The influence of print on French identity during the French

Wars of Religion (1562-1598)

Jonathan Wright (101810420)

HIST 669 Early Modern Cities (Dr Steen)

14 November 2019

1
 The French Wars of Religion (here after: wars) marked one of the most violent

occurrences in the aftermath of the Reformation and in French history both tangibly in battle,

and through the ideas and propaganda pervaded within the print culture that exploded in the

sixteenth century. Printed works such as ephemeral and persuasive pamphlets as well as more

detailed engravings were utilized by both Protestant and Catholic publishers to act as political

triggers for extreme levels of conflict and tension. Primarily focusing on the cities, Jean

Calvin’s espoused faith permeated printing presses across France from Geneva as the

Protestant faith evolved from defensive martyrdom as a retaliation to Catholic aggression

towards active resistance through monarchomach literature after the horrifying St.

Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of Protestants (1572). Conversely, the Catholic center of

printing in Paris became the vocal point for the Catholic League’s protestation towards Henri

III (1551-1589) in the latter part of the 1580s. It also had a more malevolent role in inspiring

his assassination. The impact of prints on the French population was purposely elevated to

extreme levels due to the increased tension from the conflict. From large folios of battle

scenes to octavo ephemeral pamphlets from the League, print invaded the thoughts and

caused the actions of the French population during the wars.

Three overarching themes become clear when discovering the significant impact of

print on the French identity during the wars. Firstly, divisive literature split the two warring

factions of Protestants and Catholics significantly due to separatist language as well as

extreme symbolism in poetry. Secondly, the concept of oubliance (here, taken to mean

‘forgetting’) factored into a wider crisis of identity within the wars as prints had the ability to

be both informative and powerfully destructive to reputations. Finally, archaic references to

biblical figures and events were matched by the mirroring individuals and incidents with the

Albigensian Crusade as the extreme comparisons contributed to heightened tensions. Printing

became a pretended discourse between authors and the public where symbolism and common

2
contemporary tropes could be utilized to sway the reader towards a particular religious

affiliation. Not only did religion underpin everyday life for early modern society, but the very

context of France as a Catholic land with a king who swears by an oath at their coronation to

rout out heresy was challenged and affected by print. The image of what it meant to be

French, that only a century before had been so clearly for the king and Catholicism, was able

to become twisted by propaganda as the artists and publishers controlled public opinion and

the fate of France.

Firstly, directly comparing case studies of Protestant and Catholic sources provided

the most pertinent indications of the intensity of the conflict in polemic publications where

accentuated religious differences separated Protestant and Catholics allegiances further. By

the 1590s, the Catholic League had successfully marked its place as a political as well as

religious force that sought to counter Protestantism in the place of failing royal authority. The

Protestant rejection of these attacks was evident from their depiction of a monstrous Catholic

League.

3
 1

Titled ‘The Effects of the League’, this Protestant view in 1594 heightened the differences

between Catholics and Protestants and also their futures. The monster reaches for the crown

and globe to show its powerful ambitions to take over France and potentially expand the evil

Catholic influence internationally. Additionally, a burning Protestant city behind indicated

1
Anonymous, Effectz de la Ligue (1594), Colored engraving, accessed on 11/01/2019,
<https://www.alamy.com/french-wars-of-religion-between-french-catholics-and-protestant-
huguenots-march-1562-april-1598-propaganda-print-depicting-huguenot-against-the-catholic-
league1594-colored-engraving-image220220899.html?>.

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the League’s success in killing innocents as can also be observed by the plainly dressed

Protestant martyrs being trampled and killed by the beast. Part of the poem below the

depiction highlighted how the beast was able to ruin both the cities and the fields across

France no matter their size (“ruinent grands et petits, les citez et les champs”). This indicated

the printed portrayal of heightened conflict by revealing the Catholic League’s potential to

destroy all of France. As the date of publication in 1594 coincided with the year after Henry

IV’s abjuration from Protestantism and the same year as his recapture of Paris, this colored

engraving revealed the extreme fear amongst Protestants for their future. This print was

accessible due to its artistic portrayal, as even if the viewer could not read the heading, the

author made it clear from the colorful dress of the papist icons on the beast’s robe that it was

a Catholic monster that was causing the destruction. Prints, and engravings such as this

particularly, clearly had a great effect in collaborating multiple themes in one picture to

influence the viewer of the conclusion that religious differences were irrevocable.

Similarly, earlier Catholic portrayals of Protestants also sought to distort the human

element of their religious enemy. Protestant portrayals as monkeys occur strikingly in the

Catholic poem De Tristibus Galliae (c. 1577) as taking over Lyon for example accompanied

mindless iconoclasm.2 Published in Lyon, this setting as the start of the print was

representative of Lyon’s reputation as a printing city and, aside from Paris, it had ten times

more prints in the sixteenth century than any other French city.3 Benedict’s significant

interest in De Tristibus Galliae overlooks the ape depiction that could also reference the

2
Philip Benedict, Perrissin, Jean, Tortorel, Jacques, Graphic History: The Wars, Massacres and
Troubles of Tortorel and Perrissin (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007), p. 153.
3
Universal Short Title Catalog, Most popular printing cities in early modern France, accessed on
14/12/2018, <https://ustc.ac.uk/index.php/search/cicero?
tm_fulltext=&tm_field_allauthr=&tm_translator=&tm_editor=&ts_field_short_title=&tm_field_impri
nt=&tm_field_place=&sm_field_year=&f_sm_field_year=&t_sm_field_year=&sm_field_country=
%22France
%22&sm_field_lang=&sm_field_format=&sm_field_digital=&sm_field_class=&tm_field_cit_name=
&tm_field_cit_no=&order=&sm_field_ty=true>.

