V, 2. GROWTH AND THE "WARS OF RELIGION"

5.2. Growth and "Wars of Religion"

WHEN ALL ASPECTS OF DAILY LIFE ARE SACRED,
 CONFLICT IS TOO

La capitale moderne naquit de cette crise même. Les centres de l'ancienne autorité, maintenant si faibles et si discrédités, n'osèrent pas résister  à l'établissement du pouvoir absolu du roi. Henri IV foula aux pieds les antiques privilèges des magistrats, du clergé et même des justices royales, afin d'acquérir dans Paris renaissant les principales fonctions : de la police, des cours criminelles, de la presse et même de l'éloquence sacrée.

-- Les Parisiens du XVIIe siècle de Oreste Ranum, ed. fr. 1973

 France's 16th-century civil wars are said due to "fanaticism," 
a truism that skips eight conflicts' tangible causes 
(in 1562-98) 

Sixteenth-century engraving, private collection

The best work on 16th century France, in my opinion, is still Jules Michelet's Renaissance an Reformation (1860's), for its sweep, story-telling and a subjectivity that is openly expressed.

Topics

• Growth breaks loose

• Renaissance kings devour surplus

• Detour: The French monarchy's lasting éclat 

• Catholics defend barriers to gain...

• ...Protestants shatter them

• Violence that has nothing to do with religion

• Why hate Protestants?

• In Spain, no civil war, no Protestants, no capitalists

 *      *      * 

Next,

Growth breaks loose 

GROWTH BREAKS LOOSE

EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
BRING EXPONENTIAL GROWTH
After about 1480

Capitalism* destabilizes the backwater that borders the Atlantic, 
with a speed that its relatively primitive states
cannot contain 

* Not a term of combat, but the only one that fits the search for profit with no other goal.

• Behind each vessel is a whole chain of production,

like that the trans-Saharan exchanges 
bring the African savannah 

The tempest by Bruegel the elder, 1568

Ship-building requires planks, sails, nails, ropes, tar, supplies, barrels like the one that has fallen into the sea. They in turn need warehouses, wagons, tools, donkeys, horses... 

Those chains of production have been developing since about the year 1000, especially around the Mediterranean. Growth in the rest of Europe has been gradual.

Now proximity to the Atlantic means that trade and production there expand with unprecedented speed.  

• Investing those revenues would be explosive,
so they are dispersed

Springtime by Pieter Breugel the younger, about 1600

In the background, a medieval castle.
  
The owner is either a noble by birth or a wealthy merchant who has bought land to join a caste he reveres.

Though nobility exempts him from taxes, his choice is not mercantile: economic growth has brought an inflation that diminishes the value of revenues from land, and he loses his status if he remains in trade.  

He can't invest his gains -- so he spends them.  

"The Renaissance:"

A cultural transformation that the new revenues bring.

  

*     *     *

Next, 

Renaissance kings devour surplus

DETOUR: THE FRENCH MONARCHY'S LASTING ÉCLAT

FRENCH CULTURE'S FIRST EMISSARY
WAS YOUNG ANNE BOLEYN

 She had grown up in the court of François I
where her father was England's ambassador to France,
and stood out by her French fashions
when she returned to the rustic English court
(in 1522) 

Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein the Younger

 Scouts de France, source not named

Ladies in waiting, background to royalty  

Skinny Anne was the opposite of the voluptuous beauties that were admired then as now, but she had absorbed the sophistication, allure and flirtatious repartie of Francois's court. Brilliant and cultivated Henry VIII composed motets in Latin to sing with her...

Their love letters are in French. 

-- An unconventional queen by Dominique Muller, 1996 (in French):

Having the main characters speak for themselves

 -- Anne, her awful father, Henry -- 

makes this story still more gripping. 

 • The aura now

 ° A servant's daughter (Audrey Hepburn)

 returns to Connecticut from Paris

Sabrina by Billy Wilder, 1954

 ° "Christine Lagarde's Power Dressing" 

Forbes, 2011

° The Denver Kiwanis club

makes a French dinner a raffle prize

French-flag cupcakes

John Kelly

The competition was for a dinner of French cuisine at the home of member who had learned French, come regularly to Paris and followed classes in French cooking. 

