Jonathan Wright (101810420)

HIST 669 Early Modern Cities (Dr Steen)

09 September 2019

The rise of urban French Protestantism before the Wars of Religion

This paper will examine societal differences across French Protestantism and

distinctly section them into the noble elite, Calvinist intellectuals and urban laymen. These

groups built up the bulk of Protestant congregations across France and although the nobility,

and Genevan-based Calvin, often provided the greatest weight in authorization, the literate

urbanite communities, particularly in Paris, dictated social change and made it a religion

independent of external factors. Due to the incomplete records of literacy rates made more

difficult through the oral spreading of Protestantism, it is more productive to consider who

Protestantism was for by studying those who actively placed themselves as a part of it in

church attendance. While nobles mostly worked individually within their own networks and

Calvinists were unsuccessful in orchestrating a Genevan Protestantism, the character of the

Reformation in France emerged from within the cities. French Protestantism greatly

influenced urban areas from Paris to Geneva and, though the nobility became the leaders of

the Protestant forces during the Wars, these cities became strongholds for the Protestants

during the war.

How Protestantism was consolidated and who by emerges as the most perceptive way

of judging the societal make up and success of the movement. Though the wars significantly

decreased the demographic of who was Protestant, the massacres and wars themselves merit

another study and it is the societal disposition at the start of the wars that is analyzed here.

The clear difference between cultural elites and social elites provides the foundation to what

influence the upper levels of society had over Protestantism in the cities through the examples

1
set by noblewomen and Louis prince de Condé. At its heart, the societal differences across

French cities provide an insight into how early modern France sustained a medieval view of

class where nobles ruled, and peasants remained unacquainted with religious change as

France was not yet fully bonded to the integrated notion of nationalism. As explored later in

the analysis of urbanite Protestant authority, the breakdown of who was Protestant points to

the limited numbers of nobles, however their role in inspiring the remaining Reformed is

undeniable.

To ascertain who Protestantism was for, it is first crucial to understand the

complexities and pressures that impacted the individual nobles as the social elites who

became the most public figureheads of the Protestant movement. The role of Condé as a

noble representative of the Protestant cause was heightened during negotiations of peace after

the wars. A clear early example of this at the Edict of Amboise, 1563, revealed the personal

intentions of the Protestant nobility for placing themselves first as Condé negotiated for

barons to practice Protestantism freely “in the houses where they live” 1. This would restrict

Protestant churches from meeting within Parisian walls and other French cities and rather

than reveal a desire to increase Protestant nobility, Condé’s compromise not only indicates

the influential Protestant numbers in the cities, but also the threat that Catholic negotiators

placed on urban Protestants. The crown’s attempt to pacify Condé is evident from a later

section describing how “it pleases us that our cousin the prince of Condé remain[sic]

discharged” as personal ties by Condé sold out the wider Protestant cause2. Kingdon provided

a significant contribution to the orthodox historiographical view that French Protestants drew

on Calvin’s Geneva for inspiration, but despite this overarching view, he admits that Condé’s

successful concessions were not desired by French ministers at the negotiations 3. Though
1
‘Edict of Amboise, 1563’, in ed. and trans. David Potter, The French Wars of Religion (London: St. Martin's
Press, 1997), p. 82.
2
Ibid. p. 83.
3
Robert Kingdon, Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564-1572: A
Contribution to the History of Congregationalism, Presbyterianism and Calvinist Resistance Theory (Geneva:

2
unmentioned by Kingdon, the notion of Condé selling out the cause is evident from the

revisionist view of Barker incorporating Chandieu’s role on the theological side of the

Protestant divide at Amboise. Religious aims of the Calvinists were to not concede popular

urban worship, but they were overruled by the nobles. 4 Her view shifts the orthodox view of

Genevan supremacy in French Protestantism and while Condé’s solely noble endorsement

would not last as city synods and Protestant assemblies utilized urban opinions into actions,

this initial action by Condé did have important ramifications for increasing the role of the

nobility in dictating Protestant affairs.

