For most of that time it has had a Lutheran state church with the kind of brassbound temporal authority that Protestants are often pointing fingers at the Roman Catholics for.
The president of France's National Assembly sits high above the 627 deputies in a huge, brassbound armchair, and acts like the umpire at a political tennis match.
Facing the wigged high judges of Britain had failed to dent her brassbound confidence, but facing this crowd was something else.