Botanical, Heraldic and Historical Exchanges Concerning Lillies: The Background of Jean-Jacques Chifflet's Lilium Francicum (1658)

This essay contextualises the querelle of the fleur-de-lys by considering the epistolary exchanges of a group of scholars in France, the Spanish Netherlands, and Italy. It shows that botanical and heraldic evidence were used interchangeably to make a political case and in so doing the querelle also contributed to a better understanding of the botany of a number of plants. The essay, therefore, demonstrates that seventeenth-century political discourse was often couched in metaphorical language which used information and words from other disciplines. While this is no news to intellectual historians, this essays does make a significant contribution to our understanding of some of the dynamics of the seventeenth-century Republic of Letters by linking debates which were previously seen only in relation to early modern botany to others which were previously seen only in regards with political history, thereby making good use of a multidisciplinary approach.