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Catholic view of Protestant iconoclasm as animalistic and purposeless in its destruction

which, in turn, would suggest that their doctrine was mindless. Building on this, Wylie

Sypher’s important view that polemic imagery, particularly towards Protestants, “deformed”

their Reformed principles and showed how they were morally inferior as well as flawed

religiously.4 Though focusing the analysis on sexual abnormality, this could be taken further

by indicating how the brutal intended reaction to these prints would have been to create the

exaggerated but vindictive religious separation that they witnessed. This separation could also

have had the secondary intention of dissuading the weak-willed Catholics, such as politiques

(moderates who favored strong central governmental power), from Protestantism. The date of

publication is less important here as it is the notion that once the wars had begun, printers and

engravers sought to extend the differences between the religions to strengthen their own

religious beliefs.

A significant case study of print’s impact on individuals reflects the extreme degree in

which printing could amplify conflict are Catherine de Medici. The contrasting depictions of

one of the most important figures of the French Wars of Religion, Catherine de Medici, was

perhaps to be expected. An Italian foreigner and daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, she ruled

France as Queen Regent during the instigation of the wars and this gave both religious sides

ammunition to target her role in the conflict. Brantôme’s ‘Discours sur la Reine’ in Recueil

des Dames (1584) attempted to exonerate her in comparison to the anonymously authored

Discours Marvelieus which became part of Catholic polemic in 1576. Bates was the first

historian to dedicate analysis to Brantôme’s focus on the extraordinary actions of influential

French females, in this case of Marguerite de Navarre, which Brantôme also applied to

Catherine de Medici.5 Discours sur la Reyne was a particularly sympathetic portrayal of the

4
G. Wylie Sypher, ‘“Faisant ce qu'il leur vient a plaisir”: The Image of Protestantism in French
Catholic Polemic on the Eve of the Religious Wars,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 11, no. 2 (1980): pp.
59-84 (60).

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Catherine which includes panegyric speeches that endeavor to absolve her of the blame.6

Taking this further, Brantôme was an integral part of Catherine’s royal life as court chronicler

and his later memoirs show his appreciation for a ruler who considerably increased the

quality and quantity of artistic pastimes such as ballet where performances were described as

“the finest ballet that was ever given in this world.”7 His tactically positive printed view of

Catherine’s reign can be dramatically contrasted by Discours Marvelieus where the more

accurate depiction of France during the wars emerged. Events such as the Colloquy of Poissy

(1561) and the attempted union of Protestant and Catholic thought were evidence for

Catherine going beyond reconciliation towards an active endorsement of Protestantism in an

attempt to maintain her own power.8 The polemic was framed as a biographical account of

her and while it was not overtly inflammatory about the religious differences, it reveals the

context of the time in how the religions were exploited by the royal crown in an attempt at

land disguised as peace negotiations.

The impact of print between the aristocrats and the illiterate urbanites was not

fundamentally that distant in regard to how Protestant and Catholic prints affected their

identity. This is clearest when considering the poetry produced during the wars that affected

both social spheres significantly. The two key figures in this debate were the courtly and

Catholic-favoring Pierre Ronsard with the tragedies depicted in the Calvinist perspective

from Agrippa D’Aubigné. The Tragiques (published 1616) were a product of the

development of the increasing bleakness of the wars exemplified by: C’est faict, Dieu vient

reigner, de toute prophetie/Se void la periode à ce poinct accomplie.”9 Part of the

5
Blanchard Bates, Literary Portraiture in the Historical Narrative of the French Renaissance (New
York: Stechert, 1945), p. 47.
6
Leah Chang and Kong, Katherine, Portraits of the Queen Mother: Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters
(Toronto: ACMRS Publications, 2014), p. 29.
7
Cited in Robert Knecht, Catherine de' Medici (New York: Longman, 1998), p. 239.
8
Chang and Kong, p. 155.
9
“It is done, God comes to reign. Of all prophecy/The period now sees itself accomplished”; Agrippa
D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, trans. by Jesse Zeldin (New York: Columbia University, 1953), pp. 663–

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culmination of tension in this epic poem, the idea of being “done” is particularly apocalyptic

in tone and this suggests the extreme separation that was encouraged throughout the wars. It

was published after the attempted end of the wars with the Edict of Nantes (1598) as well as

the assassination of Henri IV (1610) and it continually constructed a picture of contemporary

issues and future prophesies being resolved with blood and suffering. Phillip Usher goes as

far as to say that his Calvinist perspective had the horror and carnage “within an overarching

telos” originating with the Massacre of Vassy in 1562.10 This fear had been present in poetry

since the origins of the wars and, as a comparison, Ronsard’s Discours often attacked his and

the Catholic opponents, whom he dismissed as traitors and hypocrites within France. His

poetry described opinion as the “plague of humankind” as his court position exposed him to

the significant wrath of the public to the escalating conflict.11 However, Ronsard’s influence

at the head of the La Pléiade movement, that came to represent the height of French literature,

ensured that he aspired to be as timeless as poets from classical antiquity with an epic style,

rather than being purely polemic. Additionally, while D’Aubigné took longer to produce his

work and it was more considered, Ronsard’s composition was created in the moment of

greatest fear at the beginning of the conflict. The context of this conflict being the first

French civil war can often be forgotten behind the religious extremism inspiring the conflict,

but the social aspect of the wars ensured that the population would have dreaded the future

significantly. This emerged in the most emotive form of poetry and the prints greatly

reflected the fear of the time.

