Les pauvres « orgueilleux » Représentations et réalités entre Italie et France aux Temps Modernes

The process of the secularisation of the poor at the dawn of the modern age can be summed up in the vocabulary of infamy. A storm of accusations fall on the deconsecrated poor. Pride is included in the insulting vocabulary, even if it does not occupy a pre-eminent position. However, something pushed Jules César Scaliger, in the middle of the sixteenth century, to conceive this violent sentence : “It is a ridiculous, incredible, and truly prodigious thing that destitution and pride can be found under the same roof”.