VIOLENCE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION

GLORIFYING BRUTALITY PRECEDES THOSE WARS

Duels, the ideology of valor and sadistic art appear decades before the wars of religion. 

• Medieval painting can be violent...

     Martyrdom of Saint Denis (detail) by Henri Bellechose, toward 1400 /  zoom

• But it does not linger over details like this: 

Claude Abron

• At the Louvre a three-panel painting glorifies killers in Roman dress...

 

The Massacres of the Triumvirs by Antoine Caron, 1566 / zoom 

 

• And at the Renaissance Museum combat that has nothing to do with the theme is frequently inserted:

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

Claude Abron

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• Nobles are so used to violence that they wear coats of mail under their doublets, even at the Louvre. 

-- Letter of Henri IV, 1572

# # #

Violence honors the king:

• The six-day tournament to celebrate the birth of a Dauphin (Crown Prince) in 1518 leads to a chronicler's casual remark of "many killed and wounded..."

-- François Ier by Emmanuel Bourassin, 1997, p.75.

• And in the annual human sacrifice of mid-19th-century Dahomey the king dances, then throws cowries...

All removed their ornaments and girt their loins; it is a point of  honor to fight for the royal bakhshish, and nob and snob join in the melee. No notice is taken if a man be killed or maimed in the affair; he has fallen honorably for his sovereign. Some lose eyes or noses [...] I have seen a hand through which teeth met.

   -- Burton, 224

The Wars of Religion justify and worsen violence,

which a changed economy had already made endemic.

Stronger kingship for a time controlled it.

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Why hate Protestants?