The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (New Approaches to European History) [Paperback]

Mack P. Holt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521358736 | ISBN-13: 978-0521358736 | Publication Date: October 27, 1995

This book is an accessible and comprehensive study of the French wars of religion, designed specifically for undergraduate students. Drawing on the latest scholarship of a generation of social historians of the Reformation, the author presents a new analysis which goes beyond the partisan politics of noble factions and socio-economic tensions of early modern society. He argues that this long conflict was fomented by religious tensions among the population at large. While politics and socio-economic tensions were doubtlessly important, this book focuses on the social history of religion. By analysing the conflict as a cultural clash between two communities bent on defining the boundaries between the sacred and the profane in explicitly different ways, the author attempts to explain why the wars lasted for so long and why they ended in the way that they did.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One real strength of the book is that Roberts places her study of Troyes in the wider context of the provincial and national history of the wars and compares her findings in Troyes with what is known about wartime experience in other urban centers...An equally significant aspect of the book is Robert's examination of the Reformed church in Troyes and its congregation." Annette Finely-Croswhite, Sixteenth Century Journal

Book Description

This book is the first comprehensive study of the French wars of religion to appear for more than twenty years. Designed specifically for undergraduate students, it assumes no background knowledge of either French history or the Reformation, and includes features to aid the student reader such as maps, a chronology, brief biographies, and suggestions for further reading.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 253 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (October 27, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521358736
• ISBN-13: 978-0521358736
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,259,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An even-handed and well-written history of a turbulent era, November 6, 2011

By 

Peter S. Bradley "Peter Sean Bradley" (Fresno, California, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (New Approaches to European History) (Kindle Edition)

Mack P. Holt's "The French Wars of Religion" brings clarity and order to a historical narrative that can all too easily collapse into confusion. After all, when the penultimate act of the narrative is something known as "The War of the Three Henries," the prospect of losing a reader in the details is a constant threat.

What struck me about Holt's narrative was how "Shakespearian" the events of the French Wars of Religion were, with one generation seeking revenge for an atrocity of a previous generation, only to reap the whirlwind of their own atrocities in a later age. Thus, in the 1563, Francis, Duke of Guise, was assassinated during the siege of Orleans. The Guise suspected Admiral de Coligny of masterminding the assassination and pursued a vendetta against de Coligny, culminating in a botched assassination attempt in Paris in 1572. Because this failure threatened to touch of another round of civil war, the Guise involved themselves in a treacherous and cowardly "decapitation strike" against the Protestant Huguenot leaders in Paris, which included pulling Coligny out of bed and murdering him. This was the match to a powder keg of religious tribalism in Paris and twelve Catholic controlled communities with sizeable Huguenot minorities, known to history as the St. Bartholomew's Massacres. By the time that the massacres ended, there were 3,000 Huguenot dead in Paris and 2,000 in the provinces. The Guise were to get repaid in kind in December of 1588, when King Henry III invited the leader of the Guise, the latest Duke Henry (one of the "Three Henries") and his uncle, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, to his chambers, where King Henry III without "telegraphing his punch" had Duke Henry ambushed and murdered by his guard, and the Cardinal imprisoned. Two days later, Henry III had the Cardinal murdered, the bodies of the Duke and the Cardinal hacked to bits and burned and scattered to the winds, whereupon the Henry III went off to Christmas Mass. Henry III was repaid in his turn in August of 1589 when a Jacobin monk named Jacque Clement assassinated Henry III, and, thereby, extinguished the Valois line and promoted the last of the Henries - Henry Bourbon, the Huguenot King of Navarre and the successor of Henry III - to the throne, as well as establishing the Bourbon dynasty, which would last in France until the 19th Century - after an interruption on account of the French Revolution - and would be re-established in Spain in the 20th Century.

Shakespearian, indeed, as well as a fruitful source for contemplating the irony of history. If it wasn't history, it would make an exciting story. Also, when I consider the twists of fate caused by ill-time deaths - three of the four Valois sons would ascend to the throne and die relatively young during this period - as well as the breaking and remaking of alliances, and the fact that there were 8 separate wars, which were punctuated by peace treaties determined by who was doing better at the time that hostilities were ended, the history reminded me of the English War of the Roses.

As a Catholic, I appreciated the even-handedness of Holt's account. Histories of the religious conflicts of the Reformation era are typically written by Protestants, who find it too easy to portray the Protestant cause as the forces of historical progress against superstition and oppression. Holt's account is even-handed so that it is possible to see that there was a cycle of actions and reactions by people who found themselves in a situation where they felt provoked by their understanding of what it meant to be a community. Holt's thesis is that religion was defined by community, more than by beliefs, and that for both sides, it wasn't clear how to define people who were not part of one's own community. Notwithstanding Protestant apologists for whom the Huguenots were just liberty seeking folks who wanted to be left alone, this was clearly a problem for both sides. Although Holt simply mentions it in passing, several of the negotiated peace treaties called for the Protestants to permit the re-institution of Catholic religious practices in the cities and towns they held. It would seem that both sides had similar attitudes toward non-conforming religious practices.

I was also fascinated by the constant theme of the sacral nature of the French monarchy, which required the monarch to defend the Catholic faith as part of a vow made upon his coronation. Thus, when on the Day of the Placards, Protestants published and posted blasphemies against the Eucharist throughout France, it was inevitable that the King would react. Similarly, when Henry IV abjured Protestantism in order to assume the throne, he too saw it as part of his core mission to bring the Protestants back into the Catholic Church because of the sacral nature of the monarchy.

