The président de Thou was among the creators of the new intellectual configuration that dominated the en tire 17th C. Even as he situated himself within the tradition of the Gallican magistrates, he was part of a movement of rupture from it. Socially, he broke off hereditary ties with the old municipal patrician class of Paris and became a prototype of the nobleman of the gown through cultural imitation of the nobles of the sword. Most important, his work contributed to the dismissal of the major fields of knowledge that the Renais sance had inherited : dogmatic theology and legal science. The prestige of his monumen tal Latin His toire opened up a new European literary space. Without this work, literature could not have attained the power that it enjoyed under Riche lieu, nor could the monarchy have attained the absolutist practice of its own power.