Although scorned by the learned, coq-a-l’ane proved to be popular and vibrant genre

of poetry during the various outbreaks of violence that marked the wars, as printed poetry

4.
10
Phillip Usher, ‘D’Aubigné’s Tragiques: A Wasteland of Graffiti,’ in Epic Arts in Renaissance
France, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) pp. 160-199 (p. 199).
11
Pierre Ronsard, Discours des miseres de ce temps (1562) ed. and trans. by Francis Higman (Paris:
Poche, 1993), p. 72.

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extending the religious separation infiltrated even the peasantry. The publication dates of the

coq-a-l’áne that appeared after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), the execution of

Montgomery (1574), and the assassination of Henri III by the ‘ligueur’ monk Jacques

Clement (1589). The contrast between the violence of the events referred to and the comic

form of the coq-a-l’áne constituted one of its defining characteristics. The 1573 coq-a-l’áne

composed in La Rochelle described a cook who “En accoustrant un brochet puissant et

gros,/ Il y trouva dans le corps/ La fesse d’un huguenot,/ Quel morceau friend”; this

carnivalesque reference to Protestants not observing Lent is here ironic as the fish has eaten

the Protestant.12 This form of poetry was easily readable and accessible for non-elite

populations and yet were scarcely published as the anonymous authors could only mock the

opposing religion rather than attacking it directly. Clearly, examples such as these revealed

for the wider audience that poetry could cater for in highlighting how the war had inspired

extreme literature.

This fondness for a mixed style and for comic effects can be explained in part by the

reappearance of the Marot tradition in the polemical writing of the wars. Some of these pieces

repeat rhymes borrowed from Marot’s coq-a-l’ánes, for example in 1575 with

‘heretiques/ethiques’), and his jokes (‘Tout est bon, fors que les coups” [Everything is fine,

except blows]). Others go so far as to mention him scornfully, both in the 1575 coq-a-l’áne

‘Voirement, Marot, tu ne sc¸ais Tu as bien dit la verite’ [Truly, Marot, you don’t know/ That

you told the truth] and in a 1590 coq-a-l’áne by a Catholic ‘zele’ rejoicing at the

assassination of Henri III: ‘On eust veu les Genevois/ Brusler jusques a Marot’ [We might

have seen the Genevans/ Burn even Marot].13 The image of Marot as the hunted poet seems to

12
[While preparing a fine large pike/ Found in the body of the fish/ A Huguenot buttock,/ What a tasty
morsel!]; Grégoire Holtz, ‘Illogic and polemic: The coq-a-l’áne during the Wars of Religion’
Renaissance Studies 30, no. 1 (2016): pp. 73-87 (p. 7).
13
Anonymous, Coq a l'ane et chanson sur ce qui s'est passé en France puis la mort de Henry de
Valois, jusques aux nouvelles deffaictes (Lyon: , 1593), p. 12.

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inspire coq-a-l’áne that are prevailingly anonymous. Marot became a persona and disguise to

give credibility to a genre that relied on partisan views. In the hostile scene of French poetry,

the conflict was intensified by graphic descriptions just as it was mocked in coq-a-l’ane

ensuring that the impact of prints on the war was to further the extremes of emotion,

particularly in the dramatization of the horror being witnessed.

Secondly, the considerable impact of the conflict on the French public’s identity

cannot be underestimated. Evaluating sources that point to how individuals and events were

perceived in prints revealed the greatness of the anxiety during the wars. Individual monarchs

such as Henri III received particularly destructive attention from prints during the wars as

their reputations were shaped by what was printed about them. The later examples of

dramatic propaganda from the Catholic League targeted Henri III with imagery of the Devil

becoming a recurring theme to indicate his incompatibility with the Catholic faith and the

French throne. The assassination of Henri III in 1589 by a monk, Jacques Clément,

epitomized the success of the ultimate ambition of the Catholic League: to rid the throne of

the impure royalty who had chosen a Protestant in Henry of Navarre for the succession of the

throne. With many printers stressing that Henri died without a priest, one specific right-hand

panel of an anonymous print goes further to depict the winged Devil with claws for feet

carrying away his body.14 After propaganda had located Henri as the cause of the murder of

the Duc and Cardinal de Guise in the previous year, particularly loved by Parisian Catholic

League members, macabre satires on the subject his death were inspired by his distance from

the Catholic faith. Pamphleteers were particularly quick to view Henri’s assassination as

God’s judgement of oppressors, and the propaganda not only discredited him over time, but

Anonymous, Pour Anthoine du Brueil (c.1589), reproduced in Keith Cameron, Henri III A
14

Maligned or Malignant King?: aspects of the satirical iconography of Henri de Valois (Exeter:
University of Exeter, 1978), p. 102

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also provoked his assassination.15 News of the 1589 assassinations became part of the

international perception of current affairs and this combined with domestic propaganda to

dramatically blemish the reputation of Henri III.

