The Biblical Image of the Providential Ruler in the Protestant Propaganda on the Eve of the French Wars of Religion

French Protestantism has remained famous in the history of political thought mostly for its theories regarding popular sovereignty and the right of the people to resist and replace a tyrannical ruler. However, before the civil wars pushed them on this revolutionary path, French Protestants stressed the duty of obedience even in the face of manifest tyranny. The reasons for this were ideological, due to the significance placed on St. Paul’s assertion that all political power was divinely ordained, but also pragmatic, as Calvin and his followers were acutely aware of the danger of antagonizing the secular authorities. More importantly, they were fervently hoping for the conversion of France to the Reformation and, in their mind, the surest way such a process could take place was through the conversion of the king and the royal family. Therefore, Protestant propaganda of that time constantly urged the most important French royals to convert to the Reformation, and, for this purpose, they deployed a language full of references to the pious Biblical rulers who led their people towards the true faith—whom the addressees of these propaganda texts were advised to emulate, lest they incur God’s wrath. This paper aims to analyze the occurrences and the role of these references in the Protestants’ dialogue with the French monarchy.

Responding to the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

This is the first of four chapters scrutinizing villainy in the French Wars of Religion (1562–98). Chapter 11 considers the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August 1572, a mass killing that began with the murder of the Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny. Partisan responses to Coligny’s murder soon followed; of particular interest is La Tragedie de feu Gaspard de Colligny (1575) by François de Chantelouve. The latter, a militant Catholic, makes a vindictive mockery of the erstwhile admiral in the course of his tragedy. For Chantelouve, Coligny was a villainous traitor and a threat to France’s monarchy; Charles IX was thus justified in sanctioning Coligny’s death. Yet Chantelouve does not straightforwardly echo the official legal justification for the Massacre that had been commissioned by the Crown in 1573 from the leading jurist Guy du Faur de Pibrac.

"Eradicating Religious Differences”: Religious Turmoil During the French Wars of Religion

This essay looks at the French Wars of Religion, specifically the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the relationship that it has to religious conflict. Looking at the religious elements of violence within this massacre attempts to show that both Protestant and Catholic leaders, followers, and significant figure of the time, like the King and Catharine de Medici, used religious upheaval as a way to condone the violence that ensued during the late 1560s and early 1570s. Using both primary and secondary sources, this essay looks at ‘Religious nationalism’ and its role in the blood shed of the Massacre. The tensions between the two sects of religion were growing, St. Bartholomew’s Day is an example of when this tension became too much. Looking closely at the people involved and the events that took place, violence and religion are clearly intertwined.

A SODOMY SCANDAL ON THE EVE OF THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION

This article uncovers a sodomy scandal that took place in the Benedictine abbey of Morigny, on the eve of the French Wars of Religion, in order to tackle an apparently simple yet persistent question in the history of early modern criminal justice. Why, despite all of the formal and informal obstacles in their way, did plaintiffs bring charges before a criminal court in this period? The article investigates the sodomy scandal that led to the conviction and public execution of the abbey's porter Pierre Logerie, known as ‘the gendarme of Morigny’, and situates it in the wider patterns of criminal justice as well as the developing spiritual crisis of the civil wars during the mid-sixteenth century. Overall, this article demonstrates how criminal justice in this period could prove useful to plaintiffs in resolving their disputes, even in crimes as scandalous and difficult to articulate as sodomy, but only when the interests of local elites strongly aligned with those of the criminal courts where the plaintiffs sought justice.