While Protestants remained predominantly male, it is clear through the writings of

Haton and Calvin that both religious sides witnessed the strong unique and cultural influence

of elite noblewomen in the Protestant movement beyond city walls. The most documented

example of this comes after the arrests at Rue de Saint-Jacques in 1557 where among those

arrested were noblewomen after being discovered having a private meeting. Claude Haton, a

priest and social commentator, describes how abhorrent sexual activities occurred within the

meetings of individuals who in this case included women “beguiled by that Lutheran

religion”5. This condemnation and diminishing of Protestants through sexual actions, despite

countering Calvinist practices, was a common contemporary notion tied to the fear of their

ability to read and discuss scripture in private. This anti-heretical account reveals the unique

status of noblewomen in gender and class. While Haton clearly states that shocked arresting

officers let all the high-ranked “ladies” leave, he does not mention the burnings which

followed and instead describes the lack of punishment of those men who were captured 6. As

Haton was writing about his memories before 1582, this omission was influenced by his

Librairie Droz, 1967), p. 149.

4
Sara Barker, Protestantism, Poetry and Protest: The Vernacular Writings of Antoine de Chandieu (London:
Ashgate, 2009), p. 108.
5
Claude Haton, ‘Clandestine Protestant’ in Barbara Diefendorf, The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: A Brief
History with Documents (Bedford: St Martin’s Press, 2008), p. 51.
6
Ibid., pp. 52-53.

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desire to promote the origins of Protestantism as coaxing the most noble who became

“whores and sluts” at a time when Protestantism had been an established enemy of the

Catholics in the wars for two decades.7 However, Haton’s exposure of uncivilized Protestant

noblewomen was perhaps unsurprising and gives greater weight to Davies’ astute analysis

indicating how Protestantism was seen as being for the culturally elites. She indicated how

incidents involving noblewomen were too distinguished to avoid being recorded as

Protestants and this raised the profile of clandestine activities among the nobility.8

Their status was crucial to their publicity and Calvin’s letter after the arrests gives

greater weight to the notion that the noblewomen were representatives of an individual group

of noble Protestants defying Catholic aggression. He calls on scripture to determine that

women are “of equal worth” as men and encourages the women not to recant their faith 9.

Calvin here displays his ulterior motive for using noble Protestants rurally to further his cause

as the timing of the letter falls during the successfully expansionist missionary mission in the

1550s where Calvin was seeking to consecrate French Protestantism. However, even more

significantly he calls for them to draw on the courage given to them by God to increase the

utility of their deaths.10 Though not explicitly mentioned, the context of their arrest for heresy

resulting in execution is important as Calvin describes them as noble and “perishable” in an

attempt to utilize their position to provide individual examples to the rest of Protestantism 11.

To die as Jesus did exposes how this letter would appear to indicate how noblewomen were

acting as an individual example to others, and pertinently, Roelker persuasively highlights the

crucial cultural role of the high-ranking noblewomen in the Protestant movement. She

7
Ibid., p. 51.
8
Joan Davies, ‘Persecution and Protestantism: Toulouse, 1562-1575’, in The Historical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1
(1979), (pp. 31-51) p. 48.
9
Jean Calvin, ‘To the Women Detained in Prison at Paris’ in trans. David Constable, Letter of John Calvin, vol.
iii (Edinburgh: T. Constable, 1858), [Accessed on 20/08/2019], <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?
id=yale.39002013378923;view=1up;seq=7>, p. 364.
10
Ibid., p. 365.
11
Ibid., p. 366.

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indicates that noblewomen formed “their own elite group” in France as their rank allowed

them to become individual leaders and letters from 1557 support this theory 12. A report to the

Swiss Delegation concerning the arrests in 1557 describes the martyrdom of women “truly

noble of birth and spirit” who would not recant after being arrested and their culturally elite

status raised the profile of Protestantism as being primarily for the literate nobility 13. Both

Protestant and Catholic accounts wanted to implement noblewomen, and this reveals their

unique place in the Protestant community as forming their own powerful elite group.

Noble networks of patronage provide a false indication of how Protestantism was

spread across France in the mid-sixteenth century as the archaic ties between the socially elite

nobility and the king was revealed to be an illusion. Despite this, the interconnectivity of

patronage offered reciprocity between noble and their subjects was important in establishing

Protestant networks of support, countering the view that Protestantism was independently

dispersed across French cities. Analyzing the rural areas of noble hegemony, patronage

networks demanded loyalty and there was an inherent desire to return of the nobility to align

with royal Catholicism due to increasing divisions in religious beliefs 14. Du Tillet, secretary

and greffier civil (civil clerk) of the Parlement in Paris, exemplified the continued medieval

societal systems in place in early modern France and this aspiration emanated from the

movement of a proportion of the rural nobility towards Protestantism. However, his desperate

plea is important as it was published directly after the end of the second war and the Edict of

Longjumeau (1568) which allowed for greater noble freedom such as in the Edict of

Amboise.

