In modern times, the prince demands the same from arts and sciences, through patronage and academicism. It maintains scholars and artists, protects them and offers them a space of freedom to at the same time control and standardize science under an orthodoxy. Moreover, the utilitarian aspect is not neglected and the prince seeks to take advantage of his relationships with scholars. The period that interests us is also that of the "scientific revolution", and we can therefore wonder how the prince, through his relationship with the sciences, is an actor in this revolution.
Arts and sciences
The definition of the arts in the Encyclopedia is as follows:"a set of principles, rules organized in a field that relates to the observation of nature" . This means the arts such as the fine arts, but also the sciences. During the modern period, the two domains were therefore intimately linked and their relationship with the prince flowed from this. Science and technology, however, have a specificity because they affect the change in the relationship to the world and to truth. We leave scholasticism (then argument of authority) to go towards experience as validation. In addition, a social revolution took place around the place of science in society, with the role of print, of publication, and therefore of the public and of sociability. Nevertheless, science knows this development under the authority of the prince.
Patronage and science (15th-16th centuries)
The individual relationship between the prince and the scientist differs according to the sciences. The engineer asserted himself as an essential scholar at the end of the 15th and 16th centuries. He is an architect, mechanic, hydraulics engineer, surveyor and even painter, a typical figure of the Renaissance. This is partly due to academic siloing, which sees the arts separated from law or theology, but grouped together. The Renaissance engineer is capable of organizing knowledge and know-how according to logical principles, what is called “reduction into art”; it is at the convergence between basic and applied science.
The most famous example of an engineer is obviously Leonardo da Vinci, but we can also cite Taccola (1381-1453), a Sienese architect and hydraulic engineer, who wrote to Sigismund I came to Siena to offer him his services. The letter he sends to the emperor is titled De Ingeneis , and he also wrote a military treatise. When Leonardo da Vinci spoke to Ludovico Sforza in 1483, he followed the same logic by suggesting that he build war machines. Then, in the service of François I, the engineer launched the (ultimately aborted) project of Romorantin, a new town with a palace, seen as a communication hub.
Leonardo da Vinci was already situated in the field of experience, in confrontation with Nature; he thus laid the foundations of the scientific revolution by insisting on the importance of mathematical demonstrations. However, he never built a theory on Nature, unlike Galileo later, noting only permanent principles regulated by mathematical principles. At the service of the princes, he developed his thought outside the traditional frameworks of the University, and that is why the princes also played a role in the development of the new sciences.
We can cite the creation by François I of the College of Royal Readers in 1530 (the future College of France), a place of education which, unlike the University, does not does not issue a diploma and whose chairs are defined according to the desire to bring out this or that field. Thus, applied mathematics, with Oronce Fine, holder of the first chair of mathematics at the College. Also an astronomer, cartographer and mechanic, he is not a theoretician, but he stimulated the mathematical field and its applications (like later the Mercator projection). As a cosmographer engineer, he studies the order of the world and can therefore only be at the service of the prince, to whom he offers world maps and maps. We also see this approach with the Medici, when Cosimo I created the mathematics cabinet in 1555 at the Palazzio Vecchio. There are exhibited the instruments of the war against Siena, then later Galileo's telescope. We are here in the same logic as the cabinets of curiosities:the instruments reveal the laws of Nature, and are the product. These abstracts of the world are mastered by the prince.
At the end of the 16th century, it was astrology that gained importance, even if it was suspect in its tendency to predict in the tense context of Reformation and the Predestination Debate. However, the treatises end with "God knows everything", and astrology asserts itself as the queen of sciences, making the link between what happens on earth and in heaven. It is a metascience, and astrologers are at court, like Ruggieri, or consulted, like Nostradamus by Catherine de Medici. The prince consults astrologers to act in accordance with the order of the world.