I was surprised by Holt's sympathetic depiction of Henry IV. I had believed that Henry IV had said something like "Paris is worth a mass" in reference to his decision to abjure Protestantism. I had viewed that decision as a cynical political ploy. Holt's interpretation is that Henry IV had proven his religious sincerity too often for us to assume that he was a religous cynic. In addition, Henry's subsequent conduct in trying to encourage nobles to return to Catholicism is positive evidence of his sincerity. In any event, Henry IV comes across as the most admirable person to emerge from this conflict.

Holt describes the Machievellian intrigues of the eight wars of religion, as well as the effect that the wars had on the peasantry. Holt spends a chapter describing the desultory ending of the religious wars as Henry IV's son, Louis XIII and his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, finally brought the Protestants "state within a state" to an end in the 1620s. The Huguenots would continue to co-exist with the Catholics until the 1680s, when in a final bit of historical irony, Louis XIV, the grandson of Henry IV, the great champion of the Protestant cause, would revoke the Henry's Edict of Nantes and exile Huguenots from France.

In sum, Holt's account is a well-written and very interesting account of a fascinating period.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Why Can't We All Just Get Along, May 20, 2008

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (New Approaches to European History) (Paperback)

If when the King of France is coronated, he swears (as the Most Catholic King) to uphold, "One King, One Law, One Faith", and to stamp out all heresy; what does he do when 15% of his kingdom becomes Protestant?

Well, depending on how strong a position he is in, he gives them the option of abjuring and returning to the Catholic faith, or death. No you can't take the curtain or use a free pass. The only thing that led to the war taking 60+ years, was that during these years, most of the kings died after a few years, or became king under a regency because they were very young. Once a King was crowned in his twenties, it didn't take very long to end the whole thing.

Holt does a fine job in explaining (sometimes too detailed) who was who and what was what using a good historical basis to make it understandable as to what was going on behind the scenes. In other words he doesn't just tell you what happened, but puts it into historical and sociological perspective.

11 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What is religious history?, May 17, 2007

By 

E. J. Ludwig (Brooklyn, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629 (New Approaches to European History) (Paperback)

This book is a wonderful read. Offered as a survey book for undergraduates on the French Wars of Religion, the author succeeds in laying out the main points of an incredibly complex series of events. He downplays the theological issues and sees the "religious issues" as social history, i.e., as a struggle ultimately over the principle of "one king, one faith, one law" that had dominated the French consciousness as its unifying principle. According to Prof. Holt, the Huguenots challenged that principle, and the religious disputes played out in the context of that challenge. By writing the religious differences as social history, the result is automatically pro-Catholic though cast in seemingly more objective historical/scholarly language.
Prof. Holt accepts that principle "one king, one faith, one law" as the norm, and thus depicts Huguenot leadership as well as Catholic leadership as having to deal with it. Should it be maintained by severe repression of the Huguenots? Would it be possible to have a Huguenot on the throne and still have that principle (seemingly it would not since the crown was sworn to stamp out heresy)? Could any kind of short or long term acceptance of the Huguenots be acceptable in light of the need to maintain fundamental unity? These are just some of the many questions Prof. Holt addresses.
However, this is a book without heroes. Everyone has a mixed bag of good and bad qualities trying to work out compromises in the context of the overarching principle of state and other political and economic realities. Religion is a defining reality only up to a point. Basically other realities are defining for the actors on the historical stage. Henry IV is not judged to be a manipulator or a hypocrite for abjuring his religion but as a kind of pragmatist making decisions that were generally wise, albeit expressing a lenience towards the Huguenots in two brevets that were part of the Edict of Nantes. Catholic leadership would certainly find these brevets irksome and could not by any stretch of the imagination be thought likely to allow them to continue beyond Henry IV's death. Thus, it was almost inevitable that the support of Huguenot pastors by funds from the central treasury and the permission to allow the Huguenots to have fortified towns and their own militia (allowed for in the two brevets) were overturned by Louis XIII. Thus, the movement of events is looked at as carried out by pragmatic actors working out their destiny and the destiny of France within a narrow context.
My main complaints are that Prof. Holt does not pay sufficient respect to the victims of the persecution. To me the Huguenots were martyrs to true religion. To me, the principle of "one faith, one king, one law" was a self-serving truth perpuating an invalid monarchy, an invalid religion, and a law that had no real depth and certainly lacked the important "rights" that came to be embodied in English law and in post-revolutionary French law. Protestant faith came as an antidote to the poisonous mistakes of Catholic religiosity and to the excesses of the feudal or semi-feudal lifestyle. Again, I ask: where are the heroes: at best the leaders he likes show some good sense. But does he properly appreciate Admiral Coligny or the marvelous boldness of the evangelists from Geneva. I haven't read a book about the role of the Huguenot pastors, but I certainly would like to. Aren't those warriors of faith crucial players in the development of events? What about Calvin's role? That is not discussed. Also, while Prof. Holt seems to commiserate to some degree with the peasants who were harmed by the civil wars, it seems he is hardly touched by the sufferings of the Huguenot martyrs who were tortured, raped, robbed, and murdered by the Catholic League, the Guise family, various kings, and Catholic mobs who saw them not only as heretics but to the very fabric of French society. Is this what those who challenge the status quo deserve? Or even, is this what they have a right to expect? Thus, while the book is a brilliant survey it ultimately lacks compassion and, in my opinion, sides with the wrong side.