Wars of Religion in France
ON Sunday, March 1, 1562, the duke of Guise and his brother Charles, cardinal of Lorraine—two spearheads of French Catholicism—were riding with their armed guards toward Vassy, a village [200 km] east of Paris. They decided to stop at the church in Vassy to attend Mass.
Suddenly they heard the sound of hymns. The singing came from several hundred Protestants who were assembled in a barn to worship. The soldiers forced their way in. During the confusion that followed, insults were exchanged and then stones began flying. The soldiers opened fire, killing dozens of Protestants and injuring a hundred others.
What events led up to this massacre? What was the Protestant response?
Historical Background
During the first half of the 16th century, France was prosperous and well populated. This economic and demographic situation was accompanied by efforts to practice a more spiritual and brotherly form of Catholicism. People wanted a church that would be less rich and more holy. Some members of the clergy as well as scholarly humanists demanded religious reforms to combat abuses by high-ranking prelates and the incompetence of the lower clergy. One cleric who strove for renewal was the Catholic bishop Guillaume Briçonnet.
In his diocese of Meaux, Briçonnet encouraged all to read the Scriptures. He even financed a new translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures into French. Soon the ire of the Sorbonne University of Theology in Paris, the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, fell upon him, interrupting his efforts. But the bishop had the protection of Francis I, king of France from 1515 to 1547. At the time, the king was favorable to reform.
Francis I, however, tolerated criticism of the church only to the point that it did not threaten public order and national unity. In 1534, Protestant extremists put up posters that denounced the Catholic Mass as idolatry, even nailing a poster on the door of the king’s bedroom. As a result, Francis I did an about-face and launched a fierce campaign of suppression.
Brutal Suppression
Protestants were soon being burned at the stake. Many humanists, their sympathizers, and followers of fledgling Protestantism fled the country. The authorities began censoring books and controlling teachers, publishers, and printers.
The Waldenses took the full brunt of official opposition. They were a minority group of Bible-oriented people who lived in poor villages in the southeast of the country. Some were burned at the stake, hundreds were massacred, and about 20 of their villages were ravaged.—See box on page 6.
Aware of the need for reform within the church, a council of Catholic bishops met in December 1545, in Trent, Italy. When the council concluded in 1563, according to The Cambridge Modern History, its “general effect . . . was to strengthen the hands of those who were determined to root out Protestantism.”
The Prelude to War
Tired of waiting for changes, many members of the movement for reform within the Catholic Church sided with Protestantism. About 1560, numerous French aristocrats and their supporters joined the Huguenots, as Protestants had come to be called. The Huguenots became increasingly vocal. Their public meetings were, at times, a source of provocation and antagonism. For example, in 1558, thousands of them gathered in Paris for four consecutive days to sing psalms.
All of this angered both the powerful princes of the Catholic Church and the Catholic masses. At the instigation of Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, King Henry II, who had succeeded his father, Francis I, promulgated the Edict of Écouen, in June 1559. Its avowed purpose was to eradicate the “infamous Lutheran riffraff.” This led to a campaign of terror in Paris against the Huguenots.
Henry II died a few weeks later from wounds suffered in a tournament. His son, King Francis II, urged on by the Guise family, renewed the edict calling for the death penalty for persistent Protestants. The following year Francis II died, and his mother, Catherine de Médicis, ruled in place of his ten-year-old brother, Charles IX. Catherine’s policy of reconciliation was not to the liking of the Guises, who were determined to stamp out Protestantism.
In 1561, Catherine organized a seminar in Poissy, near Paris, at which Catholic and Protestant theologians met. In the edict issued in January 1562, Catherine granted Protestants freedom to assemble for worship outside of cities. Catholics were incensed! This set the stage for what occurred two months later—the massacre of Protestants at the barn in the village of Vassy, as described earlier.
The First Three Wars
The slaughter at Vassy touched off the first in a series of eight religious wars that submerged France into a horror of mutual killing from 1562 until the mid-1590’s. Although political and social issues were also involved, the bloodbath was primarily motivated by religion.
