French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598

Calvinism spread in France after 1555, when the Genevan Company of Pastors sent missionaries supplied with false passports and often disguised as merchants. By the end of the 1560s, nearly one-third of the nobles had joined the Huguenots (French Calvinists), and they raised their own armies. Conversion to Calvinism in French noble families often began with the noblewomen, who protected pastors, provided money and advice, and helped found schools and establish relief for the poor.

A series of family tragedies prevented the French kings from acting decisively to prevent the spread of Calvinism. King Henry II was accidentally killed during a jousting tournament in 1559, and his fifteen-year-old son, Francis, died soon after. Ten-year-old Charles IX (r. 1560–1574) became king, with his mother, Catherine de Médicis, as regent, or acting ruler. The Huguenots followed the lead of the Bourbon family, who stood first in line to inherit the throne if the Valois kings failed to produce a male heir. The most militantly Catholic nobles took their cues from the Guise family. Catherine tried to play the Bourbon and Guise factions against each other, but civil war erupted in 1562. Both sides committed terrible atrocities. Priests and pastors were murdered, and massacres of whole congregations became frighteningly commonplace.

Although a Catholic herself, Catherine feared the rise of Guise influence, so she arranged the marriage of the king’s Catholic sister, Marguerite de Valois, to Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot and Bourbon. Just four days after the wedding, in August 1572, an assassin tried but failed to kill one of the Huguenot leaders. Violence against Calvinists spiraled out of control. On St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, a bloodbath began, fueled by years of growing animosity between Catholics and Protestants. In three days, Catholic mobs murdered some two thousand Huguenots in Paris. Three thousand Huguenots died in the provinces over the next six weeks. The pope joyfully ordered the church bells rung throughout Catholic Europe.

Huguenot pamphleteers now proclaimed their right to resist a tyrant who worshipped idols (a practice that Calvinists equated with Catholicism). This right of resistance was linked to a political notion of contract; upholding the true religion was part of the contract binding the ruler to his subjects. Both the right of resistance and the idea of a contract fed into the larger doctrine of constitutionalism—that a government’s legitimacy rested on its upholding a constitution, or contract between ruler and ruled. (See “Contrasting Views: Political Authority and Religion: What Happened When Subjects Held Different Beliefs?”) The religious division in France grew even more dangerous when Charles IX died and his brother Henry III (r. 1574–1589) became king. Like his brothers before him, Henry III failed to produce an heir. Convinced that Henry III lacked the will to root out Protestantism, the Guises formed the Catholic League, which requested help from Spanish king Philip II. Henry III responded in 1588 by having his men kill two Guise leaders. A few months later, a fanatical Catholic monk stabbed Henry III to death, and Henry of Navarre became Henry IV (r. 1589–1610), despite Philip II’s military intervention.

With the Catholic League threatening to declare his succession invalid, Henry IV publicly embraced Catholicism, reputedly explaining, “Paris is worth a Mass.” Within a few years he defeated the ultra-Catholic opposition and drove out the Spanish. In 1598, he issued the Edict of Nantes, in which he granted the Huguenots a large measure of religious toleration. The approximately 1.25 million Huguenots became a legally protected minority within an officially Catholic kingdom of some 20 million people. Protestants were free to worship in specified towns and were allowed their own troops, fortresses, and even courts.

Few believed in religious toleration as an ideal, but Henry IV followed the advice of those moderate Catholics and Calvinists—together called politiques—who urged him to give priority to the development of a durable state. The politiques believed that religious disputes could be resolved only in the peace provided by strong government. The French Catholic writer Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) went even further than this pragmatic position and revived the ancient doctrine of skepticism, which held that total certainty is never attainable. On the beams of his study he painted the statement “All that is certain is that nothing is certain.” Like toleration of religious differences, such skepticism was repugnant to Protestants and Catholics alike, both of whom were certain that their religion was the right one.

The Edict of Nantes ended the French Wars of Religion, but Henry still needed to reestablish monarchical authority and hold the fractious nobles in check. He allowed rich merchants and lawyers to buy offices and, in exchange for an annual payment, pass their positions on to their heirs or sell them to someone else. This new social elite was known as the “nobility of the robe” (named after the robes that magistrates wore, much like the ones judges wear today). Income raised by the increased sale of offices reduced the state debt and also helped Henry strengthen the monarchy. His efforts did not, however, prevent his enemies from assassinating him in 1610 after nineteen unsuccessful attempts.