Abstract
With the benefit of hindsight it may seem remarkable that, in November 1561, Catherine de Medici could declare that the divisions between the faiths were not as great as depicted, but, more perspicaciously, that the peace of the realm depended on keeping them ‘from becoming bitter and taking action’ against one another.1 By August 1563, following the first war, chancellor L’Hôpital hoped that as a result of ‘the misfortunes that this poor people have suffered during these divisions [… they] will be more prompt to reconcile … with their neighbours and better disposed than before’.2 By contrast, in 1568, as conflict returned, the irenicist bishop of Valence, Jean de Monluc, lamented that ‘the language and actions of the enemy make me fear that this war will be the most perilous ever in this kingdom’ because it was not just a matter of confessional division anymore, and it was the people of France who would suffer.3 The country never wholly recaptured its early optimism about, or at least willingness to go along with, royal appeasement couched in terms of the welfare of the people and the kingdom. Nevertheless, efforts to bring the faiths together in peaceful coexistence continued in local communities throughout the wars, with a brief hiatus in the late 1580s as the Catholic League gained ascendancy.
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Notes
Cited in S. Daubresse (2005), Le Parlement de Paris ou la voix de la raison (1559–1589) (Geneva), p. 434.
F. de La Noue (1967), Discours politiques et militaires, éd. F.E. Sutcliffe (Geneva), pp. 712, 425–6.
Cited in B. Cottret (1997), 1598, L’Édit de Nantes. Pour en finir avec les guerres de religion (Paris), p. 221.
D. Parker (1983), The Making of French Absolutism (London), p. 42.
M. Berdal (2009), Building Peace after War (Abingdon), pp. 19–20, 174–5.
M. Greengrass (2007), Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576–1585 (Oxford), pp. 138, 153.
P. Roberts (2007), The Kingdom’s Two Bodies? Corporeal Rhetoric and Royal Authority during the Religious Wars,’ French History, 21, 147–64.
M. De Waele (2010), Reconcilier les fiançais. Henri IV et la fin des troubles de religion (1589–1598) (Québec), argues that Henry revived the French tradition of ‘one faith, one law, one king,’ but this approach also characterised royal policy under Charles IX and Henry III.
D.C. Margolf (2003), Religion and Royal Justice in Early Modern France: The Paris Chambre de l’Edit, 1598–1665 (Kirksville, MO), p. xv.
M.J. Braddick and J. Walter (eds) (2001), Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge), pp. 1–42.
J. Pollmann, (2006), ‘The Low Countries,’ in A. Ryrie (ed.), Palgrave Advances in the European Reformations (Basingstoke), pp. 85–9.
P. Benedict et al. (eds) (1999), Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555–1585 (Amsterdam); Pollmann, ‘Countering the Reformation’.
G. Murdock (2006), ‘Central and Eastern Europe,’ in Ryrie (ed.), Palgrave Advances, pp. 49–52
J. Spohnholz (2011), ‘Confessional Coexistence in the Early Modern Low Countries,’ in TM. Safley (ed.), A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modem World (Leiden and Boston), pp. 65–8.
Recent examples include: Safley (ed.), A Companion to Multiconfessionalism; M. Ragnow and W.D. Phillips Jr (eds) (2011), Religious Conflict and Accommodation in the Early Modern World (Minneapolis).
B.J. Kaplan (2007), Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, and London), pp. 10, 203–4, 233.
P. Roberts (2011), ‘One Town, Two Faiths: Unity and Exclusion in Sixteenthcentury France,’ in Safley (ed.), Companion to Multiconfessionalism, pp. 265–85.
On the diversity of solutions elsewhere, see B.J. Kaplan (2011), ‘“In Equality and Enjoying the Same Favor”: Biconfessionalism in the Low Countries,’ and D.M. Luebke, ‘A Multiconfessional Empire,’ both in Safley (ed.), Companion to Multiconfessionalism, pp. 99–125, 129–54.
Olivier Christin (1997), La paix de religion: l’autonomisation de la raison politique au XVIe siècle (Paris); Luebke, ‘A Multiconfessional Empire’.
G. Marnef (2011), ‘Multiconfessionalism in a Commercial Metropolis: The Case of 16th-Century Antwerp,’ in Safley (ed.), Companion to Multiconfessionalism, pp. 75–97.
K.P. Luria (2005), Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington, DC); Murdock, ‘Central and Eastern Europe,’ esp. p. 48.
Particularly useful in this context are: O. Ramsbotham, T. Woodhouse and H. Miall (eds) (1999), Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Cambridge)
R.L. Rothstein (ed.) (1999), After the Peace: Resistance and Reconciliation (Boulder and London)
J.D. Brewer (2010), Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge); Berdal, Building Peace.
M. Greengrass (1994), ‘The Calvinist Experiment in Béam,’ in A. Pettegree, A. Duke and G. Lewis (eds), Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620 (Cambridge), pp. 119–42.
R.J. Knecht (2000), The French Civil Wars, 1562–1598 (London), p. 113.
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Roberts, P. (2013). Conclusion. In: Peace and Authority during the French Religious Wars c.1560–1600. Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137326751_9
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