12
Nancy Roelker, ‘The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen in the Sixteenth Century’, in The Journal
of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 2, No. 4, (1972), (pp. 391-418), p. 405.
13
‘Report to the Swiss delegation concerning the affair of the Rue Saint-Jacques’, in Barbara Diefendorf, The
St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford: St Martin’s Press, 2008), pp. 55-
56.
14
Jean du Tillet, ‘The nobility’s obligation to serve the King’ in ed. and trans. David Potter, The French Wars of
Religion (London: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 18-20.

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 Just as nobles had patronage networks, Calvin instigated the growing Genevan links

to France through missionaries and his own personal writings, but he focused on highlighting

how French Protestantism was for all layers of society. Through Genevan missionaries

moving into France to preach, they could attempt to convert communities, and this is evident

in Queen Regent Catherine de Medici’s royal pardon in 1559 which highlighted how the

toxic heresy was from “preachers coming from Geneva, mostly common people with no

knowledge of letters”15. This indicates that not only was Protestantism at this time viewed as

Genevan-led, but also that the missionaries were less educated and more accustomed to

working with commoners. This would have been a common conception pushed by the crown

at this time to try and dissuade nobles and urbanites that Protestantism was a religion for

more educated classes. However, the pardon does indicate that part of the appeal of the

preachers was their ability to spread the word of Protestantism in the vernacular accessibly

for the less educated in comparison to Latin Catholicism. As shown earlier, Kingdon remains

one of greatest exponents of Genevan-dictated Protestantism in France and though he focuses

on Calvin’s desire for elite, noble Protestants, he also exposes the presence of “lower-class”

Protestant groups in France after the wars begun16. His orthodox view of how Calvin led the

reform in France has been scrutinized by scholarship such as Barker and Monter, but his

focus on Calvin does bring up how Genevan Protestantism did appeal to many.

However, this historiographical move away from Kingdon was most obvious in

Barker’s testament of Chandieu’s role in promoting a different approach for French

Protestants. Though Calvin and Chandieu overlapped in Geneva, Chandieu’s differing

opinions on wanting resistance created divisions within the Calvinist leadership in France,

limiting Geneva’s impact on the existing French Protestants. There was an “independence of

15
Catherine de Medici, ‘Edict du Roy, contenant la grace et pardon pour ceux qui par cy devant ont mal senty de
la Foy’ in E. William Monter, Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-century Parlements
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 175.
16
Kingdon, p. 18.

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French tradition” which contributed significantly to the French Protestant’s discrepancies

with Calvinism, and utilizing the vernacular successfully increased Chandieu’s role across

France in comparison to the more Latinized and elitist Calvin 17. Indeed, it was the spreading

of a French Protestantism focused on preaching the vernacular for the masses which also

contributed to the slow growth of nationalism in this period. While the highest intellect

attacked Catholicism with Latin, Chandieu indirectly unified the literate Protestants of France

by writing mostly in his native language 18. Taking this further, it is this use of the vernacular

that, while not totally limiting the social strata as the illiterate could be read to, appealed more

to the urban dwellers who would have appreciated this effort to move away from Latin

elitism. Chandieu’s own position originally descended from a noble upbringing is analogous

to how French Protestants targeted by the elites but did not exclusively include the elites.

