Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Fresh analysis of the political thought of the French Holy League, active during the religious wars, within its intellectual context.

Sophie Nicholls (Author)

9781108840781, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 May 2021

340 pages
15 x 23 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'This book considers political thought in a way that is both fully embodied (paying attention to argumentation and the ways in which the different parties confront each other) and original (thanks to a selection of little-known texts and a specific way of questioning them), offering us a look into the heart of the debate that ran through sixteenth-century France. Focusing on a well-defined subject (the political thought of the League) at the heart of a long and rich history (from medieval scholasticism to the seventeenth-century dévots), it proves to be extremely stimulating for anyone studying the cultural history of the French Wars of Religion.' Alexandre Goderniaux, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme

Through its close, critical reading of the political treatises and polemical literature produced in France in the sixteenth century, this book offers a valuable new contribution to the intellectual history of the Early Modern era. Sophie Nicholls analyses the political thought of the theologians and jurists in the Holy League as they pursued their crusade against heresy in the French kingdom, during the wars of religion (1562-1629). Contemporaries portrayed the Leaguers as rebellious anarchists, who harboured dangerously democratic ideas. In contrast, Nicholls demonstrates that the intellectuals in the movement were devoted royalists, who had more in common with their moderate counterparts, the 'politiques'. In paying close attention to the conceptual language of politics in this era, this book shows how jurists and theologians in the League presented visions of sovereignty that subtly replenished medieval ideas of kingship and priesthood, and endeavoured to replace them with a new synthesis of intellectual tradition and political power. In a period when 'the state' was still emerging as an idea, analysing League thought in the context of Jesuit and Second Scholastic sources positions the Leaguers in relation to innovative attempts in European Catholic circles to re-think the nature of belonging to a political community.

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Contextualising the League
2. The politique Leaguer
3. Frank and Free
4. The Church 'in' the Commonwealth
5. 'Brutish Thunderbolts': Papal Power and the League
6. Scholasticism in League Political Thought
7. Jean Bodin and the League
8. Amor Patriae
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Religious freedom / freedom of worship [JPVH4], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]