The 17th century and Galileo
The scientist is under the protection of Venice, in Padua, and he also renders services as an engineer. At the same time, he made an astronomical telescope and offered the patricians a demonstration on August 21, 1609, at the top of the Campanile. His discoveries confirm Copernicus and prove Aristotle wrong, which pushes Galileo to seek more powerful support, knowing that his work may bring him some problems. He then places himself under the protection of the Medici, whom he evokes in The Messenger of the Stars , through the Medicean stars (Jupiter's satellites). 
Despite everything, the Galileo affair breaks out. His questioning of the theories of Aristotle shocks the University, which is moreover in the tense context of the Council of Trent. In 1616, this led to the delayed condemnation by the Church of the theses of Copernicus, which Galileo validated. However, it is still protected by the Medici, but also by Pope Urban VIII, which allows him to publish in 1632 a Dialogue on the plurality of worlds , again inspired by Copernicus; he cannot then escape the trial. His atomist conception of the world is attacked because it calls into question the dogma of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Galileo retracts, which allows him not to end up at the stake like Giordano Bruno.
In France, the reaction is different. The heliocentric system is defended by the academy of the Dupuy brothers, which invites Tommaso Campanella, previously imprisoned by the inquisition for his Copernican theses. These circles are close to power since Campanella becomes an adviser to Richelieu, and makes the horoscope of Louis XIV at his birth, in 1638. Inventor of solar symbolism, Campanella is used as a propagandist under Louis XIII, then inspires Louis XIV, like the shows the example of the Carrousel du Louvre, with the king in its center and the courtiers circling around it. Be careful, however, we cannot say that the monarchy is Copernican, it created with Louis XIV its own orthodoxy.
Science and the prince in the 18th century
The Sun King decides the direction of science. Astrology has become a dangerous and under attack science, and Louis XIV intervenes in 1665, during the passage of a comet, by ordering Pierre Petit to refute this science. The image of the Sun, separated from astrology, became the king's monopoly from his last dance, in 1670. Astrologers continued to be prosecuted and accused of witchcraft until the 1690s. means of the monarchy to impose its orthodoxy.
The Academy of Sciences also produces standards, but outside the king, even if he protects it (it was created in 1666, on an idea by Colbert). She brings concrete advantages to the king thanks, for example, to her studies on the recoilless rifle or the calculation of longitudes. Producing its own orthodoxy, the Academy goes so far as to ignore Newton until the 1730s, remaining attached to Descartes, despite being condemned by the Church. It was not until Voltaire that the English scholar was finally introduced to France. This academic model also comes from Italy, from the Medici, and it involves knowledge validated by a scientific community; it must therefore be published. In France, the Journal des Savants appears . The consequence is the dispossession of the king of his power of arbitration during the 18th century:he pays and protects the academies, uses some of their services, but is no longer the sole recipient of their knowledge. An example, surgery:in the 16th century, Ambroise Paré was supported by the prince to belong to the community and be recognized as a patrician; in 1672, Pierre Dionis was appointed surgeon to the royal garden, which then became the place where surgery was taught. However, in 1691, the surgeons built an amphitheater at the Cordeliers convent, and left the royal environment. And in 1731, Louis XV created a Royal Academy of Surgery, recognized as a discipline and a science, an academy which produced its own rules and knowledge.
We are thus witnessing a phenomenon of autonomization of the arts, with commodification and a growing role for the public. However, the royal initiative allowed the emergence of new scientific fields. The prince is a motor of fields which then became autonomous. Its influence has gradually been reflected more in the organization than in the content.
Bibliography
- P. Hamon, The Renaissances (1453-1559), Belin, 2010.
- H. Drévillon, Absolute Kings (1629-1715), Belin, 2011.
- H. Drévillon, Reading and Writing the Future. Astrology in France during the Grand Siècle (1610-1715), Champ Vallon, 1996.
- P. Burke, Louis XIV. The Strategies of Glory, History Points, 1995.
- P. Redondi, Heretical Galilee, Gallimard, 1985.
- Y. Pauwels, F. Pauwels-Lemerle, Architecture in the Renaissance, Flammarion, 1998.