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PROTESTANT REFORMATION to 1600

Waiting for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
A Huguenot refuses to wear a Catholic badge to
shield himself from attack.

Henry IV, believed to have said "Paris is well worth a mass." He converted from Calvinism to Catholicism in order to be crowned King of France. He favored toleration and ended religious warring. (Wikipedia Commons)

King Henry II of France died in a jousting accident in 1559. Power remained with his Italian wife and queen, Catherine de Medici. She was the mother of young King Francis II. The effort to crush Protestantism in France had not been not succeeding. By the 1560s, there were perhaps 1,250 Protestant churches serving about 10 per cent of France’s population. Catherine was a devout Catholic who looked upon Protestantism with at least a little sympathy. She spoke to a couple of Protestant leaders, the Prince of Conde and Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, about liberty and security for all Protestants within France. French Protestants looked with hope to Catherine, and Catherine looked to the Protestants for support. In early 1562 an Edict of Toleration was issued. It attempted to steer a middle course. The Edict recognized the existence of the Protestants and guaranteed freedom of conscience and private worship, but it forbade Protestant worship within towns -- where conflicts flared up too easily.

But civil war was on the way. On March 1, 1562, a member of the aristocratic Guise family, François de Guise, stopped to attend a mass in the town of Vassy and found Huguenots holding religious ceremonies. Outraged, he led men in setting fire to the Huguenot church, killing over eighty Huguenots and wounding many others. This began what was to be to be called the First French War of Religion.

In Paris, the Protestant leader, Gaspard de Coligny, was wounded, and two days later he died. That was August 24, 1572, St. Bartholomew's Day. Protestants in Paris rose up in anger. Those opposed to Protestantism responded in what became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Two thousand or more Protestants were killed. And the killing spread to the provinces. Around 30,000 French Protestants were slaughtered in the massacres of 1572.

People outside France took notice. Protestants were horrified. King Philip of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII declared themselves pleased by the new attack on Protestantism. In France, Catherine's rule remained weak. Her third son, at the age of twenty-three, crowned Henry III, went back and forth between male lovers and repentance. The Guise family had gained dominance at court. War against the Protestants continued.

Tolerance was a necessary ingredient for a well functioning economy, and, this lacking, France’s economy was in ruin. Inflation reduced purchasing power. Manufacturing was in decline. There was a leap upward in homelessness, brigandage and other crimes. Peasants were rarely eating meat, and in places the poor were rioting. Scapegoating increased, directed against Italian residents in France. They had been marrying into French families and had felt at home in France, but many of the French saw Italian bankers as responsible for ruining the economy, and there were accusations of blood libels. Of the 75 Italian banking families in France in 1568 only 21 would remain in 1597.

There was the usual advocacy of a maximal approach against the enemy. A faction of Catholics viewed Protestants as traitors and enemies of humanity, and they clamored for France’s government to have them exterminated. Moderate Catholics dominated the courts and they opposed extermination programs.

The last of the religious civil war in France began in 1584, with rival armies contending for power. The Protestant army was led by a member of the royal Bourbon family, Henry of Navarre, and he had the moral support of Queen Elizabeth of England. A Catholic army led by Henry the Duke of Guise had the support of Spain. The Duke of Guise and his archbishop brother were invited to consult with King Henry, whose guards murdered the two. And in 1589 an outraged Catholic assassinated Henry. This left Henry of Navarre as the nominal king of France.

Henry acted with political expedience. He converted to Catholicism and was crowned King Henry IV of France. Henry moved for conciliation between Catholics and Protestants. He denounced Catholic extremists as follows:

We believe in one God, we recognize Jesus Christ, and we draw on the same Gospel... I believe that the war which you so ardently pursue is unworthy of Christians.

In 1598 Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes. It proclaimed that "everything done by one party or the other" during "the preceding period of troubles" was to remain "obliterated and forgotten, as if no such things ever happened." As a part of his move, Catholic establishments were to be restored wherever they had been interrupted. And Protestants were to have rights equal to those of Catholics.

Peace made a new prosperity possible, with Henry announcing that if God allowed him to live long enough he would see to it that every laborer had a chicken in his pot on Sunday. Henry adopted monetary reforms, reduced the tax burden on peasants, embarked on administrative reform. He encouraged education and undertook many public works, including canal building and the planting of pines, elms and fruit trees. He renewed Paris as a great city.

In general, the people of France had been learning the toleration needed for a functioning society. But highly religious fanatics were still around, and, in 1610, one of them, François Ravaillac, believed that Henry was about to make war against the pope. Ravaillac stabbed Henry to death. Ravaillac was quickly seized, preventing a mob lynching. He received what today is considered harsh punishment: he was scalded with burning sulphur, molten lead and boiling oil and resin. His flesh was torn apart by pincers and his body pulled apart. His parents were forced into exile and other members of his family ordered never to use the name Ravaillac.

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