Hatred in Print

Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity During the French Wars of Religion

Luc Racaut

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351931571
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Catholic polemical works, and their portrayal of Protestants in print in particular, are the central focus of this work. In contrast with Germany, French Catholics used printing effectively and agressively to promote the Catholic cause. In seeking to explain why France remained a Catholic country, the French Catholic response must be taken into account. Rather than confront the Reformation on its own terms, the Catholic reaction concentrated on discrediting the Protestant cause in the eyes of the Catholic majority. This book aims to contribute to the ongoing debate over the nature of the French Wars of Religion, to explain why they were so violent and why they engaged the loyalities of such a large portion of the population. This study also provides an example of the successful defence of catholicism developed independently and in advance of Tridentine reform which is of wider significance for the history of the Reformation in Europe.

CHAPTER ONE
Print, censorship and the vernacular during the French Wars of Religion

In a seminal article, 'The Advent of Printing and the Protestant Revolt', Elizabeth Eisenstein argued that Protestantism had successfully harnessed the relatively new medium of printing, whereas Catholicism had not.¹ This model was borne out by work on the Lutheran Reformation, the conclusions of which were applied to the Reformation as a whole. In the dedication of jean-Francois Gilmont's La Réforme et le Livre, a tribute is paid to the Reformed book and those who contributed to the 'progress of humanity'.² This implies that Catholics contributed little to the book revolution, a view that has been passed on to us through several generations of historians. In the nineteenth century, for example, the Baron de Ruble described the Faculty of Theology of Paris as composed of 'doctors pickled in scholastic, little to be feared in itself, had it not ruled over an army of scribes and imps ... always ready to break the public peace'.³

The history of the Reformation in France has largely been written from the point of view of the agents of change.⁴ For the same reason the history of the French religious book is dominated by the role of Geneva and the Protestant movement. I should like to challenge Eisenstein's premise, at least as far as France is concerned, that the Protestants were better at harnessing the new medium of printing than the 'forces of reaction'. French Catholics were in a much better position than their German counterparts to fight back against the Reformers. A very fierce campaign of anti-Protestant polemic was the Catholics' answer to what Robert Kingdon called 'the flood tide' of evangelical books from Geneva.⁵ French Catholic print in the vernacular has been understudied and underestimated by many historians of the French Wars of Religion. Its quantity and impact was considerable and it enabled French Catholics to compete on an equal footing with the Genevan Reformers.

From the outset, the University and the Parlement of Paris reacted very quickly to the spread of the evangelical message in France. The Faculty of Theology condemned Luther in 1521 and remained vigilant throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. The printing of vernacular bibles, the hallmark of the Reformation, was banned in 1525.⁶ An index of books forbidden by the theologians, backed by the Parlement, was issued in the 1540s.⁷ At the same time, the Edict of Fontainebleau transferred the repression of heresy from the ecclesiastical courts to the secular courts.⁸ In 1547, Henri II recognized the authority of the Faculty of Theology to dispense authorizations to print on religious matters. The co-operation between King, Parlement and Faculty of Theology reached its high-water mark in 1551 with the Edict of Châteaubriant. This piece of legislation reinforced the co-operation between University and Parlement, as permission to print could be issued only with approval of the Faculty of Theology. A privilège, which had been a tool in the hands of the Parlement to protect the book trade, had to be printed on the frontispiece of the book. For works of theology, this had to be accompanied by a permission which gave the work the official stamp of theologians of the University of Paris.⁹

Nevertheless, the degree of co-operation between these three institutions and, as a result, the effectiveness of censorship should not be overestimated. The Crown often found itself at odds with the Parlement and the University, notably regarding questions of religion. The Concordat of Bologna (1516), which had granted the King considerable powers over Church government, did much to antagonize the theologians.¹⁰ The Parlement was renowned for its conservatism and its attachment to the liberties of the Gallican Church that the Concordat was perceived to jeopardize.¹¹ These divisions grew stronger as the religious problems escalated and the Crown sought a solution beyond mere persecution. Recent scholarship has shown that the Crown came to disagree with the theologians and members of the Parlement on how best to restore religious concord.¹² Members of the University and the Parlement thought that the best way was to exterminate the Protestant heresy, while the Crown sought temporary measures of conciliation, to ultimately fall back on a legal solution.

