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TOP LEVEL
Past Issues
Year 2007
May/June 2007
Tumults, Riots, and Seditions
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The European wars of religion, which followed the Reformation and raged roughly from the early mid-sixteenth century to the later mid-seventeenth century, were marked by a range of atrocities, all carried out in the name of Christianity. Later generations realized the incongruity and attempted to shift the culpability for the violence to one side or the other of the confessional divide. That attitude, of attempting to fix the blame on Protestant or Catholic, is still influential, but it is misguided.
This article considers sixteenth-century France, which suffered more than most European countries from conflict in the name of religion. Divided between the majority Roman Catholic population and the minority Calvinist Huguenots, France was racked by civil wars (the French Wars of Religion) and by persecution and communal violence for most of the last 40 years of the sixteenth century. Peace came in 1598, with a remarkable (albeit temporary) experiment in religious toleration, effected by the Edict of Nantes. France in this period is, as one historian recently observed, “one of the most salient points in the history of persecution and pluralism.”
While modern historical scholarship is less confessionally partisan than it once was, the preconceptions of historians brought up in a Catholic or Protestant milieu still present challenges to writing the history of the Reformation era. Furthermore, prejudices engendered by past generations are often more influential than the views of today’s academics.
The books on my parents’ bookshelves as I was growing up seemed to make it clear that Protestants were the good guys and Catholics the bad guys. When as a boy I first read that the Huguenot cavalry at the Battle of Dreux (1562) were clad in white cassocks, over their armor, it seemed only appropriate. Researching the period as a professional historian has given me a more balanced perspective, but jaundiced views are still widespread. Patrice Chereau’s spectacular motion picture La Reine Margot (1994), which was both an artistic and a commercial success, including in English-speaking countries, reinforced the view that violence in France’s guerres de religion was the fault of Roman Catholics. A counterpoint to this is the recent claim by Pope Benedict XVI that the Protestant reformers were responsible for a breakdown in a traditional Catholic consensus against compulsion or violence in the name of religion.
What, then, does history really reveal about religious violence during the French Wars of Religion?
Catholic Repression and Persecution
When considering the record of religious violence in late sixteenth-century France, at first guilt seems to lie overwhelmingly with those on the Roman Catholic side.
The 1540s saw mass executions of Protestants in many French towns. These were quasi-judicial proceedings against people convicted of heresy, but are striking because of the numbers put to death. And they were to be succeeded by less formal and more massive acts of brutality. In 1561, for example, when convicted heretics were released by royal decree, as part of a short-lived attempt to achieve compromise, in the town of Marsillargues a Catholic crowd rounded them up “and executed and burned them in the streets.” Then in 1562, the First Civil War/War of Religion was triggered by the slaughter of a whole congregation of Huguenots, worshipping in a barn outside the small town of Vassy. It was the first of many massacres, of which the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris (August 24, 1572) is only the best-known and most horrific. In less than 24 hours, some 3,000 Huguenots, including women and children and the elderly, were murdered by the king’s troops, Catholic nobles and their retainers, and by the ordinary people of Paris.
In the weeks that followed the massacre in Paris, between 2 and 5,000 more Huguenots were killed across France as the news of the massacre arrived in the country’s cities, setting off copycat massacres of the local Protestant populations. At Bordeaux the massacre occurred after a Jesuit preached a sermon “on how the Angel of the Lord had already executed God’s judgment in Paris, Orléans, and elsewhere and would do so in Bordeaux.” .” 
Elsewhere, though, massacres often did not take place in the hot blood of religious fervor—the degree of calculation is sometimes chilling. In Rouen, for example, many of the Huguenots were in prison and Catholic zealots broke into the jail “and systematically butchered them.” In Lyons the leading Catholic killers made public display of their bloodied clothing in the streets, being boastful, rather than regretful.