16

In the peddler’s hat is the Neue Zeitung broadsheet printed in Zürich containing news from

Paris of the murder of the Duc de Guise. Woodcuts, engravings, and news all combined to

utilize aggressive propaganda against Henri III, and this provided a clear insight into the

awareness of their actions to attempt to eliminate this king.

15
Cameron, p. 1
16
The Broadsheet Peddler (1589), reproduced in Benedict, et al., Graphic History, p. 5.

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 The conscious shift from the spiritual defiance of martyrdom towards more actively

resistance literature in the form of monarchomach literature exemplified the Protestant self-

reflection in the wake of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572). The event was

believed to orchestrated by Charles IX and his royal council who ordered the assassination of

major Protestant leaders such as Admiral de Coligny whom had amassed for the

reconciliatory marriage of the Henri III de Navarre and Marguerite d'Angoulême (later de

Navarre) to inspire national peace. This sparked mass Catholic violence across France from

Paris to Toulouse and the largest flashpoint of the French Wars of Religion was seen to be

sparked by Charles IX. This unforgiveable act became a recurring feature in the

monarchomach literature of the 1570s and 1580s where writers such as François Hotman

heightened Charles’s role in the events. Francogallia (1573), by the jurer and polemicist

Hotman, became a challenge to what he perceived to be a dangerously absolute monarchy.

He achieved this by highlighting, in a historical and analytical format, that the French

genealogical history of authority had been based on elective monarchies.17 This image went

to counter the king, previously seen as benevolent and moderate, as he had bypassed royal

and legal procedures by ordering the arrest and execution of Coligny and other Protestant

leaders.18 The overarching evolution of the Protestant actions from defensive martyrdom

towards active resistance was epitomized by Hotman in his utilization of the memory events

to tactical produce works to be received by his audience at times of greatest stress, such as

De Furoribus Gallicis which was produced after the massacre.

17
Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), p. 179
18
James Smither, ‘The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and Images of Kingship in France: 1572-
1574,’ The Sixteenth Century Journal 22, no. 1 (1991): pp. 27-46 (p. 27).

12
13
 19

The imprint of his work falsely indicated the publishing location to be in Edinburgh which,

increasing the anonymity of the divisive Protestant tract, revealed the heightened fear among

early monarchomach authors. Hotman clearly had a highly trained mind focused on theory

but engaged in the street-fighting world of ephemeral print as well as the advanced Latin

histories espoused by both Catholic and Protestant sides to decipher their current predicament

at the height of war.20 The impact of print on the Reformation more generally was reflected

within the wars as there was clearly a market for the more extreme works and this led to

greater levels of anger and fear. The perception of individuals across the country could

fluctuate positively or negatively due to the powerful presence of propaganda from the major

printing centers such as Paris.

The intentional oubliance (here taken to mean forgetting of conflict and events)

mirrored active efforts to immortalize the conflict in terms of both popularity and the extreme

nature of the literature surrounding it. Initially, oubliance became a method within royal

policy and daily calendars as contrasting notions of how to progress from adversary centered

around forgiveness of past differences. The riots of Saint-Médard in 1561, where Catholic

worshippers were arrested by a supposedly retaliatory Protestant mob due to fear of an assault

from the Catholics and this was led by nobles as well as townsfolk. It is perhaps unsurprising

that the event is omitted from Protestant calendars reflecting Protestant victimization and

Catholic subversion, while the conspiracy of Amboise as well as continual iconoclasm was

also conveniently forgotten or ignored from these sources of commemoration during the

19
François Hotman, De Furoribus Gallicis (Edinburgh [Basel]: T. Guarin, 1573), accessed on
12/01/2019 <https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19851/lot/396/>
20
Pettegree, p. 180.

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conflict.21 The most poignant evidence from both sides of the religious divide to handle the

horror of the wars emerged in the calendars for daily use that purposely omitted major events

of the wars. The surprise of Meaux (1567) and the incident of Saint Médard were neglected

from Catholic calendars in an attempt to blot out Protestant attempts at gaining superiority

during the conflict. This also revealed the increased separation between the two faiths within

print during the wars and Benedict’s detailed focus on these calendars between 1590 and

1685 showed how daily life was shaped by the prints that would be carried personally.

Conversely, the account of Claude de Sainctes (a Catholic writer most prolific in the 1560s)

outlined how the riots in Saint Médard for example, were inspired by “the gathering of so

many people […] with some evil intent” in his discourse on the sacking of Catholic churches

by heretics. Compared to the propaganda exposed earlier in this paper, Sainctes differs in that

he questions the motives of the Protestant rioters as he sought to bring their devious intent to

light as it became almost impossible in France to truly forget.