After the Battle of Dreux in December 1562, which claimed 6,000 lives, that first war of religion drew to a close. The Peace of Amboise, signed in March 1563, granted Huguenot nobles limited freedom to worship in certain places.
“The second war was precipitated by Huguenot fears of an international Catholic plot,” says The New Encyclopædia Britannica. At the time, Catholic magistrates were commonly hanging citizens merely for being Huguenots. In 1567 a Huguenot attempt to seize King Charles IX and his mother, Catherine, ignited the second war.
After telling of an especially bloody battle at St.-Denis, outside Paris, historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote: “France again wondered what religion was this that led men to such slaughter.” Soon afterward, in March 1568, the Peace of Longjumeau granted Huguenots the modest toleration that they had previously enjoyed under the Peace of Amboise.
Catholics, however, were outraged and refused to carry out the terms of the peace. Thus, in September 1568, a third war of religion broke out. A subsequent peace treaty granted Huguenots even greater concessions. Fortified towns, including the port of La Rochelle, were ceded to them. Also, an important Protestant prince, Admiral de Coligny, was appointed to the king’s council. Again Catholics were incensed.
“Saint” Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
About a year later, on August 22, 1572, Coligny survived an assassination attack in Paris that took place while he was walking from the Louvre Palace to his house. Furious, the Protestants threatened to take harsh measures to avenge themselves if justice was not done speedily. In private council, youthful King Charles IX, his mother Catherine de Médicis, and several princes decided to eliminate Coligny. To avoid any reprisals, they also ordered the murder of all the Protestants who had come to Paris to attend the wedding of Protestant Henry of Navarre and Catherine’s daughter Margaret of Valois.
On the night of August 24, the bells of the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, opposite the Louvre, sounded the signal for the massacre to begin. The duke of Guise and his men rushed to the building where Coligny was sleeping. There Coligny was killed and thrown from the window, and his corpse was mutilated. The Catholic duke spread the word: “Kill them all. It is the king’s order.”
From August 24 to 29, scenes of horror marred the streets of Paris. Some claimed that the river Seine flowed red with the blood of thousands of slaughtered Huguenots. Other towns witnessed their own bloodbaths. Estimates of the death toll vary from 10,000 to 100,000; however, most agree on a figure of at least 30,000.
“One fact, as horrible as the massacre itself,” reported a historian, “was the rejoicing which it excited.” Upon hearing of the slaughter, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a thanksgiving ceremony and sent his congratulations to Catherine de Médicis. He also ordered a special medal struck to commemorate the slaughter of the Huguenots and authorized the painting of a picture of the massacre, bearing the words: “The Pope approves the killing of Coligny.”
Reportedly, after the massacre, Charles IX had visions of his victims and would cry to his nurse: “What evil counsel have I followed! O my God, forgive me!” He died in 1574 at the age of 23 and was succeeded by his brother Henry III.
Religious Wars Continued
In the meantime, the Catholic population was stirred up by its leaders against the Huguenots. In Toulouse, Catholic clerics exhorted their followers: “Kill all, pillage; we are your fathers. We will protect you.” By means of violent suppression, the king, parliaments, governors, and captains set the example, and the Catholic masses followed.
However, the Huguenots fought back. Within two months of the “Saint” Bartholomew’s Day massacre, they began the fourth religious war. Where they outnumbered Catholics, they destroyed statues, crucifixes, and altars in Catholic churches, and even killed. “God wants neither towns nor people to be spared,” declared John Calvin, the leader of French Protestantism, in his pamphlet Declaration to Maintain the True Faith.
Four more wars of religion followed. The fifth ended in 1576 with King Henry III signing a peace that provided the Huguenots full freedom of worship everywhere in France. The ultra-Catholic city of Paris eventually revolted and drove out Henry III, considered too conciliatory toward the Huguenots. The Catholics set up an opposition government, the Catholic Holy League, led by Henry of Guise.
