Religion and violence

Acteurs, temporalité et géographie des massacres

Massacres primarily attributed to Catholics?

These massacres, in French territory, were mostly committed by Catholics. It is not that the Huguenots refused the call to violence, but this rarely took the form of collective action against ordinary people of faith. It mostly targeted soldiers, clerics, and even objects. Considering holy images a form of idolatry, the Protestants favoured acts of iconoclasm[1] ; the first took place in France in 1528 and was followed by several waves, in 1555 in Toulouse, in 1561 once again in the capital, in many towns in 1562.....it was a feature already described by the Calvinist authors of L'Histoire Ecclésiatique, affirming that the 'religious' made war only on images and altars.

The Catholics attacked people, the Protestants, property. This rather complacent picture of Huguenot violence is only relative. Protestant mobs certainly did attack the ordinary faithful. The massacre of Michelade took place on the night of 30 September to 1 October 1567 in Nîmes – after St Michael's Day, hence the name – and it is undoubtedly the best known of the massacres committed by the Huguenots. The governor of the province imposed Catholic councillors on the town, which had a Protestant majority. Although the Huguenots took back control of the municipal institutions, a trivial incident between the two communities (a woman was jostled by one of the governor's soldiers) degenerated into a riot. Between 15 and 120 Catholics -civilians, religious and military leaders, were taken to the bishop's palace in Nîmes, stabbed to death and thrown into a well. On 15 August 1562, the killings at Lauzerte (now in Tarn-et-Garonne), where 94 clerics were murdered, is another massacre perpetrated by the Protestants. Conversely, Catholic violence was also aimed at property. Conflict led to the destruction of Protestant churches, and bibles in French were burned.

The massacre of Michelade at Nîmes, 1576InformationsInformations[2]

All the same, historians from Natalie Zemon Davis to David El Kenz, including Denis Crouzet, have all confirmed that Catholics were the main perpetrators of massacres in the kingdom of France.

The location of massacres in time and space

The historian David El Kenz set out to quantify and locate massacres. Massacres are not random; on the contrary, they have characteristics which hold true not only for France in the wars of religion.

  • They happen in the areas where the two communities, Catholic and Protestant, are relatively demographically balanced.

  • They are a response to the rejection by the Catholic majority of coexistence and civil toleration[3]. After 1577 the frequency of massacres in towns declined as many Protestant communities had been forced to disperse and emigrate, such that those remaining did not pose a threat to the Catholic majority.

  • Many massacres were carried out alongside military action. According to the historian David El Kenz' analysis, between 1559 and 1571, out of a total of 58 massacres cited in L'Histoire des martyrs (1514) begun by Jean Crespin and continued by Simon Goulart, and in L'Histoire ecclésiastique des Eglises reformées au royaume de France (anonymous, but attributed to Théodore de Bèze[4] , 1580), the greatest number of killings took place in Provence (62.7%), followed at a fair distance by the Loire Valley (8.5%), Languedoc (5.2%), Champagne (4.6%), La Guyenne and Poitou (4.6%). This geography of killings corresponds to the areas where combat was most intense. David El Kenz shows that a third of massacres occurred when a town was taken. In Tours, for example, 200 Protestants were killed during the retaking of the town by the Catholics on 11 July 1562.

The net over-representation of the Midi in this geography of massacres appears in fact to be linked to the unusual urban density of that region; the forced were balanced, which favoured the escalation of violence. This bias is certainly also linked to the source; the Reformed churches of the Midi were especially dynamic and it was they who provided the author of L'Histoire ecclésiastique with the reports of the massacres. Conversely, there were no killings in Brittany, due to the fact that there were few Protestants there and the Catholic governor, the Duc d'Étampes[5] , acted with moderation and prevented fratricidal strife.

Geography of massacresInformationsInformations[6]
  1. Iconoclasme

    The destruction of representations of God and saints was based on a literal interpretation of the second commandment (forbidding the worship of God's image). [See Module 2014-15 “Religions and representation in images”]

  2. Source : « le massacre fait à Nismes en Languedoc le I d'Octobre 1567, en la nuict », estampe extraite de Jacques Tortorel et Jean Jacques Perrissin, Premier volume contenant quarante tableaux ou histoire diverses qui sont mémorables touchant les guerres, massacres et troubles advenus en France ces dernières années, 1569-1570. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8400596p Paternité - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale

    L'estampe témoigne de la qualité des informations auxquelles ont eu recours les graveurs. Leur image concorde en effet avec les dépositions des témoins lors la procédure judiciaire qui a suivi le massacre. Quoiqu'acquis à la cause des réformés, Tortorel et Perrissin n'en font pas moins preuve ici d'une certaine impartialité, soulignant le déséquilibre des forces (les huguenots sont armés, non les catholiques) et le sort réservé aux victimes (le prieur des Augustins Jean Quatrebas jeté dans un puits).

  3. coexistence and civil toleration

    (Edict of) Tolerance: In January 1562, at the instigation of the Chancellor, Michel de l'Hospital, in search of peace, Catherine de Medici signed the Edict of Tolerance of St Germain in the name of her son Charles IX, who was still a minor. It permitted the practice of the reformed religion in private houses or outside the city walls. It was the first official attempt to establish coexistence between Catholics and Huguenots, but it also set off the first war of religion. The troops of the Duc de Guise who massacred the Huguenots at Wassy in March 1562 accused them of not honouring the terms of the Edict in holding a service within the town. However, the provisions of the Edict of St Germain were gradually confirmed and extended by many edicts aimed at putting an end to the wars of religion.

  4. Théodore de Bèze

    Théodore de Bèze (1519-1605): called to Geneva by Calvin at the end of the 1550s to direct the academy there, he was his right hand man. After the death of Calvin in 1564, he was considered the principal figure of Calvinist Protestantism. From Geneva, where he was teacher and pastor for most of the following decades (with the exception of short stays in France), he focused on advising Protestant war leaders and ensuring the cohesion of the community through his significant correspondence. He published political treatises (On the rights of magistrates over their subjects, 1574) and no doubt contributed to L'Histoire ecclésiastique.

  5. Duc d'Étampes

    Jean IV de Brosse (1505-1564): Count of Penthièvre, Duke of Étampes and Chevreuse, and governor of Brittany (1453-1565).

  6. Source :Extrait de David EL KENZ, Les bûchers du roi, la culture protestante des martyrs (1523-1572), Seyssel, Champ-Vallon, 1997, p. 217 Paternité - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale

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