War for God or a War for the Godless?

Abstract

The French Civil Wars, or ‘Wars of Religion,’ were set primarily in the sixteenth century and enveloped France in a religious conflict. The Civil Wars were a series of violent periods between the French Protestant Huguenots and the Roman Catholics, Catholicism being the official religion of the French Kingdom. The ongoing struggle resulted in an escalation of civil violence and polarity between the religious affiliations, creating a divided French populous that carried out many atrocities, such as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. The violence subsided in 1598 when King Henry IV enacted the Edict of Nantes, granting substantial conditions and support to the Huguenot population in France. However, this paper argues for the importance of categorizing the wars as ‘civil’ and not ‘religious.’ The dynamic situation involves more than religious differences, including a central reliance on community-based disputes, group association based on mass paranoia, and even political gain for those of the French nobility. It is important to understand the complexity of the Civil Wars. Denoting them as a religious conflict ignores the other civil implications which provoked aggression between French communities and forces.