Where Catholics lacked the numbers or confidence to attempt to put all their confessional rivals to the sword, they used other tactics. Thus at Sens, in 1562, a mob, drawn from both the town and nearby villages, confronted the Calvinists coming out of church and engaged them in “a bloody battle.” In Lyon the same year, Catholic boys stoned Protestant worshippers on their way to service. At Pamiers in 1566 a youth society performing a ritual in honor of Pentecost entered the Calvinist quarter as the local pastor was preaching, then began to sing “‘kill, kill,’ and serious fighting began that was [to last] for three days.”
The violence spilled over even into the organized campaigns of the civil wars in which, in theory, the rule of war ought to have applied. But Louis de Condé, leader of the Huguenot cause up to 1569, was murdered as he tried to surrender after being unhorsed in the battle of Jarnac in March 1569. Two other Huguenot generals, Montgommery and Briquemault, were denied the rights of prisoners of war when captured in 1574; instead they were tried as traitors and executed by being broken on the wheel—judicially tortured to death.
As the distinguished American historian Natalie Zemon Davis has highlighted in her important study of religious violence in the guerres de religion,
Catholic violence went beyond the grave—not only Huguenot lives were taken, their dead bodies were desecrated.
In Normandy and Provence, “leaves of the Protestant Bible were stuffed into the mouths and wounds of corpses.”
In 1568, when word spread that a Huguenot was about to be buried in a consecrated cemetery, “a mob rushed to the graveyard, interrupted the funeral, and dragged the cadaver off to … the town dump.”
The corpse of Admiral de Coligny, the celebrated Huguenot leader whose murder was one of the first actions of the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, was mutilated, stoned, and hung on a gibbet before finally being burned.
At Provins in 1572, a Huguenot corpse had ropes tied to neck and feet and was then made the subject of a tug-of-war competition between the boys of the town, before they dragged it off to be burned.
Elsewhere, it was commonplace for Huguenot bodies to be thrown into rivers or burned, but bodies were also mocked and derided as they were dragged through the streets to their fate, and frequently “had their genitalia and internal organs cut away.”
All this is not the stuff of Protestant propaganda; it is well-documented historical fact. Furthermore, Catholic preachers and polemicists deliberately tried to whip up hysteria against the Huguenots, accusing them of rape, cannibalism, and infanticide; characterizing heresy as a pollutant, a cancer, or a contagious infection; and declaring that droughts, blights, and famines were God’s judgment on those who would not cleanse the nation of the defiling disease of heresy. As the great political theorist Jean Bodin observed in 1583: “The eloquent tongue of a mutinous orator is like a dangerous knife in the hands of a madman.”
It is easy, then, to portray the Catholic party in the wars of religion as a malign force—as oppressors and persecutors, with Calvinists as victims who only defended themselves.
Protestant Aggression and Intolerance
However, the Huguenots in fact were not guiltless—they were an active ingredient in the combustible recipe that produced the explosion of violence in late sixteenth-century France. In Rouen, just in 1560 and 1561, “there were at least nine incidents variously described in the documents as ‘tumults,’ ‘riots,’ and ‘seditions,’ … all of them arising out of actions” by the Huguenots. In Agen in 1561 Protestant artisans systematically destroyed the altars and statues in the town’s Catholic churches. At Lyon a Calvinist shoemaker interrupted the Easter sermon preached by a Franciscan friar, crying out “You lie”—a claim punctuated by the gunshots of Huguenots waiting outside in the square. Throughout France, Protestants frequently interrupted masses or Corpus Christi Day processions to seize the host and crumble it before indignant Catholics (for whom, because it was Christ’s literal body, this was a horrible blasphemy), proclaiming it “a god of paste” or “a god of flour,” rather than the real body of ChristSimilar patterns were repeated often: Catholic religious processions were regularly showered with rubbish; they, like church services, were disrupted by psalm-singing, whistling, or slogan-chanting Protestants; and frequently churches were “cleansed,” with offending objects deliberately desecrated with spit, urine, and excrement before being smashed. Priests, monks, and friars, or officers of the law holding Protestant prisoners, were often beaten up or killed, and occasionally even tortured to death.
