The French wars of religionNo wars are more terrible than civil wars. They tear at the very fabric of society, rending its institutions and destroying the delicate web of relationships that underlie all communal life. The nation is divided communities break into factions; families are destroyed. At every level of organization the glue that binds society together comes unstuck.
For nearly half century civil war tore France apart. Massacres of Catholic congregations matched massacres of Protestants ones. Assassinations of Catholic leaders followed assassinations of Protestants ones. Kings of France died at the hands of their subjects. Leaders of Protestants and Catholic movements died by the order of the king, Aristocratic armies roamed the country wreaking havoc on friend and foe alike. Indeed, the religious causes that brought the wars about were soon forgotten.
Protestantism came late to France. The unyielding hostility of the monarchy had prevented Lutheran reforms from making much headway there. Through a series of concessions made by the papacy in the fifteenth century and codified in the Concordat of Bologna (1516), the French kings had gained the right too make ecclesiastical appointments and thus controlled much of the wealth of the Church.
Lutheranism held little attraction for Francis I (1515-1547) and he rigorously suppressed it, sending John Calvin among others, into exile. The Catholic church directed by the monarchy proved even more resistant to reform than had the Catholic church directed by the papacy. It was not until after Calvin reformed the church in Geneva and began to export his brand of Protestantism that French society began to divide along religious lines.
The French wars of religion
