Robert Parsons, S. J. : de la reconquête à la recréation du royaume d'Angleterre

Résumé 0

Robert Parsons has long enjoyed a bad reputation, mostly due to his Spanish sympathies and his defence of equivocation. As a resuit, his political treatises are little read if at all. Yet, they were quite well known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to the extent that they were literally plundered at the time of the two revolutions by parliamentarian, republican and whig writers. This article is an attempt to interpret Parsons's ideas and to put them into historical perspective. It focuses on two major works, A Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England (1594) and The Jesuit's Memorial (published posthumously in 1690). The former is an articulate defence of mixed monarchy and the right of popular resistance, while the latter outlines the best policy (including by means of the Inquisition) for effecting a complete reconversion of England to catholicism. A forerunner of liberal theories (although a marked adversary of the coramon law, which would place him on the absolutist side of politics), Parsons also appears as a champion of intolerance. It is suggested here that what makes these two aspects of his doctrine paradoxically compatible is a constant (and quite traditional) attachment to the supremacy of the spiritual power over the secular.