Macron prepares the city of the French language as a great legacy of his presidency

• Africa: Spanish, French and Lost Students

This story has two key dates separated by 478 years and the same setting, the Villers-Cotterêts castle, 80 kilometers north of Paris.

There in August 1539 Francis I signed an ordinance on Justice

, instead of Latin, in administrative and judicial documents. On March 17, 2017, Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte arrived in the city native of Alexander Dumas, in full presidential campaign.

One of the few supports of

The then candidate was Jacques Krabal, then a radical deputy and today of the government party.

He insisted that he see the castle he did not know despite being born in nearby Amiens.

.

The local authorities explained to them that the private initiative was going to transform it into a hotel casino. "When they heard this,

and Emmanuel said that he would not allow it "recalls the deputy in

.

That same afternoon, he announced that if he was elected, he would reopen the castle "to make it a symbolic pillar of the Francophonie." Said and budgeted at 185 million.

While in Spain Spanish is denied in the Celaá Law, in which its mention as an official language is eliminated, Macron

how François Mitterrand left his Library or the Louvre Pyramid;

Chirac, the Museum of Early Arts or Georges Pompidou, the Beaubourg.

, before the next presidential elections.

It will house the city of the French language that will have "a tour dedicated to the language, residences for writers, training centers against illetricism, translation companies, etc." listed on the Elysee.

While in Spain the role of the Spanish language in education is being discussed, France is promoting a symbolic capital of its language. The project is in sketch.

The reasons were explained by Macron himself to about fifteen students in a nursery class:

when different dialects were spoken, "he said in fall 2017.

- Macron was given firewood in the networks - but it connects with the idea that integration passes through the domain of French as it is intended to require foreigners who want to obtain nationality.

The imposition of French over other languages ​​is, however, much later, the work of the Revolution and Bonaparte, which does not diminish the importance of the ordinances of Francis I, one of the kings of greater cultural significance.

Not only

Leonardo de Vinci but imported and promoted the Renaissance.

He rebuilt the castles of Amboise and Blois and built Chambord, on the Loire, then the center of his kingdom.

And he had Villers-Cotterêts built, in the center of the Forest of Retz which he had inherited before acceding to the throne of France by marriage to Claudia, the daughter of his predecessor.

A place renowned for hunting, a great royal hobby that is considered a masterpiece of the Renaissance.

In his chapel, the first to break with the Gothic tradition, Francis I imposed his emblems: the crowned salamander, the fleur-de-lis and the F. In that chapel, which is one of the little that remains intact, the king signed between the August 10 and 13, 1539, the General Ordinance of the Act of Justice, registered on September 6 in the Parliament of Paris and known as

or

by reason of the name of its editor Guillaume Poyet, Chancellor of France.

Are

.

Four articles have passed to posterity.

Two establish that births and deaths must be registered in the parish registers, the basis of the civil registry, and another two (110 and 111) order the pronouncement and registration of all official acts.

.

Thus the administrative language

.

The aim was to allow the people a better understanding of the verdicts, something theoretical because only in the Loire basin and in and around Paris was the language spoken

(Old French) facing south that was expressed in the language

.

The other end was obvious, to reduce the influence of the Church. Perhaps this was influenced by the fact that Francis I was not comfortable in Latin.

.

A man of readings, Francis I established by another ordinance the legal deposit of every book and left a library of 3,000 volumes, many of which came from the sacking of the Sforza Library in Milan.The Villers-Cotterêts ordinance is part of the awakening of the national languages ​​and was preceded by the publication on August 18, 1492 of the

by Antonio de Nebrija, first in vernacular languages.

of humanists like Erasmus of Rotterdam.

And the administrative language of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the 19th century.

The Catholic Church, for the sake of its universality, held its offices in Latin until the late 1960s after the Second Vatican Council. The history of Villers-Cotterêts continued after the reign of Francis I. Henry II inherited two hobbies from his father:

.

In Villers-Cotterêts he was able to kill deer in eight hours.

He also gave lavish parties with "the little band of court ladies" led by his official mistress, Diana de Poitiers.

The expression "have fun like in Villers-Cotterêts" dates from then.

, redesigned by André Le Nôtre, the gardener of Versailles.

Molière represented here his

.

At the coronation party of Louis XV, the celebration brought together 140 opera actors and 1,000 guests racked up 80,000 bottles of Burgundy and champagne.

Castle officer. Then came the hangover.

And the Revolution.

First barracks.

.

The old theater of Luis Felipe became a dormitory for men;

the chapel, in a female bedroom.

The internal walls were demolished to create large rooms easy to monitor.

Grills and bars prevented escapes. Military hospital during World War I, the castle emerged unscathed despite the proximity of the battlefields.

Later, it was a nursing home until 2014. Then it was closed;

its windows and doors were bricked up, another symbol of the decadence of northern France.

In the town there is a cinema and the mayor is from the RN de Le Pen.

And then Macron arrived.

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