JUDGING THE FRENCH REFORMATION: Heresy Trials By Sixteenth-Century
Parlements
Thomas Worcester
830 words
1 June 2000
Theological Studies
369-370
Volume 61, Issue 2; ISSN: 0040-5639
English
Copyright (c) 2000 Bell & Howell Information and Learning
Company. All rights reserved. Copyright Theological Studies,
Inc. Jun 2000
By William Monter. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University,
1999. Pp. x + 324. $49.95.
The author of important works on the history of witch hunts
in early modern Europe, Monter here turns his attention to
another persecuted group, Protestants in 16th-century France.
The fruit of much primary research in judicial archives, this
book shows how secular courts punished "heresy"
as a crime of sedition or treason. The parlements were the
courts to which those condemned to death might appeal their
sentences; more often than not, such appeals were poor strategy,
as the parlements tended to be even more severe than lower
courts. Fearing religious innovation or novelty as a path
to public disorder, the parlements imposed death by burning
or strangulation, as well as whippings, the cutting out of
the tongue, and an array of lesser punishments. M. shows how
such savagery was also practiced on those labeled heretics
in Protestant England and in Catholic lands under Hapsburg
control.
In France, the coronation oath committed the king to keeping
his kingdom free of heretics. Highlighting the reigns of Francis
I (1515-1547) and Henry II (1547-1559), M. shows how royal
policy changed several times, ranging from a fairly mild approach
to an all-out war on heresy. A 1534 incident in which placards
were posted in Paris, attacking the Mass as idolatrous, prompted
a period of particularly harsh royal policy. The lay judges
who staffed the parlements were more consistent in their desire
to rid France of what they frequently called Lutherans, even
though other Reformers had far more influence in France than
the one in Wittenberg ever did. While the king made the laws
in Old Regime France, the parlements enjoyed great latitude
in implementing or enforcing them. Moreover, there were few
constraints or norms in sentencing; judicial discretion was
virtually unlimited. In trials for heresy, such discretion
rarely served the interest of defendants.
By the 1560s, as France moved into what would be some 30 years
of civil war, the Queen Regent, Catherine de Medici, adopted
a policy of limited toleration. Heretical beliefs were no
longer criminalized, but the preaching of heresy remained
so. Certain actions, especially iconoclasm, continued to be
subject to the death penalty. Indeed, Calvinist destruction
of images, stained glass, paintings, and statues, elicited
far more Catholic hostility than doctrinal challenges ever
did. Popular zeal in ridding France of Protestants, M. effectively
shows, was largely a reaction against iconoclasm. At times,
the crowds that gathered to watch the spectacle of an iconoclast's
public execution had to be prevented from lynching the condemned.
M. also examines adeptly the awkwardness of a Protestant cult
of martyrs. On the one hand, reformers such as Calvin lambasted
as idolatrous the Catholic devotion to the saints and their
relics. On the other hand, French Calvinists wanted to preserve
the memory of their martyrs. Jean Crespin's martyrology, first
published in 1554 in Geneva, solved the problem by focusing
not on physical relics nor even on the lives the martyrs had
lived, but on the last words of those that died for the Reformed
faith: "The power of Crespin's martyrs lies almost entirely
in their words, rather than in their heroic actions; not even
Michel Foucault can surpass Crespin's paeans to the value
and power of discourse" (180). However, executioners
were sometimes instructed to prevent even the possibility
of scaffold heresies by cutting out tongues beforehand.
Calvin appealed for his disciples in France either to flee
to Geneva, as he had done, or to remain steadfast in public
profession of the Reformed faith, no matter the consequences.
Nicodemism, or secretive religion masked by public conformity,
he condemned. M. offers important evidence that Calvin was
heard and followed on these points. There was a considerable
"brain drain" to Geneva, and many French Protestants
were willing to risk death for the practice of their faith.
M. is careful to caution against attributing promotion of
religious diversity, as we may know it today, to anyone in
16th-century Europe. Even as they were persecuted, French
Protestants were hardly advocates of a general religious toleration.
Calvin supported the execution of the Unitarian Michael Servetus;
Lutherans and Calvinists were at least as savage as Catholics
in the persecution of German Anabaptists. To the extent that
toleration was allowed French Protestants, it was a limited
toleration, dictated by political considerations, and revokable
at the king's will.
This book is valuable not only for historians of the French
Reformation, but also for the Catholic Church today as it
struggles to acknowledge past institutional sins. Some historians
cite the Inquisition as one of the Church's worst misdeeds.
At least in the French context, M.'s study suggests that the
State may have more to apologize for than the Church does.
THOMAS WORCESTER, S.J.
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass.
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