Abstract
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.
Highlights
The sixteenth century has been a crucial period for the development of European political thought, with many historians placing in this age the origin of key modern concepts, such as constitutionalism or popular sovereignty
The historiography dedicated to the evolution of the Reformation in France and to the French Wars of Religion has focused more on the “anti-royalist” phase of Protestant political thought, which produced a polemical literature of exceptional quality which remained in history under the name of the “monarchomach” texts
The beginnings of the French Reformed Church have been the subject of several exceptional monographs: first, Robert Kingdon’s Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555–1563 and Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, where professor Kingdon argues that Calvin and the Genevan Company of Pastors played a fundamental role in the growth and in the political enterprises of the French Reformed Church; second, Hugues Daussy’s Le Parti huguenot: Chronique d’une désillusion (1557–1572), where professor Daussy argues brilliantly that the French Protestants sincerely believed in the possibility of the conversion of France to the Reformation and mobilized all their resources, material and spiritual, for this purpose
Summary
The sixteenth century has been a crucial period for the development of European political thought, with many historians placing in this age the origin of key modern concepts, such as constitutionalism or popular sovereignty. The historiography dedicated to the evolution of the Reformation in France and to the French Wars of Religion has focused more on the “anti-royalist” phase of Protestant political thought, which produced a polemical literature of exceptional quality which remained in history under the name of the “monarchomach” texts. The beginnings of the French Reformed Church have been the subject of several exceptional monographs: first, Robert Kingdon’s Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555–1563 and Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, where professor Kingdon argues that Calvin and the Genevan Company of Pastors played a fundamental role in the growth and in the political enterprises of the French Reformed Church; second, Hugues Daussy’s Le Parti huguenot: Chronique d’une désillusion (1557–1572), where professor Daussy argues brilliantly that the French Protestants sincerely believed in the possibility of the conversion of France to the Reformation and mobilized all their resources, material and spiritual, for this purpose. This paper aims to complement professor Daussy’s research by examining the figure of the providential ruler as it appears in Protestant propaganda directed at the French royal family and the Biblical imagology employed to support that picture
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