Introduction
There were changes in the nature and symbolic value of religious violence during the sixteenth century. The poet Agrippa d'Aubigné[1] in his ‘Tragedies' distinguishes between two periods: the time of ‘fire' when the first heretics were burned, in other words, the time of the martyrs, was followed by the time of ‘guns', a period of confusion and uprisings, the era of the civil wars and the massacres which accompanied them. In a third period, after 1572 in France to the end of the sixteenth century in the Netherlands, massacres gave place to internal and localised violence. This was also when there were the first commemorations and the establishment of a collective memory of sectarian atrocities.
A real war of words was set in train, in particular via publications celebrating the victims of religious oppression and their martyrdom as against the savagery, even the ‘barbarity' of their persecutors. The period of the wars of religion resulted in a taste for martyrologies, the compilations of the lives of martyrs which had set the tone for the cult of saints from the first centuries of the Church. These works played a crucial role in the propaganda promulgated by the different sides and perfected between the mid sixteenth century and the seventeenth century. They were effective tools in the service of the rival identities as well as formidable weapons in the discourse of hate. Historians have rightly questioned the status of martyrologies as reliable sources for the objective study of the socio-religious realities they represent.
On both the Protestant and the Catholic side, the authors of martyrologies were guided by the famous adage of Tertullian[2] : “sanguis martyrum, semen christanorum” (Apologia 50, 13), meaning “the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians”. The vogue for martyrdom was inspired by nostalgia for the origins of the Church, recalled both by Protestant authors such as Jean Crespin[3] and Catholic authors such as Richard Verstegan[4] . For the Protestants, inducting their martyred co-religionists into the long line of martyrs from the early centuries also gave legitimacy to their sacrifices through the martyrologies that celebrated them. Above all, it was about showing that the new ways were more faithful to the heritage of early Christianity than the Roman church.
The authors of the Reformation, who rejected the veneration of saints, wanted to avoid sanctifying their martyrs and thus transforming their martyrologies into new hagiographies. In response to criticism from Catholics, who were quick to point out evidence of paradox, Protestants insisted that their martyrs only suffered on their own behalf and that the living could not expect their intercession. They rejected the cult of relics as a form of idolatry which degraded the suffering of the martyr. Furthermore, they did not include illustrations of their martyrs. In contrast, the Catholics made the most of the emotional power of the image; their martyrologies are rich in graphic engravings, which heightens their impact.
