and financier

Its studies of Right and its lawyer practice prepared it with the office of advising at the Parliament of Paris which it obtained in 1586. Its active participation with the catholic League during several years after 1589 could have put it in difficulty but it succeeds in making it forget. With the approval of the new king Henri IV, Marillac became Maître of the requests in 1595. In this function, it fills of many missions near the royal Conseil, in particular in the provinces and chaired many legal commissions and financial, especially under the Chancellor Nicolas Brûlart de Sillery. When Marillac resigned as Maître of the requests in 1612, Sillery appointed it Conseiller of State, specializing in the financial businesses. This promotion was encouraged by Marie de Médicis, the regent to whom it family of Marillac was already bound by marriages and bonds of service.

a religious activist

These personal and political connections were reinforced by the religious bonds which were essential in the devout party which emerged at the end of the wars of religion. Marillac became one of the emblematic figures of the movement. It considered at several times to give up its career to embrace its religious vocation. After 1602 it was dependant very narrowly with the influential circles, like that of Mrs Acarie, devoted to the spiritual reform and directly at the origin of some of the most important religious movements of this time, such as the introduction in France of the reformed order of the Carmelites in 1604 or the foundation about the Oratoriens by Pierre de Bérulle in 1611. Marillac was one of the craftsmen of the négotiations to raise the legal and financial obstacles put at their development.

Marillac with the capacity

Superintendent of Finances

August 27th, 1624, Michel de Marillac is named jointly with Jean Bochart, Surintendant of finances. The tasks of each one not being specified, it is not possible to differentiate what concerns the work of one or other. One can thus only return to the life of Jean Bochard to describe the activities of Marillac in financial matters: behavior of the Room of justice and the research of the means necessary to the control of the foreign politics of the Prime Minister.

Minister of Justice

See also: Code Michau

In June 1626, the Chancellor of Aligre, compromised by its fidelity with Gaston of Orleans, is disgrâcié. Michel de Marillac replaces it like Minister of Justice.

Its action recovers four outstanding facts: It opens the States of Brittany to Nantes since the Duc of Vendôme, the governor of the province, was dislocated of its functions. It orders that is held the lawsuit of the Count de Chalais. It chairs the assembly of notable of December 1626 in February 1627.

It writes the ordinance of 1629, known under the name of Code Michau, important synthesis in four hundred and twenty-nine articles of the texts adopted with the General states of 1614 and of the assemblies the notable ones of 1617 and 1626, considering all the aspects of the government. This very vast Code was largely its creation, masi not only because it codified many existing laws and was dedicated mainly to the reform in the religious, legal and financial fields.

The career of Marillac is typical innumerable bonds between the religion and the policy under Louis XIII, and they propelled it to the highest loads, particularly when Marie de Médicis found her political power with the beginning of the year 1620.

At the same time the ministerial responsibilities for Marillac convince it of the corruption of the adminsitration. Its efforts of reform, of which to make fold the powers of the Parliaments and the provincial States, still conferred to him a reputation of authoritarianism, larger than that of Richelieu. However, the differences between them were more degree and of temperament.

The fall of Marillac

This work of lawyer privileging the interior reform of the State and the defense of Catholicism opposes it to Richelieu whose policy is centered above all on the resolution of the international problems of time. The political consensus which them had both brought to the capacity came in its term when the Protestant revolt ended in 1629. In 1629 and 1630, the two men deliver a larval war: Richelieu encourages the Parliament not to record the Michau Code; Marillac is opposed to the French intervention in Piedmont and to the war against the Spain. It emerged like principal the critic of the anti-Habsbourg strategy of Richelieu. Beyond the rejection of tactical alliances with Protestants, it feared that wars, by perpetuating the civil disorders and slowing down the essential reforms, would still weaken France. Marie de Médicis joined with this position in 1630 and agreed to ask for the reference of Richelieu.

The Day of Dupes and the triumph of the Prime Minister and his orientations (November 11th, 1630) seal the fate of Marillac. Michel is summoned to go to Glatigny to await the orders of the king there. November 12th, the City with the Clerks and Charles Duret de Chevry come to claim the seals in the name of the sovereign to him and give it to the hands of of the bodyguards and eight archers charged to accompany it in his exile. It is led in residence forced to Caen, Lisieux and finally to Châteaudun in February. July 19th, after the escape from Marie de Médicis of Compiegne, it is locked up in the castle of Châteaudun. It dies there on August 7th, 1632.

Much remains mysterious in connection with this promising beginning of career of a man whose its only biographer, his disciple Lefebvre de Lezeau, reduced the life with an example of religious virtue and discretion of high moral rise, a man who seems deprived of any ambition and who however could well have replaced Richelieu like Prime Minister of Louis XIII.

Writings

political writings

  • Harangue of Mr. Minister of Justice made in the States from Brittany held in Nantes, there séant Roy, 1626 in 8°, 12 pages
  • the relation of the descent of the English in the isle of D, of the seat put by them at the height of Saint Martin's day and all that did without day in day jusques to the English defeat and retirement of the aforesaid, Paris, E. Martin, 1628, in 8°, 247 pages.
  • the Ordinance of the roy Louis XIII on the complaints and complaints faittes by the deputies of Estats of his kingdom convened and assembled downtown of Paris in 1614, published in the Parliament on January 15th, 1629, A. Estienne, in 8°, 1629,303 pages. It is the Code Michau
  • the exact Relation of all that occurred to died from the marshal from Anchor, Leyde, 1659, in 4°, 75 pages,

religious writings

  • the Examination of the entitled book Remonstrances and conclusions of people of the King and judgment of the Court of Parliament of November 26th, 1610 allotted wrongfully to Mr. Servin, adviser of the king in his council and lawyer at the court of Parliament of Paris as having been made in the aforementioned court on the book of the Bellarmin cardinal to show ignorances, impertinences, falsenesses and corrupt practices which are almost on all the pages, 1611, in 8°, 179 pages is a religious book on works of the Bellarmin cardinal seized by the Parliament and in which he is opposed to the polemics gallicanes which developed then.
  • Of erection and institution about the nuns of Notre-Dame of the Carmel Mount according to the reformation of Saint-Therese in France, of the disorders and the excited disagreements in this order and the judgment given by the pope on iceux, Paris, E. Martin, 1622, in 8°, 384 and 25 pages, attests its interest for the order which it helped to settle in France.
  • the translations of CL Pseaumes (sic) of David and of X canticles inserted in the office of the Church, Paris 1625, in 8°, 512 pages, and of the IV books of the Imitation of Jesus-Christ, Paris, 1631, in 8°, 568 pages attest its form of piety and its art of the translation.

Notes and references of the article

See too

Related articles

External bonds and documents

  • Note of the Committee of history of the Ministry for Finances on

Random links:Badly considering evil known as | Deborah François | Martos | Park of Bourgtheroulde-Thuit-Hébert | That balances in Paris