Despite frequent hostility towards the papacy, which waxed and waned depending on circumstances but never vanished, erudite Gallicans of the later sixteenth century felt compelled to accept a major role for it in French Catholicism. This was largely due to the importance they placed on historical continuity as a way of understanding and legitimating a monarchy that had, after all, been intertwined with the papacy since its inception and which (so they believed) could for better or worse no longer be conceived of a part from it. It was also, however, also the consequence of a mode of personal identity that also privileged historical continuity, but on the level of piety towards church, king, and family.