It is not only what the Huguenotsdid ; it is what they did notdo. They were often unwilling to accept that Catholics were also sincere Christians and were unwilling to compromise on any points.
The most influential sixteenth-century French proponent of toleration of other Christians was a Roman Catholic, Michel de L’Hospital, Chancellor of France in the 1560s. He came to believe, genuinely and passionately, that toleration was what was right for followers of Christ, who, as De L’Hospital wrote, “loved peace, and orders us to abstain from armed violence…. He did not want to compel and terrorize anybody through threats, nor to strike with a sword.”
In contrast, Calvin condemned the leading Calvinist advocate of toleration, Sebastian Castellio, as did prominent Huguenot pastors and theologians.
For that matter, Henri of Navarre’s willingness to compromise his faith in order to end conflict was an important factor in ending the wars, but in so doing he provoked the condemnation of many Huguenots, both leaders and rank and file. Henri acted as he did partly to advance himself, in order to be unchallenged king of France (which he became as Henri IV), famously declaring: “Paris is well worth a mass.” However, Henri also genuinely wanted to end decades of confessional conflict and it is unlikely that this could have been achieved without some compromises. Many Huguenots felt that Henri should have had faith in God and defied human logic, and a miracle might have been worked. Yet ultimately Henri’s willingness to abjure was vital in ending religious violence. Which course of action, then, was the more in keeping with the example of our Lord? It’s a perplexing question.
The Nature df Early-Modern French Religious Violence
None of this changes the fact that the Huguenots were much more sinned against than sinning in sixteenth-century France. Nineteenth-century Protestant writers were right in identifying the intolerance of the Roman Catholic majority as the motor that drove religious conflict in France.
First, Calvinist violence was often defensive, rather than aggressive. The nine civil wars resulted from the unwillingness of Calvinist nobles and congregations to allow fellow believers to be imprisoned, enslaved in the galleys of the royal fleet, or executed. The Huguenots never sought to impose Calvinism on the rest of France by force of arms, only to secure liberty of conscience and worship for themselves. Louis XIV was able to revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685, ending France’s experiment in religious liberty and driving the Reformed Churches underground, partly because a combination of military defeat and royal concessions led to the Huguenots disarming in the 1620s and 1630s, leaving themselves defenseless.
While at times Calvinists did initiate violence against Roman Catholic religious rituals or ecclesiastical officials, often in communal riots the Huguenots were simply defending themselves. Moreover, the worst outrages––the massacres––were of
Calvinists, by Catholics, though this is not always apparent from Catholic historiography.
During his time as pontiff, John Paul II issued several apologies for wrongful actions by Roman officials in the past. Yet during his visit to Paris in August 1997, when celebrating a public mass on St Bartholomew’s Day, he restricted himself to declaring, cautiously (and misleadingly), that on such a day, “one cannot forget the massacre of St Bartholomew, arising from very obscure motives in the political and religious history of France. Christians have undertaken actions that the Gospel reproves.” Although the question of precisely who in the government and Catholic nobility was responsible for ordering the massacre remains much disputed by historians, there is no doubt of who did the killing and who were killed––and no doubt of its religious motivation.
Second, as Natalie Zemon Davis pointed out 30 years ago, there is a clear qualitative difference between the violence of Calvinists and Catholics. France’s Calvinists hoped to change the mind of the majority population; for them, Catholicism’s sacred objects and leaders were the problem, because (as the Huguenots saw it) they misled the masses. And so Calvinists destroyed the host, icons and relics, to show that they were not imbued with divine power, and killed priests, because they were perceived to be leading the people astray. However, for French Roman Catholics, it was Calvinists themselves that were the problem. Killing Huguenots purged the country of what was perceived as pollution, or a cancer of the body politic, and was the first step toward recovering divine favor. This is why 3,000 Huguenots could be killed in Paris in 24 hours on 24 August 1572—a chilling parallel to the 3,000 killed in New York on 11 September 2001. With the smaller populations back then it was clearly an even more terrorizing moment in history.