News pamphlets and propaganda both depicting events from the wars were part of the

immortalization of the conflict that were heightened by print. In these productions, the

authors made conscious efforts to record and memorialize visual memories and the way news

was presented during the war seemed highly contradicting. While detailed depictions of the

wars appeared to be religiously impartial, the visual propaganda of events remained as

divided as the earlier examples seen in this paper. Jean Perrissin and Jacques Tortorel

produced ‘The Wars, Massacres and Troubles’ as part of the monumental Quarante Tableau

(1570) publication in Geneva and the engravings within it depicted the initial decade of the

conflict. There had been three major outbreaks of violence up to 1570 and ‘The Second

21
Philip Benedict, ‘Divided memories? Historical calendars, commemorative processions and the
recollection of the Wars of Religion during the ancien regime,’ French History 22, no. 4 (2008): pp.
381–405 (p. 400).

15
Charge at Dreux’ particularly exemplified the intensity of the conflict through detailed

descriptions of the event.

22

The picture, above, specifically outlined the ‘order’ of the events and provided detailed

timelines of the battle to help the viewer understand the quantity of soldiers as well as the

rural location being part of the conflict. The descriptive battle scenes had intrinsic importance

to the authors and acted as delayed broadcasts of the wars for the viewers. Their moderation

when representing the events moved their work away from inflammatory propaganda and

was needed as the Protestant, Jean Perrissin, remained in Lyons despite the fact that later it

was dominated by the Catholic League. The printing in Geneva revealed a more obvious

international market facilitated by the quantity of Protestant output, but more subtly, their

work strove to reach wider audiences and purvey the horrific contemporary situation. The

.‘La deuxieme charge de la Bataille de Dreux’ (1562); reproduced in Benedict, et al., Graphic
22

History, pp. 297-8.

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extreme nature of the prints was in contrast to the propaganda produced of events. Alongside

the Geneva publication of Wars, Richard Verstegan’s work also brings in the international

scale of the conflict and how it spilt out of France to Antwerp. Antwerp was a more liberal

city for print culture where religious material was able to be produced, and the Anglo-Dutch

publisher visualized the extreme and problematic accounts of violence to the contemporary

audience.

23

Verstegan’s Theater of the Cruelties of the Heretics of Our Time even contained verses

concerning the lack of Protestant respect for kings and burning the sacred bones of saints.

The collaborative approach in this depiction revealed examples of Protestant violence against

Catholics as well as containing lettered references to the different episodes and this
23
Richard Verstegan, ‘Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis’ (Antwerp, 1587), in
Barbara Diefendorf, The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford:
St Martin’s Press, 2008), p. 16.

17
converged with the undeniably more impartial and realistic attempt in Wars to show a more

impartial version of episodes. This aggressive piece dramatically contrasted to the more

subtle artistic depictions of events that emerged during the wars.

While the intent to provoke conflict is apparent in Verstegan’s piece, this opposed the

royal policy of attempting, and failing, to appease both sides of the religious divide. The

oubliance discussed earlier factored into this as the principal perception and memory of royal

acts centered around this concept as seen in the rhetoric of edicts. Although the Edict of

Nantes (1598) was the most successful in restoring a period of lasting peace, its wording

focused on the “reformée vivre et demourer par toutes les villes et lieux de cestuy nostre

royaume” without threat.24 Despite the intense violence, this more successful edict, as

evidenced by the lack of severe conflict for over a decade under Henri IV, Protestants are to

live without being investigated or questioned as if to forget the differences. To briefly

compare this to future events that would divide the French population more divisively, the

differences between the edicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the eighteenth-

century revolution lay in the personnel of who wrote them. The royal decree to halt the wars

of religion, “pour ne laisser aucune occasion de troubles et différence entre notre subjects”,

contrasted dramatically to the famous nineteen August decrees which were more

revolutionary in that they sought to destroy aristocratic hegemony within France.25 The

destruction of the highest form of society was more aggressive than the king requesting to

ignore and forget the differences within the violent population, perhaps indicating the lack of

success that edicts from previous centuries had had in generating genuine change.

Additionally, the hundreds of public members participating in the National

Constituent Assembly (1789-1791) were in in charge in shaping the memory of the conflict

24
Edict of Nantes (1598), Article XII, accessed on 11/25/2019
<http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/editsdepacification/edit_12#art_12_21>
25
Here translated as “to leave no opportunity for trouble and difference between our subjects”; Ibid.

18
and the clearest difference emerged as the edicts desperately sought for all to forget the

conflict while the resolutions genuinely shifted French social spheres through their

revolutionary tracts. Printed versions of both forms of peace remained a powerful factor in

shaping the memory of events as it could both generate a clear picture to the public of the and

individuals and events of the war while also sparking intense divergence through propaganda.

Ernest Renan’s infamous ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’ lecture revealed the legacy of the

resolutions on the French state. Nearly a century after the Revolution, he concluded that the

nineteenth century French nation remained, just as in the eighteenth century, based on the

forgetting of divisive conflicts as ancestral legacy continued from the past.26 Indeed,

genealogy as far back as the Albigensian Crusade became important within print and

therefore, the French population’s perception of their nation were, at least within the top tier

of authority, based on the memories forged from prints concerning the conflict.