In considering how far Calvin’s Protestantism in France appealed to all, it is necessary

to consider the lower end of the social strata, the peasantry. They played a crucial, albeit

limited, role in exemplifying how it was not just nobility or the urban population who utilized

Genevan Protestantism. The subtly religious context surrounding their uprisings in southern

France saw how the limited Calvinist peasantry were inspired by an anger against taxes as

can be seen in Blaise de Monluc’s Commentaries which highlights peasant communities

being “publicly preached” at to convert and not pay the king’s tithes 19. The importance of

taxes recurring in this account indicates how social defiance was advocated by Genevan

missionaries as a beginning to their religious conversion away from Catholicism that was

generally rife among the French peasantry. However, Monluc’s position as Marshall of

France and royalist challenges this perception as blaming Protestantism, and not the contents

17
Barker, p. 85.
18
Barker, p. 283.
19
Blaise de Monluc, The Commentaries of Blaise de Monluc, ed. Ian Roy, (London: Longmans, 1971), p. 209

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of tithes levied by the king, reveals his prejudiced view of the peasantry being susceptible to

Genevan beliefs.

Stronger than socially elitist noble Protestants and even Calvinist French

Protestantism, was the emergingly literate and affluent urban class in cities across France

who dictated the success of the religion. In analyzing the impact of Protestantism on the

French population, the town of La Rochelle becomes an important case study of how

Protestantism became an urban religion. A cross-sectional analysis of the congregational

composition in La Rochelle reveals that Protestantism was taken up most greatly by artisans

and merchants regardless of their role in the town. 20 That it transcended occupational

boundaries indicates the mass appeal of Protestantism across other French urban populations

and how it resonated within individuals as a way of life. This initial evaluation of marriage

and baptismal registers is taken further by Robbins who revises Meyer’s book by delving into

the mentalities of middle-ranking merchants in their opposition against Catholicism 21.

Although acting as a united front for Protestantism in the town, their individual connection to

the religion was unique. Indeed, Robbins successfully argues that their religion offered an

escape from any elitist form of control due to their merits as an urban populace and their

embracing of a functional Protestantism22.

Though many populations of cities with Protestants were often made up primarily by

manufacturers, each acted uniquely and Manceau records from Le Mans that reveal how a

local particularism allowed the urban community to forge their own identity. Their focus on

congregationalism was dictated by the literate urban population in Le Mans independently of

Geneva23. While this view is limited by the weaker position of Le Mans surrounded by a

20
Judith Meyer, Reformation in La Rochelle (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996), p. 105.
21
Kevin Robbins, City on the Ocean Sea: La Rochelle, 1530-1650: Urban Society, Religion, and Politics on the
French Atlantic Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 1997), p. 114.
22
Ibid., p. 152.
23
Phillip Conner, Huguenot Identities During the Wars of Religion: The Churches of Le Mans and Montauban
Compared, in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 54, No. 1, (2003), (pp.23-39), p. 27.

8
largely Catholic north of France, Conner’s analysis of the Montauban urban churches in the

south identifies how their unique customs and heritage allowed for Protestantism to succeed

in towns24. The clear differences between Protestant-leaning towns was partly because they

desired autonomy from Parisian royal control. Incorporating Montauban reveals the urban

Protestant arc that swung from La Rochelle to Montpellier, but this notion is inept at

revealing the individualistic priorities that each down had.

Having assessed the integral case studies of cities representing the differing

Protestantism and finding artisans to be large players in the urban Protestant growth in

France, other individuals should also be considered. The literate urbanites provide the clearest

examples of who Protestantism was for. Firstly, as an urban religion, the minority status of

Protestantism in most cases was due to urban individuals being restricted from climbing the

social hierarchy. The contemporary historian Lancelot la Popeliniere revealed that artisans

and others actively attempted to change their underprivileged status through the attraction of

Protestantism25. As a French Protestant, he outlines how communities in cities before

Calvinism would seek change before overlapping with nobles, decreasing the elite role in an

individual’s Protestantism. In seeking to answer who was Protestant, Joan Davies links the

artisanal popularity of Protestantism to noble property owners moving away from a

religiously active urban population26. However, she also significantly recognized how it was

the upper-class who wrote the records of the time, an evaded notion in the historiography of

the wars, which raises the notion that greater clandestine urban Protestantism did occur than

archives indicate. This reveals that their number lay higher than first thought above the

Catholic peasantry and the noble elites.

24
Ibid., p. 37.
25
George Wylie Sypher, ‘La Popeliniere's Histoire De France: A Case of Historical Objectivity and Religious
Censorship’, in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1963), (pp. 41-54), p. 52.
26
Davies, p. 37.

