author
François Hotman
1524–1590
A fierce French jurist and Protestant polemicist, he wrote in the middle of the religious and political storms of the 1500s. Best known for challenging royal absolutism, his work helped make constitutional arguments part of early modern political debate.
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About the author
Born in Paris on August 23, 1524, François Hotman became one of the most notable legal humanists of his age. Trained in law, he moved through the scholarly world of France and the Swiss Reformation, and his life was deeply shaped by the upheavals of the French Wars of Religion.
Hotman embraced Protestant ideas around the late 1540s and spent much of his career in exile or in motion, teaching and writing in places such as Lausanne, Strasbourg, and Basel. He was admired for his learning as a jurist, but he was also a sharp political writer who entered directly into the struggles of his time.
He is especially remembered for Franco-Gallia (1573), a book that argued the French monarchy was not meant to be absolute and that older political traditions placed limits on royal power. That made him an important voice in debates about resistance, sovereignty, and the rights of political communities, and it helps explain why he still appears in histories of law, Reformation thought, and early constitutionalism.