Thirdly, print also had an overarching reliance on archaic examples that ranged from

biblical references to the Albigensian Crusade as the wars examined the memory of the

largest issues that the population faced with divisions. The Protestant and Catholic divide and

extreme massacres, depicted in prints of La renversement and Anne du Bourg, provided

examples for archaic imagery used extensively during the wars. Any discussion of archaic

depictions in print would be incomplete without discussing the impact of Crespin’s Actes des

Martyrs (1554-1570). The print was a hugely popular within the Reformed Church as a

martyrology and many accounts utilized Old Testament imagery as a persuasive discourse to

“serve as instruction not only to all the faithful, in particular, but in general all peoples and

Ernest Renan, ‘What is the nation’, in Nation and Narration, ed. by Homi Bhabha (London:
26

Routledge, 1990) pp. 8-22 (p. 16).

19
republics.”27 In the introduction to the 1565 edition, this personal comment provides an

insight to how all of society would benefit from imagery such as Anne de Bourg’s

iconoclasm. He recorded in 1559 that Anne du Bourg of Paris defended iconoclasm “by

quoting the mandate given to Israel to tear down idols.”28 Anne de Bourg’s martyrdom,

publicly hanged and burned as a heretic in Paris, was part of a wider image of the Children of

Israel tearing down altars and cutting down idols in Deuteronomy 12:4. The notion of

bringing up old heresies intensified the contemporary conflict and became fundamental to not

only to the martyrology but to Huguenot identity.29 The martyrology was printed in Geneva

between 1554 and 1570 and was influenced by Crespin’s acquaintance with Jean Calvin

while living there, and Crespin utilized personal letters and eyewitness accounts to build the

book. The logical explanation of this trend, whereby religion underpinned all aspects of life

in early-modern France, could be expected in that the martyrs would resort to the strong

language that defined their faith in their religious persecution. It was this appropriation of the

Old Testament that Protestants were able to identify with and explain their current climate of

conflict and oppression. Particularly in the earliest decade of the wars, martyrology was the

greatest expression of faith before this gave way to active defiance in the form of

monarchomach resistance theory after the St. Bartholomew Day massacre. It filtered into

prints through aggressive examples drawn from martyrologies and contemporary events the

clearest example of this are revealed in the Renversement de la Grande Marmite (c.1562)

with burning Protestant bodies fueling the Catholic vestments.

27
Jean Crespin, Histoire des martyrs (1564) trans. by Matthieu Lelievre (London: Facsimile
Publisher, 2015), p. 189.
28
Charles Parker, ‘French Calvinists as the Children of Israel: An Old Testament Self-Consciousness
in Jean Crespin's 'Histoire des Martyrs' before the Wars of Religion,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 24
(1993): pp. 227-48 (p. 234).
29
Luc Racaut, ‘Religious Polemic and Huguenot Self-perception and Identity, 1554-1619’ in Society
and Culture in the Huguenot World 1559-1685, eds. Raymond A. Mentzer, Andrew Spicer,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) pp. 29-43 (p. 29).

20
21
 30

This multi-faceted polemic print indicates the intensification of the tensions at the beginning

of the war in 1562. The marmite outlined the factors of Protestant detestation of their internal

religious enemy and the failing attempts to uphold French Catholicism as the supporting

columns are broken by the combined force of holy scripture and the sword of Truth. This was

also reflected across the print as a cardinal, exposed by his headdress, adds to his personal

offertory (mite) box. It is intriguing that two other cardinals lead blind laity who are being

treated like fenced animals and this indicates how Catholic belief was stopping the French

population from finding salvation and needed to be enlightened with the faith exposed by the

martyrs. The poem accompanying this print was almost as important as the image would be

for illiterate audiences. The hypocrisy and overturned truth described in the first two lines

refers to the discordant beliefs in the true reading of the scriptures and this became an early

war propaganda endeavor to give weight to the assembling Protestant forces in 1562. Linked

to this, there was clearly a biblical proportion to this print with the dove of the Holy Spirit

present and the heavens descending. The anonymous author assigned to work was common

within Protestant prints, particularly in France where the Calvinist emphasis censored

aggressive tracts and, as seen throughout this thesis, Catholic authors were more willing to be

more openly fight Protestants in print. Calvin himself insinuated that “in France they make no

distinction of parties” and so creating a clear line on Calvinist, censored imagery was

important which left the clandestine printers to more direct representation of the intense

conflict.31 Martyrdom may not have been a continuous feature of all Protestant thought in

France, but the archaic imagery, that drew on previous oppressions to compare to the
30
Anonymous, La Renversement de la Grande Marmite (1562); reproduced in Philip Benedict, ’Of
Marmites and Martyrs: Images and Polemics in the Wars of Religion’, in The French Renaissance in
Prints: from the Biblioteque Nationale De France, ed. Karen Jacobin (Los Angeles: Grunwald Center,
1995): pp. 109-131 (p. 109).
31
Jean Calvin, Letters of Calvin: Vol. IV, ed. by Jules Bonnet, (Edinburgh: Burt Franklin, 1972), p.
404.

22
contemporary crisis, strengthened and intentionally exaggerated the metaphorical and

physical conflict.