The emergence of what Olivier Christin has caiied 'an impartial state' based on the 'autonomisation of political reason', however, could only be achieved through the control of the printing press.¹³ In the process the Crown came into conflict with the self-styled upholders of orthodoxy, the University and the Parlement. The censoring powers of the Parlement and the University of Paris had been strengthened during the reign of Henri II but were increasingly challenged by his successors. The conservatism of the Parlement had been enhanced with the purge culminating with the execution of Anne du Bourg, suspected of heresy, in March 1560.¹⁴ The Parlement openly came into conflict with the Crown when Catherine de Medici appointed Michel de L'Hôpital as chancellor in June 1560. L'Hôpital was unpopular among the members of the Parlement who disagreed with his conciliatory views and regarded his promotion as arising from Catherine's sudden change of policy.¹⁵

At a time when the views of Church, Parlement and Crown converged, censorship was fairly straightforward. On the eve of the French Wars of Religion, however, this was no longer the case. A case in point is a book that had been approved by the Parlement and the theologians but was offensive to the Crown.¹⁶ In October 1561, this inflammatory anti-Protestant book provoked the reaction of the English ambassador in Paris, Throckmorton, who asked for it to be removed from circulation.¹⁷ In compliance with the ambassador's remonstrance, Montmorency issued an order forbidding printing without the authorization of the King or his council, thus conflicting with the prerogatives of the Parlement and the Faculty of Theology.¹⁸

This order came in the wake of the refusal of the Parlement of Paris to ratify the edict of pacification of January 1562 that included unprecedented measures of conciliation.¹⁹ The King had authorized Montmorency to have the Edict of January immediately printed by Charles Langelier although the Parlement had refused to ratify it.²⁰ On this occasion, the Crown chose to disregard the traditional prerogatives of the Parlement - which was a stepping stone towards gaining control of the printing press.²¹ In 1563 this trend was reinforced by an edict of Charles IX forbidding the printing of books which did not bear royal permission endorsed by the chancellor.²² In 1566 it culminated in the Edict of Moulins which gave the Crown sole control of the privilége. Theoretically, the Crown could turn its powers of censorship, originally designed to stem the flow of Protestant books, against disaffected Catholics who disapproved of the royal policy of conciliation. But it seems that even the Edict of Moulins was unsuccessful in curbing the production of anti-Protestant material in Paris or elsewhere. During the ascendancy of the Holy Catholic League, the Edict of Moulins was rendered largely ineffectual as the powers of censorship reverted back to the hands of the Parlement.²³ The conflict over jurisdiction meant that censorship remained largely ineffectual until the beginning of the seventeenth century.²⁴

The Parlement and the University of Paris dominated the Reformation debate, competing with the Crown as well as the heterodox publications that were produced in Geneva. Until the dismissal of the chancellor Michel de L'Hôpital in 1568, the Crown, under the aegis of Catherine de Medici, pursued religious concord through dialogue.²⁵ In doing so, it attracted the wrath of traditionalists, lawyers in the Parlement and theologians in the University, for whom any form of dialogue, conciliation, or tolerance was anathema. Unlike in Germany, it was these self-same traditionalists who had most influence on the French book trade, both as to the amount of material published in the vernacular, and in their powers of censorship. This 'conservative party' resisted the Crown's measures of conciliation at every turn, through printed remonstrances addressed to the King, sermons from their most acclaimed preachers, and in numerous works of polemic lambasting the Protestant faith. It is this material, for the most part underresearched, that constitutes the principal source for this book.

Heralding the development of the League which openly turned against the Crown, these pamphlets were as much a protest literature as were Protestant productions. Increasingly, the anti-Protestant pamphlets were directed against the royal policy of conciliation. Preachers such as Simon Vigor and Jean de Hans did not refrain from speaking openly against the edicts of pacification that, they argued, betrayed the true religion. The pamphleteer Artus Désiré even resolved to appeal to the King of Spain, a former enemy of France, in the spring of 1561.²⁶ The end of the second war of religion in 1568 and the Edict of Longjumeau provoked a considerable reaction amongst Catholic authors.²⁷ From 1568 until the massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572, the Crown was openly attacked by a number of authors, notably Artus Désiré, René Benoist and Simon Vigor.²⁸

If censorship was unable to curb the excesses of Catholic polemic, it had an adverse effect on the Protestant productions. In Germany, Robert Scribner remarked that the Catholic response was 'too meagre and too limited to have any large-scale or long-term impact' - a view that is often found in the historiography.²⁹ In France, however, the situation is reversed: Protestant printing was apparently not in a position to compete quickly and effectively with Catholic attacks on the Reformation. Geneva has been rightly identified as the source of the Calvinist message in print. On the other hand, it is clear that Calvin and th...