French nobles have admired Americans since Benjamin Franklin,
and democratic Americans admire an "art de vivre"
that harks back to the court:
Opposites attract.

*     *     *

Next,
Catholics defend barriers to gain...

CATHOLICS DEFEND BARRIERS TO GAIN...

 "MONEY, THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL..." 

  The Church helps kings dominate merchants
and make revenues circulate

Internet

  A queen with a halo distributes alms.

• Other ways in which it limits gain:

° Belief in Purgatory 
leads to financing masses for the dead
and leaving one's resources to the Church.

° Forbidding lending at interest 
reinforces royal economic control.

Bypassing the rule is possible but difficult. For major projects, one must turn to kings, as Columbus and Magellan turn to Spain's Ferdinand and Isabella. 
.

• Building and decorating sanctuaries 

disperses huge sums: 

Take the superb 16th-century churches
of the trade-route junction of Troyes

Photos by Claude Abron

Contesting the Church 
means contesting deeply rooted barriers to gain.

 *     *     *

Next,
...Protestants shatter them

...PROTESTANTS SHATTER THEM

ARTISANS, SHOPKEEPERS, ENTREPRENEURS 
-- THAT IS, EMERGING CAPITALISTS --
MAKE PROTESTANTISM A MASS MOVEMENT
IN FRANCE

Nobles obtain most of the attention.
But their faith is linked to clan rivalries,
and a major massacre decapitates their movement.
(In 1572)

 • A middle-class faith

° A list of victims of that calamity shows that they were
"shoemakers, bookbinders, hatmakers, weavers,
pin-makers, armor-makers, barrelmakers,
watchmakers, goldsmiths, furniture makers,
gilders, button-makers, hardware makers etc."

-- The 16th century by Jules Michelet, 1833
Modern historians have not taken up that fundamental remark
as far as I know.

° Training, habits and self-interest

 predispose them to accept the new faith, 
in a way that is "sincere and based on calculation."

-- Balzac, The Calvinist martyr

Moral and intellectual rigor, the Church's corruption, political factors, regional traditions of heresy, local issues and pastors' personal impact let Protestantism cross class lines, but businesspeople were at its core.

° By the middle of the 17th century,

Protestants in France control
 the production of most textiles
-- which is fundamental --

of buttons, ribbons, gold and silver lace and other luxuries

 and of metal objects, including weapons and tools.  

-- God's enraged ("Les enragés de Dieu") by Georges Blond, 1970, p. 286  

• At the heart of Protestant doctrine: 

Salvation is one's personal responsibility.

That belief leads to a serious view of life
and to the "Protestant ethic"

of honesty, work and austerity 

American Gothic by Grant Wood, 1930, Art Institute of Chicago

Sixteenth-century French Protestants would have appreciated this couple.

° Those values help launch businesses,

and material success becomes a sign of salvation. 

° It follows that poverty 

is due to laziness and hedonism,

 and a sign of damnation

These famous studies explore the connection. Calvin himself disavowed that use of his doctrine: "The rich," he said, "are servants of the poor." 

• Austerity encourages plowing gains

back into business. 

That favors...   

 ° Arts of costless grandeur 

Most Protestant churches are visually insignificant and services usually skip elaborate ceremonial. Exceptions come from the environment (the minimalist wooden churches of North America) or history (Henry VIII adapts the Catholic ritual when he splits with the Pope).

Majesty appears in other ways: in England the King James Bible and the epic poetry of John Milton; in France, psaulms by which ordinary people praise God directly so powerfully that Catherine de Medici and Charles IX attend services to listen.

No money is spent.

 ° It shows superiority.
Wearing dark clothes without ornamentation
and avoiding the theater, taverns and community fetes 
states that one belongs to God's righteous, separate elect.

Nobles begin to glorify superhuman figures and valor 
at exactly the same time. 

*     *     *

Next,
Violence that has nothing to do with religion

VIOLENCE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION

GLORIFYING BRUTALITY
 PRECEDES THOSE WARS

Duels and the glorification of valor
appear decades before they break out 

• Twelve hundred young noblemen fight for fun,
with dead and wounded.