In sum, whereas Catholic violence was directed against people, Calvinist violence was largely directed against. things It was therefore inherently always more limited than Catholic violence.
Yet the crucial facts are that Calvinists still perpetrated violence: they still murdered priests; they were still guilty of intolerance and oppression. While the distinction between the two forms of violence is an important one, we are, as it were, talking here about the lesser of two evils, not of a contrast between good and evil.
Conclusion
There is a part of me that thrills when I read the narrative of the Battle of Coutras (1589) by Agrippa d’Aubigné (the distinguished Huguenot historian, who was recording events in which he had participated), knowing that both the overweening arrogance of the Catholic League’s army and the overwhelming numerical superiority on which it was based were about to be shattered by the moral superiority of the outnumbered but zealous Huguenot cavalry, chanting the 118th Psalm as they charged. But there is also a part of me that thrills when reading Michel de L’Hospital’s heartfelt, gospel-based plea for acceptance of alternative points of view—and recognizes that De L’Hospital, a devout follower of Rome, was closer to the spirit of the Gospels than most members of the Reformed Churches.
Considering the experience of persecution and violence during the French Wars of Religion reminds us that the use of violence for religious ends, even if it is used moderately or to achieve apparently limited aims, will be counterproductive, because violence only hardens positions and leads to actions inconsistent with the teachings of virtually all the world’s great religions. Violence and persecution should have no place in the arsenal of religious people seeking to convert others to their faith.
In addition, it is clear that seeking to pin blame on one side or the other in sixteenth-century France is misguided, because Protestants and Catholics alike failed to live up to the high standards of the One who declared: “You have heard it said … hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those that spitefully use you and persecute you.” Rather than seeking to determine who was more at fault, it is better to try to understand why so many true believers could act so contrary to the wishes of Christianity’s founder and foundation. This will not only produce better historical understanding, but it may also yield insights into why the persecutory mentality is still far from dead today.
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Dr. David J. B. Trim is professor of history at Newbold College, Bracknell, Berkshire, near London, England.
1 Luc Racaut, “Persecution or Pluralism? Propaganda and Opinion-Forming During the French Wars of Religion,” in Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 1500–1700 (Oxford, New York & Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), p. 65.
2 Cf. D. J. B. Trim, “De Franse godsdienstoorlogen en de uitdaging voor partijdige geschiedenis,” Transparant: Tijdschrift van de Vereniging van Christen–Historici, vol. 17, no. 3 (2006), pp. 4-8.
3 “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” Regensburg, Sept. 12, 2006, available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html.
4 Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-century France,” Past and Present, no. 59 (1973): 51-91; repr. in Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975), which is the version cited here (from p. 163) and hereinafter.
5 Davis, 167, 165, 172-3, 183; Philip Benedict, Rouen During the Wars of Religion (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 128.
6 Davis, pp. 157, 162, 163, 179; Benedict, pp. 64, 67.
7 Quoted in Racaut, p. 70.
8 Benedict, p. 58.
9 Davis, pp. 163-4.
10 Eg., Ibid., pp. 156-7, 171; Benedict, p. 61.
11 Davis, pp. 157-58, 160, 171, 173-4, 179-81, 183; Benedict, pp. 60-3, 67.
12 Quoted by Loris Petris, “Faith and Religious Policy in Michel de L’Hospital’s Civic Evangelism,” in The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France, ed. Keith Cameron, et al (New York, Oxford & Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), p. 137.
13 Eg., Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan (1911; Mountain View, Calif., & Oshawa, Ontario: Pacific Press, 1950), pp. 276-77.
14 Quoted in Yvonne Roberts, Jean-Antoine de Baïf and the Valois Court (Bern & New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 80 (I owe this reference to Richard Bonney).
15 Davis, esp. p. 174.
16 Cf. Harry Leonard, “Reconsidering the St Bartholomew’s Massacre, August 24, 1572, in Light of the Attack on New York, September 11, 2001,” Fifth Walter C. Utt Lecture, Pacific Union College, Angwin, Calif., 2002.
17 Matthew 5:43, 44.
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