French Wars of Religion Research Papers (original) (raw)

Fracasado el Coloquio de Poissy (1561), y desestimada en consecuencia toda posibilidad de reconciliación bajo una única fe, la concordia dejará paso a la tolerancia. Será el canciller Michel de L’Hôpital (1504-1573) el encargado de enarbolar el nuevo estandarte, y el Edicto de Enero (1562) el marco legal de la pretendida coexistencia pacífica entre las confesiones. Ideal fugaz y fallido que dará lugar, tan sólo dos meses más tarde, con la matanza de Vassy, a un extenso período de guerras civiles de religión. Múltiples y variados serán los intentos filosóficos por hacer frente a esta profunda crisis de descomposición política y religiosa que afectará a Francia con particular virulencia. De entre esos intentos de respuesta, son sólo dos -y con extrema brevedad, por cierto- los que pretendemos presentar a lo largo de este escrito. En primer lugar referiremos a la posición de Jean Bodin (1530-1596), quien en su Repúblique (1576), y ante el gran poderío adquirido en pocos años por las diversas facciones -como la Liga Católica o el ejército hugonote-, propondrá la instauración de un poder político superior a cada una ellas. Un poder absoluto y sin vínculos religiosos. En segundo lugar daremos la palabra a Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), quien desde una perspectiva escéptica, y conociendo los numerosos inconvenientes políticos que pueden provocar los cambios repentinos en la legislación, presentará en sus Ensayos (1580) una dura batalla contra los hugonotes. Del mismo modo en que Bodin había llegado a creer que la solución a la crisis de la fe podía ser alcanzada a través de la instauración de único rey, Montaigne concluirá que el mejor modo de evitar la desintegración será admitir una única ley.

- by Bertrand Haan and +1
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- History, French History, Early Modern History, French Wars of Religion

Cette communication, rédigée pour un colloque virtuel à Nantes en novembre 2020 au sujet de la "Diplomatie rebelle au XVIe siècle" par Fabrice Micallef et Matthieu Gellard, analyse les agents diplomatiques et politiques du jeune prince Henri I de Condé. La communication sera publiée dans les actes du colloque par les Presses universitaires de Rennes.

- by Mark Greengrass
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- Wars of Religion, French Wars of Religion, French Huguenots, Henri III de France
- by Gianclaudio Civale
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- Early Modern History, War Studies, Jesuit history, French Wars of Religion

“Ni Français ni Breton, Malouins suis !”, proclame la devise de Saint-Malo. Cela ne fut jamais plus vrai que pendant l’épisode de la “république de Saint-Malo”. En pleines guerres de religion, entre 1590 et 1594, Saint-Malo s’émancipe en effet du pouvoir royal et seigneurial, met en place des structures d’autogouvernement et développe des relations commerciales et diplomatiques avec ses voisins.

- by Mark Charles Fissel
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- Arms and Armor Studies, Wars of Religion, Swiss History, Medieval Archaeology
- by Andrew Spicer
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- French History, Early Modern History, Material culture of religion, Urban History

This collection of essays, edited by Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer, developed from a one-day conference—‘Religion and Violence in Early Modern France: The Work of Natalie Zemon Davis’—which was held in June 2008 at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Five of the papers published here were initially delivered on that occasion, but the conference also sought to learn from the differing perspectives of violence outside sixteenth-century France. This concern is also reflected in this collection, which seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.

- by Andrew Spicer
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- French History, Peace and Conflict Studies, Early Modern History, Iconoclasm

This book is designed as an addition to my earlier book, published in 1997, The French wars of Religion: Selected Documents. It provides contextual and explanatory material and seeks to allow students to study the Wars of Religion in... more

- by David Potter
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- French Wars of Religion

The term «jongleur» is currently employed in Quebequois French with reference to the shaman-healer of the Amerindians. The authors explore the history of the peculiar conflation between a typical medieval character and the doctor of the «savages», through the texts and images that first provided its description between the XVI and XVIII Centuries. Their aim is to show how the representations of this charachter result from the encounter of different pre-existing iconographic traditions and, especially, how they express the political and religious conflicts raging in Europe at the time.

