The scars of religious war in histories of French cities (1600–1750)

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the memory of France’s Wars of Religion in urban histories published during the century and a half that followed the restoration of peace with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. It asks why, despite explicit prohibitions against reviving memories of injuries suffered during the wars, local historians persisted in demonizing former opponents in histories that remained overtly confessional in their representation of the troubles. The article focuses on Catholic authors, who wrote fifty-six of the fifty-eight works examined. Protestants had little incentive to memorialize the towns in which they had a limited and declining position. Catholics, by contrast, mobilized memory to reaffirm a local identity rooted in Catholic practice and belief. Retelling the suffering local populations endured and recounting the city’s ritual responses to the religious schism, they pushed Protestants to the margins of a civic culture represented as inherently Catholic even in a bi-confessional state.