The resuscitation of biblical imagery was a common technique utilised by authors and

printers during the wars and often targeted artistic representation of events as well as

individuals from the Bible. The example that the preacher Thomas Beauxamis espouses

revealed how biblical examples in prints were commonly used to intensify the religious

differences. In his allegorical sermon, Resolution sur certains pourtraictz & libelles, utilizes

Exodus (16:1-3) where in the wilderness of Sin, Israelites yearn the “fleshpots of Egypt” as

the Protestants are represented as being detached from God.32 The theological approach to

rationalizing the Catholic strength over Protestant weakness intensified the early war in print

and at flashpoints during the war such as the St. Bartholomew Day massacre, Resolution was

even reprinted. He was a curate of St. Paul’s in Paris at this point and therefore his oral

sermons had a large impact alongside his prints. Similarly, the influence of a contemporary

Herod and apocalyptic biblical imagery in the League’s propaganda also emerges in prints as

Pierre de L’Estoile’s album of Les belles figures et drolleries de la Ligue (1589) highlights.

The assassination of Henri III, unpopular within the Catholic League due to his conciliatory

approach to Protestants and his reputed role in the murder of the Duc de Guise, became

highly satirized in relation to archaic biblical examples.

32
Benedict, ‘Of Marmites’, p. 111.

23
 33

Accompanying the depiction of a barbaric Henri as a wicked Herod, the League propagandist

also places a depiction of the Last Judgement alongside this as a comparison between the

reign of Henri III and the end of days. It was likely be a reference to the most extreme

depictions of League rhetoric against the king was in response to Article 21 of the Edict of

Nantes prohibited the printing, of books and libellous writings without state approval.34

Therefore, L’Estoile’s collection of League prints also acted as a counter to the clandestine

League polemics that were produced without governmental enforcement. Combining the

33
Pierre de L’Estoile, Les belles Figures et Drolleries de la Ligue (Paris: Lieux divers, 1606), p. 84.
Accessed on 11/09/2019 <https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k859264h/f84.image>.
34
Edict of Nantes (1598), article XXI, accessed on 11/25/2019
<http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/editsdepacification/edit_12#art_12_21>

24
propaganda at the beginning and end of the wars enriched the picture of extreme conflict

within the printed world as well as wars.

Building on this, martyrology evident in Protestant prints was opposed by

contemporary resuscitation of the religious violence of the Albigensian Crusade in Catholic

polemic literature.

Primarily based around the polemic work of Jean Gay, these authors branded the heretical

Protestants to the crown as an equivalent evil as the Cathars of Languedoc who were

extinguished in the thirteenth century. Gay exemplifies this heightened tension through his

analogy of Protestants acting as “Evangelistes, comme font les heretiques modenies.”35

Comparing the two heresies through the medium of print provided for an eager mass market

on the brink of war and made the contemporary tension more extreme. Jean du Tillet would

later write that the same medication of religious violence against heresy would work now as

it did during the Crusade and that France should “prendre par violence les choses d'autre”.36

As clerk (greffier) of the Parlement de Paris, he would have access to the royal court and his

prints sought to counter the rebellion that he saw within the Protestant movement. His

diagnosis of cleansing the kingdom was through religious violence as had been the Catholic

view throughout the war and this book produced with the royal privilege motivated violence

at the high point of the League’s power to intensify the conflict he wished to see. The Cathars

of the Albigensian Crusade were slaughtered and effectively quelled but the key difference

here is that the Catholic prints are an effort to spark aggression from the king. Indeed,

proposed violence surrounds the context of Gay’s work was the advocation of a vicious

campaign against Protestants who held the same heretical genealogy that linked them with
35
“evangelists like the modern heretics”; Jean Gay, Histoire des scismes et heresies des Albigeois
conforme a celle depresent, par laquelle appert que plusieurs grans princes et seigneurs sont tombez
en extremes desolations et ruines pour avoir favorise aux heretiques (Paris: Pierre Gaultier, 1561), p.
1.
36
“or take things by violence”; Jean du Tillet, Sommaire de l’Histoire (Paris: Robert Nivelle, 1590), p.
29.

25
the Cathars.37 Printed and reproduced, the Toulouse parlement called for a “Crusade for the

extirpation of [Protestant] heretic” and, as this occurred after the second war, it provides an

indication that works such as Gay’s carried huge weight in resuscitating the notion of

religious war against French unorthodoxy.38 Gay’s position as a procureur of the Toulouse

parlement strengthens the impact of his voice not only in print but within the parlement as the

proclamation indicated. The Reformed theologian, and successor of Calvin, Theodore de

Bèze described the Toulousain parlement as “the bloodiest in France” the seat of the

Inquisition when the Crusade began.39 The cities records are well-documented and indicate a

distinct lack of change between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Wilkinson persuasively

retains the focus of Toulouse as the heartland of Catholicism in the Languedoc region

surrounded by increasingly Protestant towns in his extensive use of baptismal records and

Protestant marriage bonds.40 This provided context for the heightened fear in Gay’s

publication as the identity of Protestantism, particularly in southern France, could not escape

archaic comparisons to the heresy of the thirteenth century.

To further their inducement of violence, Catholic authors also labelled contemporary

individuals as the figures count Raymond of Toulouse and Simon de Montford influenced the

Albigensian Crusade. Integral to the parlement of Paris, Tillet presented printed

encouragement for Charles IX of the notion that he should emulate Louis IX and destroy

37
Philip Conner, Huguenot heartland: Montauban and southern French Calvinism during the wars of
religion (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002), p. 128
38
ADHG (Archives Departementales de la Haute Garonne, Toulouse), B 3460 (1/10/1568) cited in
William Monter, Judging the French Reformation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p.
280.
39
“le plus sanglant en france”; Theodore de Bèze, Histoire écclesiastique des Églises Réformées au
Royaume de France, vol. I (Paris: Forgotten Books, 2018), p. 54
40
Alexander Wilkinson, Mary Queen of Scots and French Public Opinion, 1542-1600 (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 55.