- by Sara Petrella and +1
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- Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Iconography, Art History

This paper will describe how the books that the Franciscan Cosmographer and noted traveler André Thevet (1516–1590) is known to have owned influenced the writing of his 1557 book "The Singularities of France Antarctique." In Brazil, Thevet appeared to find an image of Paradise, his experiences on that shore were inherently informed by the long-lingering desire to recapture what was lost in humanity's Fall told in the first chapters of Genesis. This paper will demonstrate how Thevet set his account of Brazil within this tradition of Paradise in medieval European literature, and how the apparently earthly Eden which Thevet observed challenged the existing perceptions of Paradise and its possible transcendence of the terrestrial, thus its divine equation with Heaven.

- by Jonathan Davies
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- History, Renaissance History, Violence, Early Modern History

This is an excerpt from a draft version of my book A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World (Apocryphile Press, 2023). I've extracted just a few sections here so as to present some of my ideas on how the idea of God has driven war, and how, even when God is supposedly not involved, other ideologies replace him. The key to reducing war, I submit, lies only partly in removing God; the true solution requires minimizing all ideologies. While I cite sources and scholarly works, the book this note is extracted from is intended for a general audience, not an academic one. Comments welcome, especially on whether I've accurately reported the historical details.

- by Dan Kohanski
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- History of Religion, French Revolution, Wars of Religion, Religious Pluralism

This article examines who committed major massacres, when they were committed, and where. This led to three discoveries: (1) men in organized military units, not crowds, perpetrated most of the massacres; (2) most violence occurred in the early phases of the Wars; and (3) massacres tended to occur in regions where one side was trying to solidify its control, frequently in the context of local coups or seizures of power. These facts suggest that in general, military and political leaders ordered massacres based on rational — usually political — calculations.

An examination of the municipal insurrection in Toulouse at the beginning of the French civil and religious wars in May 1562

The article considers why in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), the crown found it found it extremely difficult to make peace between Protestants and Catholics. The article uses modern political-science models of peace-making to improve our understanding of why Henri IV (reigned 1589-1610) succeeded in pacifying France while his predecessors did not. Previous accounts have seen Henri IV’s success as a product of his great personal qualities, but his achievement has been overstated. In fact, over the first fifteen years of the wars, Catholics learned that Protestants could not be eradicated from the country, and became more willing to negotiate. Henri’s success was due more to structural changes brought about by his position, rather than his personal qualities. Specifically, Henri’s questionable legitimacy forced him to adopt policies of persuasion rather than coercion, while his predecessors were hindered by their position as mediators within a conflict between the Protestant forces and the Catholic League.

Toile de fond de l’écriture des Essais, les guerres de Religion qui déchirèrent la France entre 1562 et 1598 représentent un défi pour la pensée de Montaigne. Quels sont les ressorts du fanatisme et du radicalisme religieux ? Quelle attitude tenir face aux partis belligérants? Comment conserver sa loyauté vis-à-vis des autorités en place tout en conservant la possibilité d’un jugement critique ? Comment envisager le « monde d’après », à partir d’une réforme éthique des individus ? Ce sont là les questions auxquelles ce volume tente de répondre à partir d’une analyse tant interne que contextuelle des Essais, en examimant les multiples rapports que cette oeuvre entretient avec les auteurs et les idées de l'Europe de la Renaissance.

- by Emiliano Ferrari
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- Religion, French Literature, French Studies, History of Religion
- by Michel De Waele
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- History, Women's History, French Wars of Religion

This book examines John Calvin’s sense of vocation. 1) It begins with an analysis of thinking on prophecy in early, medieval, and Reformation theology. 2) It finds Calvin within a non-mystical, non-apocalyptic prophetic tradition... more

- by Jon Balserak
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- Religion, Christianity, History, European History

Serge Brunet, « Perceptions identitaires et nationales dans la France de la première modernité : de la francité et de l’hispanité des Gascons », in Mikhaïl-V. Dmitriev et Daniel Tollet (éd.), Confessiones et nationes. Discours identitaires nationaux dans les cultures chrétiennes, Moyen Âge – XXe siècle, Paris, Honoré Champion, « Bibliothèque d’étude des religions du monde », 2014, p. 57-125.
This study seeks to rediscover and understand the perceptions that the men of southwestern France (the Gascons) had of their identity and nationality during the historical period from the end of the Hundred Years War (1453) at the entrance of France in the Thirty Years War (1635), passing by half a century of wars of Religion, and the restoration of national unity by Henri IV. We have therefore chosen to decentralize the analysis of national identity by privileging the assessments which the Gascons, provincials of a peripheral and border region of Spain, gave of themselves, whether Catholic or Protestant, ligueurs, royals or politiques, in relatively calm texts, in order to search for the expressions of their identity in a time essential to the gestation of the modern feeling of national belonging. Anglo-Gascons in the fifteenth century, they became fully French in the following century, while remaining basically Gascons. Their qualities as soldiers are long valued. But their Spanish affinities, put to the service of the Ligue,
against the accession to the crown of France of the Protestant Béarnais Henri de Navarre, led them to be treated as "Spaniards" and "bad Frenchmen." After the assassination of Henry IV (1610), the "Spanish marriages" (1615) and the rise of the Parti dévot brought about the transformation of the positive image of their warlike valor into that of the ridiculous "Capitan Matamore" until the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659). We therefore dwell, with precision, and analyze, the invention of the ridiculous Gascon in the comedies of the baroque age. On the other hand, we conclude that it is fidelity to the sovereign who remains the foundation of Franceness and we measure how the world changes, with its representations, at the time of the establishment of the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons, and with the entry of France into the Thirty Years' War (1635).

- by Serge Brunet
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- Early Modern History, Border Studies, National Identity, History of Universities
- by Liesbeth Corens and +5
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- Information Systems, History, Cultural History, Archival Studies
- by Scott Juall
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- Early Modern History, Brazilian History, Transatlantic History, Calvinism
- by David Trim
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- French History, Early Modern History, Transnational migration, French Wars of Religion
- by Gregory Hanlon
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- Military History, Venetian History, Ottoman Balkans, French Wars of Religion

En un escenario de odio religioso exacerbado, como el de las Guerras de Religión en Francia (1562-1598), el recurso a la demonología como herramienta de deshumanización absoluta del enemigo devino moneda corriente. Si bien la represión judicial de la brujería en suelo francés no alcanzó la intensidad que tuvo en principados vecinos, el diablo no estuvo jamás ausente de aquel reino galo destrozado por la violencia interconfesional. De hecho, su presencia en el discurso de los intelectuales al servicio de los bandos involucrados se fue acrecentando con el paso del tiempo, hasta tornarse agobiante en los años posteriores a la matanza de San Bartolomé. Es en el contexto de esta conflagración feroz, en la que el objetivo político de las facciones no podía ser otro que el exterminio del respectivo antagonista, que dos brillantes y prestigiosos polígrafos tardo-renacentistas, el jurista francés Jean Bodin y el jesuita español Juan Maldonado, diseñaron las teorías, modelos e interpretaciones demonológicas que constituyen el tema central del presente libro. Ambas demonologías resultan tan originales en sí mismas como diferentes entre sí. Pero las dos convergen en un aspecto esencial: su capacidad de transformar una disciplina abstrusa y enmarañada en un verdadero fenómeno de masas, en el marco de una comunidad política desangrada por el fanatismo religioso y profundamente inmersa en la apocalíptica esperanza de la inminente irrupción del Fin de los Tiempos.

- by Tatiana Debbagi Baranova and +4
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- French Wars of Religion, Protestant Reformation, Pamphlets

Estudia la historia del Derecho internacional, partiendo de dos acontecimientos históricos : La paz de Augsburgo y La paz de Westfalia de donde surgieron principios que se internacionalizaron configurando un nuevo sistema de relaciones... more

- by Galo Garcés Avalos
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- Late Middle Ages, International Law, Renaissance Studies, Political Science

Fine ottobre 1592. Paolo Paruta – letterato e uomo politico veneziano – giunge a Roma nella veste di ambasciatore ordinario della Serenissima Signoria. In Francia, dove si è nel pieno della fase finale delle guerre civili di religione, Enrico di Borbone, re di Navarra – erede legittimo al trono – sta combattendo contro la Lega cattolica, alleata con la Spagna, per conquistare il suo regno. Enrico è pronto a convertirsi al cattolicesimo e ad abiurare il calvinismo, atto, questo, che gli consentirebbe di essere riconosciuto sovrano da tutti i francesi. Il passo di Navarra non sarebbe comunque valido senza la ribenedizione pontificia, necessaria a liberare il re dalla scomunica che gli era stata inflitta nel 1585.
A Paruta quindi spetta il compito di convincere papa Clemente VIII ad assolvere il Bearnese – com’era altrimenti chiamato il Borbone - dalla propria colpa, in modo tale che la Francia, ricompattata sotto la guida di un unico capo, possa ritornare a svolgere in Europa – e soprattutto in Italia –, una funzione di bilanciamento nei confronti della potenza spagnola. Un simile obbiettivo, del resto, la Repubblica di Venezia l'aveva perseguito sin dall’inizio dei torbidi francesi, e sempre con grande coerenza, sia applaudendo alla strage della notte di San Bartolomeo sia riconoscendo, nel 1589 – prima fra le nazioni cattoliche –, Enrico di Navarra nuovo re di Francia.
L’ambasciatore veneziano a Roma seppe conquistarsi la stima del pontefice e di altre influenti personalità della Curia, tant’è vero che, in merito alle vicende d’oltralpe, il suo parere fu tra i più ascoltati. E, nel 1595, allorchè papa Aldobrandini decise di concedere al Borbone il perdono della Sede Apostolica, Paruta su richiesta dello stesso Clemente VIII, intervenne direttamente nelle trattative tra i delegati regi e i rappresentanti pontifici. Riuscendo nell’impresa di mettere tutti d’accordo, riguardo alle condizioni che il re avrebbe dovuto soddisfare, al fine di veder confermata dal Santo Padre la propria assoluzione dalla scomunica maggiore, che aveva ottenuto il 25 luglio 1593 nella chiesa di Saint Denis quando, al cospetto del clero francese, rinnegò il credo calvinista per abbracciare la religione cattolica.

- by Gianlorenzo Bruna
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- French Wars of Religion, Niccolò Machiavelli, Storia moderna, Filippo II

This dissertation examines musical affective economies surrounding the Wars of Religion in Lyon. Expanding on affect theory that considers how emotions stick to and slide from subjects and objects, this research asks how musical affect also sank into bodies and ontologies, serving to both bond and break the community of Lyon. I consider how the boundaries of community were delimited through musical theatre in the early sixteenth century, demonstrating how techniques of communitas were essential to performing this community. I explore how the principal of Lyon’s Collège de la Trinité made use of these techniques, both in his pedagogical theatre, and in an elite musical print aimed at religious reconciliation.
From here, I examine how these techniques began to be used towards divisive ends, as Protestants confronted Catholics with psalms and “spiritual songs.” A group of martyr songs, disseminated amongst both elite and more popular audiences, activated the Protestant habitus through such genres, putting the visceral experiences of five young martyrs of Lyon into oral circulation. The subversiveness of such “spiritual songs” within orthodox martyrological practices underscores the musicality of how the theatre of martyrdom was memorialized. Polemic was especially propagated through the inflamed populace in the guise of “chansons nouvelles,” contrafacta songs that were “sung to the tune of” extant popular tunes. Exploring how this genre engaged with contemporary notions and concerns about anger, I demonstrate how the timbres (song bases) of these “chansons nouvelles” accumulated affect across the Wars of Religion as they were adhered to violent Catholic invective.
Finally, I turn to Lyon’s proto-social welfare project, permanently established in 1534, the Aumône Générale. Interrogating how the institution subjected the city’s impoverished residents to a Catholic economy of faith, I focus on how the hyper-marking of the forced musical processions of the poor would serve to facilitate their eventual confinement in the seventeenth century. Positioned within the emergent subfield of music and conflict studies, this dissertation argues that, because of its very ephemeral and emotional qualities, music was a vital force in cultivating both solidarity and animosity during the tumult of the Wars of Religion.

