Religious Wars

22 Pages 5385 Words

e is how they ought to be, and new ideas would lead to anarchy and destruction. No one wanted to admit to being an “innovator.” The Renaissance thought of itself as rediscovering a purer, earlier time and the Reformation needed to feel that it was not new, but just a “return” to the simple, true religion of the beginnings of Christianity.
These fears of innovation certainly seemed justified when Henry the Second died suddenly in 1559, leaving an enormous power vacuum at the heart of social authority in France. The monarchy had never been completely absolute and had always ruled in an often-uneasy relationship with the nobility. The nobles’ sense of their own rights as a class, and the ambitions of some of the more talented, was always there to threaten the hegemony of the crown.
When the vacuum appeared, the House of Guise moved in. Francois the Second, although only fifteen, was married to Mary Queen of Scots, a niece of Duc de Guise. The Guise was a cadet branch of the house of Lorraine that was raised to the peerage by Francois the First. They were ambitious and had already produced at least two generations of exceptional leaders. During Francois the Second’s brief reign, Guise power was absolute.
This greatly threatened the House of Montmorency, an ancient line that had enjoyed great political prominence under Henri the Second, as well as the Bourbons, who as the first princes of the blood had the rights of tutorship over a minor king. Francois was not officially a minor,
which was fourteen, but he was young and sickly and no one expected much from him.
These dynastic tensions interweave with the religious and social ones. The Bourbon princes were protestant, and although the Constable de Montmorency was Catholic, his nephews, and the Chatillon brothers were Protestants. The Guise identified themselves strongly as defenders of the catholic faith and formed an alliance with Montmorency and ...