( in 1521)

-- Francis I by R. Knecht, 1994 (in French)

• Sadistic art appears then too:

Medieval painting can be violent...

Martyrdom of Saint Denis by Henri Bellechose, toward 1400, Louvre

...but it does not linger
over details like this  

 Ceramic (detail),  Renaissance Museum  / Claude Abron

Until about the year 1000 European economies are stable. The first mass movements are the Crusades, which coincide with the loss of land, social ties and ancestral beliefs that come with growth.

-- The pursuit of the millenium by Norman Cohn, 1957,

a classic

• But by the 16th century violence fascinates:
At the Renaissance Museum the theme is constant

-- Though it is not present in the choice of works presented on the web.

Claude Abron

•  A massacre of Protestants is this painting's title,
but the real subject is horror 

The massacres of the triumvirs by Antoine Caron, 1566, Louvre

Glorifying the killers by Roman dress makes the glacial scene still more nightmarish.  

The wars result from a violence
that religion justifies and worsens,
but does not cause.  

*     *     * 

Next: 

Why hate Protestants?

WHY HATE PROTESTANTS?

THE SAINT BARTHOLEMEW'S DAY MASSACRE
SETS OFF A "SEASON" *
 THAT SPREADS TO MOST FRENCH TOWNS

* Jules Michelet

It starts in Paris on the night of August 23, 1572 
and lasts three months 

• Queen Catherine de Medici triggers it
by trying to play off noble clans

 The Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre by François Dubois, 1572, Lausanne Museum

Catherine de Medici is the figure in black on the upper left.

Sixteenth-century engraving

She tries to have the Protestant leader shot so as to blame the noble Catholic clan and trigger Protestant revenge, but he is only wounded.

Fearing that revenge, the Catholic nobles attack the house where the wounded man is recovering, kill him and throw his body out of the window.

Town authorities are supposed have local militia keep order. When tolling church bells tell them that their role has begun, those militia join the underclass in killing the Protestant population.

-- The massacre of the Saint-Barthélemy by Philippe Erlanger, 1960, the classic modern account (in French)

.
• Both sides commit atrocities,
 historians say

 ° That statement is true for the countryside
and for towns when soldiers enter them, 
because the armies attract the same kind of men
    

"Soldiers' feast" (detail), tapestry, Renaissance museum, museum publication

Soldiers are mercenaries or pillagers, men cut off from the land and its rules. Nobles are so used to violence that they wear coats of mail under their doublets, even at the Louvre. 

-- Louvre: letter of Henri IV, 1572

° But when massacres are due to city populations
victims are mainly Protestant. 
Blood lust, theft and score-settling strike Catholics too,
but less often and later.

•  Why should "fanatics" suddenly

attack peaceful craftspeople and shopkeepers?

° Like all minorities they stick together
(take the "old school tie")
and insist on being outsiders,
 deliberately and by a faith that elminates the saints

Saints are so much part of daily life that for many Catholics, their saint's day is more important than their birthday. Days of the year ("Saint Valentine's Day") and streets ("rue Saint-Denis," X) are named after them. 

Protestants respect the saints, but pay them no further due.

° Protestant craftsmen

often work outside the guilds, 

charging lower prices

--  Michelet.

Historians have not noticed that statement,
to my knowledge.

Charité de Giverville (Normandy), 1865, photographer not named

Folk art shows the closeness of guild leaders and church: the massacres could not have reached such dimensions without those leaders' consent.

° Suppressing the Church

means supressing alms, hospitals and schools:

In England,

destroying the monasteries and convents
sends monks, nuns and lepers into the streets to beg

Internet

Sixteenth-century woodcut

Chasing a leper in London

Abolishing religious holidays
adds 50 more workdays each year:
Imagine apprentices' and employees' reactions 
when "heretic" patrons impose that change

-- Protestant stores and workshops stay open even on Christmas:
History of Protestants from the Reform to the Revolution (in French),

dir. Philippe Wolff, 2001, without comment.

In short,
Protestants humiliate the vulnerable
 by claiming themselves superior 
and defy practices that protect them.

Sixteenth-century engraving (detail), private collection

*     *     *

Next,

In Spain, no Protestants, no civil war, no capitalists