The Church and the Protestant Faction

Abstract

The policy of harsh repression implemented by Henri II and his Parlements was unable to crush the rise of Protestantism. Its converts were now being drawn from among the highest noble families, the magistrates of the sovereign courts, the civic elites of merchants and officeholders, and ordinary townsfolk. Public demonstrations like those in the rue Saint Jacques in 1557 or the Pré-aux-Clercs in 1558 bore witness to the strength and zeal of the reformed community in the royal city of Paris. Elsewhere small groups were forming, more and more openly, celebrating communion in the Genevan fashion, reading the Gospels, and singing the Psalms. The makeshift pastors who guided them, though clearly Protestants in breach with the Catholic Church, were not always adherents of strict Calvinist orthodoxy. A stream of appeals flowed to Calvin, to whom the French Protestants looked for leadership, asking for pastors trained in the master’s pure doctrine. Often enough it was local notables, worried by the risk of doctrinal or even social deviance, who wrote to Geneva, anxious to take the decisive step and belong to a gathered Church.1