France : an edict of pacification
France was in a different situation. The kingdom was more centralised than any other in Europe and in all probability more conscious of its unity than the Holy Roman Empire. Through the 1516 Concordat of Bologna[1] king Francis I[2] had obtained strong means of pressure on the church. He had the upper hand on 110 dioceses and 4000 monasteries. All the kingdom's prelatures were in his gift to entrust to men whose qualities he respected and whose services he wished to reward. He was as a result the undisputed master of the ecclesial infrastructure, just as he was of the civil organisation. Serving God was serving the king; this conviction was neatly framed in a much publicised and well rehearsed phrase: « one faith, one law one king »
.
Informations[3]The Reformation filtered in as early as 1525, first from Germany, then from Geneva where Jean Calvin[4], had taken refuge and whence he masterminded the Reformation in the kingdom of France. After some years wavering, the power tried to force a policy of repression. After the turning point of 1543, the repression yielded its « martyrs »
and the number of « adepts of the new faith »
kept on growing. It peaked in 1559 by which time the Reformation was reckoned to have gathered two millions followers, that is about 10 per cent of the population. Now during that same year, king Henry II[5] died accidentally in a tourney, leaving four sons, the eldest of whom was only 15 years old, under the tutelage of their mother Catherine De' Medici[6] who had soon assumed power. Having noted the failure of brutal enforcement, she set herself the goal of holding the balance between the diverse parties, if only to safeguard her children's kingdom. First, as had been done in Germany, she attempted conciliation. She was assisted in this by a moderate-minded group the members of which came to be known as « moyenneurs »
(middlers) after Calvin's put-down – and an indication of his mistrust. A national council was called, under the heading of “colloque” to keep Rome happy. The Moyenneurs faced two extreme trends: the Calvinists and the Catholic majority. The Colloquium was a failure, like in Germany leading to the military option.
Informations[7]Thereafter, France would be rent apart by eight successive wars during which neither side showed able to achieve a conclusive victory. Unlike in the German conflict, these wars did not oppose Catholic sovereigns to Protestant ones, they were actual civil wars, the religious fault line running through all social classes. They achieved nothing: violent flare-ups were followed by periods of appeasement mostly owed to the fighters' general exhaustion. Each time they were sanctioned by very short-lived Edicts of « Peace »
. They destroyed the foundations of social life, throwing the citizens of the same city, the members of the same family at each other's throat. Even leaving aside their human and economic consequences, they totally destroyed any religious sentiment and risked advancing atheism, as Protestant theologian Theodore Beza feared. Furthermore they undermined the authority of the State; to cite but one instance the enforcement of justice had become almost impossible. None of the three warring parties, whether Protestant, extreme Catholics or moderate Catholics also known as « politiques »
succeeded in getting the better of the others. It eventually fell to Henry IV[8] to impose a solution to the problem created by the Reformation. In April 1598, he signed, with the utmost discretion, the Edict of Nantes which put an end to the Wars of Religion in the kingdom France. What were, in a nutshell the clauses of this Edict? The Protestants qualified as a « corps »
, a body in its own right, in a state that counted many (the aristocracy, the clergy, the third estate, the corporations, etc...). As such, under the king's authority and as his benevolence allowed, they would benefit from:
Civil equality with the Catholics: They could buy, sell, marry, draw up a will, pay taxes
Equality in matters of education and public aid, access to all distinctions
Total liberty of conscience (although the term was not used)
Freedom of worship – restricted but no less effective
A military capability for defence conceded through the grant of strongholds for their safety
France's royal power was thus, as the Habsburg's imperial power before it, forced to accept the presence of two faiths for want of being able to extirpate Protestantism. The Edict of Nantes was, like the Peace of Augsburg, perceived as a necessary evil. The Reformed faith was acknowledged as a fact, it arose from a breach the experience of which, said the actors, showed that « God alone can remedy it »
. The place given to Protestantism was such that it inclined its adepts to hold their peace but it was by no means a positive value. The French solution, like the imperial solution was political. However these solutions differed; instead of a juxtaposition of states observing different faiths but internally thoroughly homogenous, the king of France imposed in his kingdom what was later called « coexistence in intolerance »
. This coexistence was ruled in every particular by a multitude of frequently exacting clauses.