Finally, the eighth war, or the War of the Three Henrys, saw Henry III (Catholic) form an alliance with his future successor, Henry of Navarre (Protestant), against Henry of Guise (Catholic). Henry III managed to have Henry of Guise assassinated, but in August 1589, Henry III himself was assassinated by a Dominican monk. Thus, Henry of Navarre, who had been spared 17 years earlier during the “Saint” Bartholomew’s Day massacre, became King Henry IV.
Since Henry IV was a Huguenot, Paris refused to submit to him. The Catholic Holy League organized armed opposition to him throughout the country. Henry won several battles, but when a Spanish army arrived to support the Catholics, he finally decided to renounce Protestantism and accept the Catholic faith. Crowned on February 27, 1594, Henry entered Paris, where the people, totally exhausted by the wars, hailed him as king.
Thus the French Wars of Religion came to an end after more than 30 years in which Catholics and Protestants periodically slaughtered one another. On April 13, 1598, Henry IV issued the historic Edict of Nantes, which authorized freedom of conscience and worship to Protestants. According to the pope, the edict was “the worst thing that could be imagined because it granted freedom of conscience to one and all, which was the most terrible thing in the world.”
Throughout France, Catholics felt that the edict was a betrayal of Henry’s promise to support their creed. The church did not rest until, nearly a century later, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, initiating an even more severe persecution of the Huguenots.
Fruit of the Wars
By the end of the 16th century, France’s prosperity had vanished. Half the kingdom had been besieged, plundered, ransomed, or devastated. The soldiers made excessive demands of people, which led to peasant revolts. The Protestant population, decimated by death sentences, massacres, expatriations, and recantations, entered the 17th century diminished in number.
By all appearances, the Catholics had won the French Wars of Religion. But did God bless their victory? Evidently not. Weary of all this killing in the name of God, many Frenchmen became irreligious. They were the forerunners of what has been called the anti-Christian orientation of the 18th century.
[Blurb on page 9]
“God wants neither towns nor people to be spared.” So declared the leader of French Protestantism
[Box/Picture on page 6]
The Waldenses Stood Firm—With What Effect?
PIERRE VALDES, or Peter Waldo, was a wealthy merchant in 12th-century France. During this time when the Roman Catholic Church purposely kept the people in ignorance of the Bible, Waldo financed the translation of the Gospels and other Bible books into the common language of the people of southeastern France. He then gave up his business and dedicated himself to preaching the Gospel. Soon many joined him, and in 1184 he and his associates were excommunicated by Pope Lucius III.
In time, these Bible-oriented groups of preachers became known as the Waldenses. They advocated a return to the beliefs and practices of early Christianity. They rejected traditional Catholic practices and beliefs, including indulgences, prayers for the dead, purgatory, worship of Mary, prayers to the “saints,” infant baptism, adoration of the crucifix, and transubstantiation. As a result, the Waldenses often suffered terribly at the hands of the Catholic Church. Historian Will Durant describes the situation when King Francis I launched a campaign against non-Catholics:
“Cardinal de Tournon, alleging that the Waldenses were in a treasonable conspiracy against the government, persuaded the ailing, vacillating King to sign a decree (January 1, 1545) that all Waldenses found guilty of heresy should be put to death. . . . Within a week (April 12-18) several villages were burned to the ground; in one of them 800 men, women, and children were slaughtered; in two months 3,000 were killed, twenty-two villages were razed, 700 men were sent to the galleys. Twenty-five terrified women, seeking refuge in a cavern, were asphyxiated by a fire built at its mouth.”
Regarding such historical events, Durant commented: “These persecutions were the supreme failure of Francis’ reign.” But what was the effect upon those who observed the steadfastness of the Waldenses during the persecutions authorized by the king? Durant wrote: “The courage of the martyrs gave dignity and splendor to their cause; thousands of onlookers must have been impressed and disturbed, who, without these spectacular executions, might never have bothered to change their inherited faith.”
[Picture on page 5]
The massacre at Vassy touched off the wars of religion
[Credit Line]
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
[Picture on page 7]
“Saint” Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, during which thousands of Protestants were slaughtered by Catholics
[Credit Line]
Photo Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
[Pictures on page 8]
Protestants killed Catholics and destroyed church property (above and below)
[Credit Lines]
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris