French Wars Of Religion Research Articles

르네상스기 프랑스의 아시아 인물 전기: 앙드레 테베의 『명사초상록』 제8부를 중심으로

In Italy and France in the mid-16th century, a novel trend arose to collect “portraits” of famous people and write elogies and biographies based on them, with authors such as Paolo Giovio and Giorgio Vasari in Italy and André Thevet in France as prime examples. The portraits of this period broke away from medieval stereotypes and sought to depict individuals realistically while revealing their inner characteristics through their outward appearance. In the second half of 16th century, French readers were interested not only in the experiences of overseas colonization but also in politics and the military matters, due to the religious conflicts and political turmoil during the French Wars of Religion. The biography written by André Thevet, Les Vrais Pourtraicts et vies des hommes illustres, grecs, latins et payens, published in 1584 reflects the historical context of this period. In particular, Book VIII of Thevet’s work is devoted to biographies of pagan celebrities from Asia, Africa, the Americas, as wells Europe. Among them, Tamerlane (Amir Timur), is the unique historical figure from the Tatars. His portrait and biographical text reveal the complex ambivalence of fear and reverence that Renaissance Europeans held toward him. Additionally, Tamerlane’s biography exemplifies Renaissance Orientalism and humanistic interests in exotic ethnicities, geography and language.

The legal boundaries of coexistence: reframing liberty of conscience as a tool of toleration in the French Wars of Religion

Abstract In histories of the Wars of Religion and narratives of rights and the rise of the state, ‘freedom of conscience’ is often treated as self-evident. However, this article demonstrates its contested meaning through French Protestant and Catholic reactions to liberty of conscience as granted by the monarchy in 1563, when its particular use as the legal framework for the toleration of Calvinists can be identified. As a malleable tool of toleration, this politicized liberty of conscience protected conscience in households, but separated it from the exercise of religion, a formula for pacification repeated in the 1598 Edict of Nantes. Not only did this usage conflict with theological interpretations of conscience, but it disrupted notions of French citizenship and reinforced royal power by framing heresy as sedition. Far from freeing individual consciences, this article concludes that royal liberty of conscience constrained the actions of Catholics and Protestants while enforcing their coexistence.

Arms Control in the Valentinois-Diois during the French Wars of Religion

Arms Control in the Valentinois-Diois during the French Wars of Religion

Rebellion and Peace: The paths for conflict resolution in Huguenot and Catholic propaganda during the French Wars of Religion

The second half of the sixteenth century saw France descend into civil war, after several decades of increasing religious tensions brought about by the Reformation. It was an outcome which traditional political thought dreaded, because internal union was one of the most prized features of a healthy political body. Civil war, the line went, was much worse than any other calamity which might befall a polity and threatened it with complete dissolution. Therefore, once France found itself in such a situation from 1562 onwards, one of the main issues in French political discourse became the restoration of internal peace: all the parties involved in the conflict paid at least lip service to it, although each envisioned their own path in order to achieve this goal. For the radical Catholics, internal peace could not be divorced from religious unity, therefore, the Protestants had to be exterminated, chased out or brought back into the Catholic fold. A more moderate group of Catholics came to argue that this was not possible without doing irreparable damage to the country and that coexistence with Protestants had to be accepted at least temporarily, looking to the king to impose such a solution. Finally, the Protestants, who envisioned at the beginning of the wars the possibility of converting the whole France to the Reformation, came to embrace the second point of view, as well, under the pressure of political realities. This paper aims to analyze the discourse of peace in the propaganda issued during the French Wars of Religion, examining its main themes and how it unfolded over this period of more than thirty years.

The Politics of Print During the French Wars of Religion: Literature and History in an Age of “Nothing Said Too Soon”. By Gregory P. Haake

The Politics of Print During the French Wars of Religion: Literature and History in an Age of “Nothing Said Too Soon”. By Gregory P. Haake

:Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

:<i>Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion</i>

A Matter of Jurisdiction: “Guelfs” and “Ghibellines” in the French Wars of Religion

Gallicans like Montaigne construed the confessional struggle as a problem of jurisdiction between the Crown and the Pope. When he quipped “to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, to the Guelph a Ghibelline”, he was thus not intimating that he appeared “Protestant” to the Catholic side and “Catholic” to the Protestant one. Instead, he used these terms in their historical sense, designating a division between citramontane supporters of the king and ultramontane supporters of the pope. Between anti-tolerant and anti-pacifist Leaguers and tolerant-pacifist Politiques lay a third option, that of anti-tolerant but pacifist Gallicans.

From Ahab to “Vilain Herodes”: Biblical Models of Evil Kings in Catholic Anti-Royalist Propaganda during Charles IX (1560–1574) and Henry III (1574–1589)

During the French Wars of Religion, both the Huguenot and the radical Catholic factions started by stressing their devotion to the Valois monarchy, for reasons both pragmatic and ideological. Both were hoping for the support of the Crown in achieving their goals—the Huguenots to convert France to the Reformation, the radical Catholics to eradicate the Protestantism from the kingdom—and their propaganda made use of numerous Biblical references in order to urge the kings of France to pursue such policy goals. However, Biblical precedents could be a two-edged sword: once hope for royal support was replaced by disappointment and even resentment, the nature of the Biblical models and comparisons changed as well. From appeals to emulate the righteous kings from the Bible, like David, Solomon or Josiah, the propagandists moved to warnings and even threats, by presenting the kings of France with the fate of, this time, wicked rulers like Ahab or Herod, who were grievously punished by God for their transgressions. This paper aims to analyze the recurrences of such examples in the Catholic propaganda during the French Wars of Religion, until the death of Henry III in 1589, and their significance in the political discourse of that age.

PeterBillerandL. J.Sackville, eds.:Inquisition and Knowledge 1200–1700. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: The York Medieval Press, 2022; pp. xi + 346.

PeterBiller<scp>and</scp>L. J.Sackville<scp>, eds.:</scp>Inquisition and Knowledge 1200–1700. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: The York Medieval Press, 2022; pp. xi + 346.

Enacting National Trauma on the Female Body in Aubigné's Misères : An Epic Motif

Abstract: The French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century coincided with a literary desire to validate French cultural dominance through poetry. As part of this goal, a traditional epic would establish a Virgil for France and a heroic story to equal Rome's. Though the civil wars prevented the composition of such an epic, they opened the path for Agrippa d'Aubigné's Les Tragiques , an epic account of the Wars themselves. As a Protestant poet on the losing side of national conflict, Aubigné rests upon epic traditions while using them to garner support for his faction and to blame Catholic leadership vehemently for the national crisis. This article examines the epic tradition (seen in Helen, Dido, Bramimonde, and others) by which national trauma and epic conflict are enacted upon female bodies. Aubigné uses this epic motif to specific rhetorical ends: gaining sympathy for the Protestant cause and lamenting Catholic oppression. He adapts the epic tradition to emphasize mothering bodies (pregnant or nursing) to heighten the horror of the war and win the audience to the poet's side. This adaptation of epic tradition takes two forms: the anthropomorphization of France herself and the presentation of victims of civil war. The Misères of the nation, lamented in the poem's first book, resonate in female reproductive bodies to universalize the trauma, thereby aligning the reader with Aubigné's outrage and grief. Though female embodiment of national trauma is traditional to epic, Les Tragiques finds a new angle that serves its rhetorical goals.