- by Jess Herdman
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- Music History, Peace and Conflict Studies, Renaissance music, Community

This thesis examines the literary representations of Jeanne d’Albret (1528 - 1572), Queen of Navarre. While this historical figure has already known many historical studies, this work seeks to highlight her importance in French literature, as subject, patron and writer herself. Concentrating on the theme of feminine exemplarity and its rhetorical implications, this study will show the evolution and transformation of Jeanne d’Albret’s representation in the literary world, from various epidictic pieces composed for her during her childhood, to the legacy of a woman of letters, to the celebration of a strong Calvinist Queen, and eventually to the shadowing of these successes in the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie.

- by Annick MacAskill
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- Gender Studies, Women's History, Calvinism, Women's Literature

Au tournant des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, le zélantisme romain ne cesse d’exprimer son effroi en France devant la doctrine impie d’esprits généralement qualifiés de politiques. Au lendemain de la promulgation de l’Édit de Nantes (1598), le terme est courant et désigne presque toujours des catholiques qui se signalent fâcheusement par leurs inclinations antitridentines, gallicanes ou encore philoprotestantes — et souvent les trois ensemble. Plus largement, le vocable est systématiquement affecté aux tenants d’une suprématie, occasionnelle ou non, du pouvoir civil dans les affaires ecclésiastiques du royaume. Le présent article essaie de rendre compte des motifs pour lesquels les théologiens catholiques favorables à la papauté ont été déconcertés par l’éclosion d’une sensibilité doctrinale qui ne correspondait pas à leurs catégories d’analyse habituelles.

This dissertation investigates the French military alliance with the Ottoman Empire during a series of religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants in France. It asks why the French court and its diplomats continued to pursue France’s Ottoman alliance during a period of such intense internecine conflict, and how those diplomatic endeavors were achieved. Based on extensive manuscripts research, this dissertation argues that the French court pursued an alliance with an Islamic Empire while the country was in the throes of Catholic-Protestant warfare because the Ottoman Empire was a central part of how the French conceived of their foreign policy. To prevent Spanish intervention into their domestic turmoil, the French court and its diplomats turned to their Ottoman ally to counter Spain in the Mediterranean. Historians have long known about the alliance between King Françios Ier (r. 1515-1547) and Sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566), but the historiography has believed there were no further political ties until the reign of Louis XIV. This dissertation shows that the Franco-Ottoman alliance continued unabated throughout the sixteenth century despite the outbreak of religious civil war. France’s cross-confessional foreign policy was institutionalized long before the 1630s. This dissertation is divided into two parts. Part one provides an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of early modern and specifically Franco-Ottoman diplomacy. It demonstrates how the French court and its diplomats in the Ottoman Empire established a structure of communication and interaction with their Muslim allies to facilitate Franco-Ottoman diplomatic and military cooperation. Part two provides a narrative of the waxing and waning of the Franco-Ottoman diplomacy. It shows that the French crown included the Ottomans in all its foreign policy endeavors during the second half of the sixteenth century until the end of Henri IV’s reign (r. 1589-1610). Frustration with the Ottoman Empire’s inability to provide substantive military support to France caused Henri IV and his court to abandon the military aspects of the alliance, leaving only an economic agreement. Historians have traditionally defined the European geopolitical community within the restrictive parameters of western Christian Europe, treating the Ottoman Empire as a peripheral actor on the margins of Europe at best and as a foil against which the European community defined itself at worst. This dissertation demonstrates that the French court and its diplomats treated their geopolitical community as a much broader region that included the Ottoman Empire.

- by Nathan Michalewicz
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- Early Modern History, Mediterranean Studies, Early Modern Europe, Diplomacy

The ways of the early reception of Machiavelli in Central-Europe have to be reconsidered: Instead of conceiving of it as a simple crossing of the Alps from Italy to the Northern territories of Austria and Germany and beyond, distinguishing the vernacular and the Latin forms of distribution, it was rather in triangular and quadrangular paths that Machiavelli entered from the West and the South-West into the political and academic culture of Central Europe, from the French speaking Lower Netherlands (Belgium), certainly from Basel and in the context of the pamphleteering concerning both Western wars of religion in France and the Netherlands.

- by Cornel Zwierlein
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- History, Intellectual History, History of Ideas, Political Theory

History Sources on Modern France [16th, 17th and 18th centuries]

- by Jean-Marc Moriceau
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- Early Modern History, Rural History, Social History, French Wars of Religion