The dream of the French world empire and the national consciousness in the works of Joachim du Bellay

It is generally accepted that nationalism implies creation of nation-state. However, there are many historical examples of nation-building within the framework of the empire and there are many examples of organic combination of national consciousness with imperial projects. The term «nation» is not applicable to the description of Europe in 14th - 16th centuries. However, the idea of nation preceded the nation itself. At the time, national consciousness and other preconditions of genesis of the nations emerged. National consciousness, based on ideas of unity, specificity, superiority and God's election of an ethnic community, often implied gaining a world empire, but not creation of a nation-state. Holy Roman Empire became an object of «nationalization». A holder of it was “German nation”. But intellectual elites of Italy, Spain, France and other provinces of Christianity found it as illegitimate usurpation of «dominium mundi». Such intellectuals as Dante and Petrarch considered Italians and Italy to be the core of Roman Empire. As for France, Pierre Dubois, Jean de Jandin, Jean Thenaud, Jean de La Haye, Guillaume Postel and other medieval and renaissance writers considered French people to be the holder of coming global empire. Joachim Du Bellay (1522-1560), poet, critic, and member of the «Pléiade», was also political and historical thinker. In his «Défense et illustration de la langue française» (1549) and poems («Les Antiquités de Rome», «Le Songe», «Les Regrets» (1558) and others) he suggested to show France as center of world empire, as future political and cultural hegemon. France, he believed, was destined to become the true reincarnation of Roman Empire with French national specificity and tongue. Du Bellay rejected German emperor's aspiration for global hegemony and papacy. He considered Holy Roman Empire of German nation to be only a shadow of real Roman Empire: German crow pretended to be a Roman eagle. Papacy, possessor of Rome, had been totally corrupted by the time. Only kingdom of France, to his mind, could realize new «translatio imperii et studii», and new «Age of Gold» in the world.