Nicholls, Sophie. Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Nicholls, Sophie. Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Writing an integrated history of mediated communication for the ‘period of the League'. Or: How Henry III and Royal Camp Initiated and Disseminated News Publications in 1589

My article argues that the mediated communication in the ?period of the League' (French wars of Religion) should be examined with an integrated approach, thus advancing, extending and systemising recent tendencies in research. Such an integrated history of mediated communication has to include all relevant aspects for a specific act of mediated communication, to consider plural perspectives, to combine various fields of research and to observe the interrelation and interdependency of different media (intermediality) as well as constellations and practises, amongst others. Writing such an integrated history is exemplified here by news publications which circulated in the first month of the year 1589 when the wars of Religion reached a climax. The article will focus on King Henry III and the Royal camp, as research has hitherto - almost exclusively - concentrated on the King's opponents: the League.

Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion. By Sophie Nicholls

<i>Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion</i>. By Sophie Nicholls

Emma Claussen. Politics and ‘Politiques’ in Sixteenth-Century France: A Conceptual History.

In Politics and ‘Politiques’ in Sixteenth-Century France: A Conceptual History, Emma Claussen provides a detailed analysis of the shifting definitions of the term “politique,” as it was deployed as both an adjective and a noun in a range of published texts from the early sixteenth century to the conclusion of the Catholic League. Her stated ­­methodology is to examine published works that employ the term extensively and to treat it as a “keyword” that ­­underwent ­­continuous elaboration, ideological applications, and borrowing over the course of the century and ­­especially during the French Wars of Religion. This treatment of the term as a discursive construct rather than a description of a specific political stance in regard to the French monarchy and civil order is abetted by the claim that there was in fact no politique party in ­­sixteenth-century France nor any individuals who would have actively used the designation in...

The Politics of Print during the French Wars of Religion: Literature and History in an Age of ‘Nothing Said Too Soon’. By Gregory P. Haake

Gregory P. Haake’s premise is that in the sixteenth century ‘crises of representation, interpretation, and authority ultimately lead to who has the authority to speak and to influence in literature’ (pp. 323–24) and onto this long-familiar idea he grafts, over six chapters, a pleasing corpus of political texts by Simon Goulart, Pierre de Ronsard, Agrippa d’Aubigné, François Hotman, and others, nicely balanced by less familiar writers as well as by some anonymous pamphlets. Haake sees these authors, along with the printers who served them, as controlling their readers’ reception and understanding of what they presented as historical accounts by imposing particular interpretations of events and by the choice of paratexts to support their stance. Such rhetorical and material devices were designed to bolster their credibility and indeed to create new centres of authority in the face of semiotic uncertainty and the weakening of traditional reference points such as the monarchy...

Sophie Nicholls, Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Sophie Nicholls, Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Slavery and Freedom in a Time of Civil War: La Boétie, L’Hospital, and Montaigne

The modern ‘neo-Roman' or ‘republican' concept of freedom as liberty from the arbitrary will of another is the starting point for a discussion of three French Renaissance magistrates for whom freedom is paramount political question: La Boétie, L'Hospital, and Montaigne. The first of these sees freedom in ontological terms, the foundation of being as well as of any political system in the form of freedom of expression and amitié. The article shows that that these values are severely tested by the French Wars of Religion. L’Hospital claims that personal and collective liberty is compatible with monarchical rule and submission to the will of another. This attempt to reconcile domination and non-domination is then greatly refined by Montaigne who re-frames the premises of this debate in terms which develop the role of historical figures such as Socrates and Lucan in the defence of individual and civic freedom.

The Politics of Print during the French Wars of Religion: Literature and History in an Age of “Nothing Said Too Soon.” Gregory P. Haake. Faux Titre 443. Leiden: Brill, 2021. x + 352 pp. €127.

The Politics of Print during the French Wars of Religion: Literature and History in an Age of “Nothing Said Too Soon.” Gregory P. Haake. Faux Titre 443. Leiden: Brill, 2021. x + 352 pp. €127. - Volume 75 Issue 4

Elizabeth's French Wars, 1562–1598: English Intervention in the French Wars of Religion. William A. Heap. London: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2020. 336 pp. $30.

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