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 In conclusion, there was an individualistic approach to Protestantism that surrounded

each French citizen’s exposure to the new religion, and it was the urbanite community who

incorporated it most fundamentally into their lives. At a time when France adhered to the

global trend of a rural majority population, Protestantism was predominantly urban. While

the nobility acted for their own interests and Calvin successfully instigated a reform in the

1550s that would be changed by cities for their own local needs, this left the urban literate to

claim Protestantism as their own. La Rochelle’s reference in the Edict of Amboise indicate

the critical status of cities independent of royal control in cementing Protestantism’s

individual and unique attraction across France. While it must be seen that not every city was

full of Protestant workers, in a society where Protestantism was already a large minority, the

city most strongly represented who Protestantism spoke to.

The nobility most often acted for their own personal interests of power during the

wars and this meant that the networks themselves are not representative of Protestantism

being a religion for the elites. Returning to Condé, his noble-centric actions were for his own

purposes as his patronage circle did not follow him despite the reciprocity which patronage

required. Preaching Calvinism allowed Protestantism to attempt to reach even the less literate

populations in France and this indicates how it was a religion that Calvin aspired could be for

everyone, even if in practice they were creating their own individual French character. Urban

and not noble networks dominated the Protestant faith as, from La Rochelle to Montpellier,

communities established their Protestant faith and remained strong despite their minority

status numerically. It was the attraction of Protestantism to all social classes that made it a

force strong enough to launch the religious wars in 1562, but the emerging urban artisanal

class crafted French Protestantism most influentially. French populations existed before

Calvinist authorization and therefore how it was a later mediator of existing Protestant

communities and not a creative power. Calvinism did not change the basic structure of

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society in France and only approved already existing communities. Calvin himself as a leader

provided a strong influence through his letters to the French population. There was a clear

difference emerging within Protestantism as well as France that the increasingly powerful

artisanal urbanites were more integral to the sustained success of Protestantism than the self-

interested social elites.

Bibliography

Primary

Calvin, Jean, ‘To the Women Detained in Prison at Paris’ in trans. David Constable, Letter of John

Calvin, vol. iii (Edinburgh: T. Constable, 1858), [Accessed on 20/08/2019]

<https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002013378923;view=1up;seq=7>

de Medici, Catherine, ‘Edict du Roy, contenant la grace et pardon pour ceux qui par cy devant ont mal

senty de la Foy’ in E. William Monter, Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-

century Parlements (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)

de Monluc, Blaise, The Commentaries of Blaise de Monluc, ed. Ian Roy, (London: Longmans, 1971)

11
du Tillet, Jean, ‘The nobility’s obligation to serve the King’ in ed. and trans. David Potter, The

French Wars of Religion (London: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 18-20

‘Edict of Amboise, 1563’, in ed. and trans. David Potter, The French Wars of Religion (London: St.

Martin's Press, 1997)

Haton, Claude, ‘Clandestine Protestant’ in Barbara Diefendorf, The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre:

A Brief History with Documents (Bedford: St Martin’s Press, 2008)

‘Report to the Swiss delegation concerning the affair of the Rue Saint-Jacques’, in Barbara

Diefendorf, The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford: St

Martin’s Press, 2008)

Secondary

Barker, Sara, Protestantism, Poetry and Protest: The Vernacular Writings of Antoine de Chandieu

(London: Ashgate, 2009)

Conner, Phillip, ‘Huguenot Identities During the Wars of Religion: The Churches of Le Mans and

Montauban Compared’ in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 54, No. 1, (2003), pp.23-39

Davies, Joan, Persecution and Protestantism: Toulouse, 1562-1575, The Historical Journal, Vol. 22,

No. 1 (1979), pp. 31-51

Kingdon, Robert, Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564-1572: A

12
Contribution to the History of Congregationalism, Presbyterianism and Calvinist Resistance Theory

(Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1967)

Meyer, Judith, Reformation in La Rochelle (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1996)

Robbins, Kevin, City on the Ocean Sea: La Rochelle, 1530-1650: Urban Society, Religion, and

Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier (Leiden: Brill, 1997)

Roelker, Nancy, ‘The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen in the Sixteenth Century’, in The

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 2, No. 4, (1972), pp. 391-418

Sypher, George Wylie, ‘La Popeliniere's Histoire De France: A Case of Historical Objectivity and

Religious Censorship’, in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1963), pp. 41-54

13