26
unorthodoxy as both would have been conquerors at a young age41. This evidence indicates

that the archaic resurfacing of the Albigensian Crusade comparisons reached royal levels,

further revealing the power of the polemic use of the crusade as a constant increase of

religious tension. Saint Louis’s reign officially ended the crusade by effectively destroying

Cathar leadership and sending the remaining few underground and this significantly aided his

growing reputation that culminated in his canonisation. This pious comparison was balanced

with a comparison of Condé and Raymond as both provided areas of safety for heretics under

their protection.42 This comparison not only revealed the permeation of the Albigensian

Crusade in the pre-war years, but also highlighted the desire of Catholic authors to heighten

the extremity of the situation by drawing on previously successful internal French religious

conflict to justify eradicating the Protestant heresy. The context of the threat Protestants

posed in 1561 was crucial as Tillet’s printed prophesy became realized in 1562 when Condé

rebelled to help instigate the beginning of the wars.

Returning again to the crucial polemic work by Gay, the Montmorency-Damville

noble family of Languedoc were targeted in print by hinting that they were acting impiously

like Raymond of Toulouse during the Albigensian Crusade. Histoire’s Preface to Anne de

Montmorency was produced after his associations with Protestant-favouring nobles such as

Antoine du Bourbon and was a thinly veiled printed attempt to portray Montmorency as

becoming like Raymond in his actions.43 This imprint was most likely part of a tactical

decision to incite Montmorency to take on heresy in the Protestant Midi region. The context

surrounding Gay’s book being accepted by Parlement of Toulouse and theologians but

41
Elizabeth Brown, Jean du Tillet and the French Wars of. Religion: Five Tracts, 1562-69
(Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1994), p. 11.
42
Jean du Tillet, Jean du Tillet, Remonstrances faictes au roy par messieurs (1561) in Eugénie Droz,
ed., Chimins de l’Hérésie: textes et documents, vol. III (Geneva: Slatkine, 1974), pp. 420-32 (p.431).
43
Gay, p. iv.

27
affronting the crown indicates that there was a discord in opinions of polemic printing in a

heightened environment of fear before the wars.44 As royal policy was already targeting

literature despite Gay’s work aligning with the coronation pledge to destroy heresy. Just like

Tillet, Gay’s publication pre-empted Albigensian similarities that were fulfilled as

Montmorency would be dismissed by Charles IX later after what he wrote regarding being

“more of the Religion than Papist” and would protect Protestants with his own land.45 The

similarity of this action to Raymond who was not a Cathar but determined to embrace them in

the Languedoc region is significant as it lends a new approach to the polemic literature that

concerned archaic use of the crusade to invoke fear. Before the wars had begun, Catholic

authors portrayed their future enemy as a beaten unorthodox belief as the principal authors,

Gay and Tillet, used the threat of future war to heighten tension and help instigate conflict.

In conclusion, the physical and damaging conflict of the wars was mirrored in the

aggressive polemic literature that ensured the differences between the religions were

immortalized. The origins and legacy of major events such as the assassination of St.

Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and Henri III were, in part, inspired due to flourishing

propaganda efforts on the part of monarchomach authors such as Hotman and the Catholic

League’s tirade of material. However, the overarching themes of: propaganda inspiring the

separation of the faiths; the reception of events and individuals being distorted by memory

and prints; archaic representations of the Bible and the Albigensian Crusade, caused a greater

intensity of dramatic conflict affecting every individual in France. Too extensive to be fully

reviewed in this work, the impact of print on oral culture and the specific influence of popular

artistic satires such as The Procession of the League (1590) also played a critical role in the

44
Luc Racaut, Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity During the French Wars
of Religion (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 10.
45
‘Letter from Charles IX to Anne de Montmorency,’ in The French Wars of Religion: Selected
Documents ed. and trans. by David Potter (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 160-161 (p. 160).

28
extension and representation of the conflict. The contrasting roles of individuals and events

during the wars was extensively covered within the contemporary literature as Charles IX’s

benevolent representations were destroyed after the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre and the

intertwining roles of print and public opinion became firmly attached. In contrast, the battles

of the wars were immaculately reproduced in the Wars as one of the earliest formats of

artistic French news for the public. Collectors such as Pierre de L’Estoile and mass-produced

works such as the edicts furthered the information available to modern scholars, but it was the

more ephemeral and aggressive propaganda that emerged as the most influential prints during

the wars. Catholic printers effectively revived the notion of crusade in their literature as

general histories such as Gay and Tillet’s cemented the notion that it was vital to raise the

stakes of the religious conflict by portraying the Protestants as Cathars. Catholic prints, more

so than Protestant, also undertook a detailed focus on destroying false religions, referring to

the Albigensian Crusade’s heresy and biblical examples of purging non-Christians to bolster

their desire for contemporary monarchs to emulate this annihilation. The impact of the

considerable prints produced before, during, and after the French Wars of Religion on the

population intensified the conflict considerably and ensured that it would remain the most

aggressive and brutal half-century in French history.

29
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33