The course of the French Wars of Religion, commonly portrayed as a series of civil wars, was profoundly shaped by foreign actors. Many German Protestants in particular felt compelled to intervene. In Germany and the French Wars of Religion, 1560-1572 Jonas van Tol examines how Protestant German audiences understood the conflict in France and why they deemed intervention necessary. He demonstrates that conflicting stories about the violence in France fused with local religious debates and news from across Europe leading to a surprising range of interpretations of the nature of the French Wars of Religion. As a consequence, German Lutherans found themselves on opposing sides on the battlefields of France.

Through translations of documents concerning communal religious violence, political confrontation and war, this book aims to provide the means to study the French Wars of Religion through contemporary sources. Documents include: legislative acts of the period from the edicts concerning religion and toleration in 1560-62 to the 1590s; sources on types of religious violence during the early years of the wars; an examination of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew; and the breakdown in the 1580s and its restoration by Henry IV.

Through translations of documents concerning communal religious violence, political confrontation and war, this book aims to provide the means to study the French Wars of Religion through contemporary sources. Documents include: legislative acts of the period from the edicts concerning religion and toleration in 1560-62 to the 1590s; sources on types of religious violence during the early years of the wars; an examination of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew; and the breakdown in the 1580s and its restoration by Henry IV.

A new look at the French wars of religion, designed for undergraduate students and general readers.

The Wars of Religion embroiled France in decades of faction, violence, and peacemaking in the late sixteenth century. When historians interpret these events they inevitably depend on sources of information gathered by contemporaries, none more valuable than the diaries and collection of Pierre de L'Estoile (1546-1611), who lived through the civil wars in Paris and shaped how they have been remembered ever since. Taking him out of the footnotes, and demonstrating his significance in the culture of the late Renaissance, this is the first life of L'Estoile in any language. It examines how he negotiated and commemorated the conflicts that divided France as he assembled an extraordinary collection of the relics of the troubles, a collection that he called "the storehouse of my curiosities." The story of his life and times is the history of the civil wars in the making. Focusing on a crucial individual for understanding Reformation Europe, this study challenges historians' assumptions about the widespread impact of confessional conflict in the sixteenth century. L'Estoile's prudent, non-confessional responses to the events he lived through and recorded were common among his milieu of Gallican Catholics. His life-writing and engagement with contemporary news, books, and pictures reveals how individuals used different genres and media to destabilize rather than fix confessional identities. Bringing together the great variety of topics in society and culture that attracted L'Estoile's curiosity, this volume rethinks his world in the Wars of Religion.

This book is the first to explore the rich festival culture of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France as a tool for diplomacy. Bram van Leuveren examines how the late Valois and early Bourbon rulers of the kingdom made conscious use of festivals to advance their diplomatic interests in a war-torn Europe and how diplomatic stakeholders from across the continent participated in and responded to the theatrical and ceremonial events that featured at these festivals. Analysing a large body of multilingual eyewitness and commemorative accounts, as well as visual and material objects, Van Leuveren argues that French festival culture operated as a contested site where the diplomatic concerns of stakeholders from various national, religious, and social backgrounds fought for recognition.

Au temps des guerres de religion de nombreux pasteurs formes a Geneve prirent part aux conflits et tenterent d'amener la Fille ainee de l'Eglise a la foi reformee. Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France (1555-1563) met en evidence le role determinant que certains predicateurs jouerent dans cette periode de troubles, revelant l'imbrication, une fois encore, des pouvoirs religieux et politique. Cet essai ayant considerablement marque la pensee historique sur la Reforme, un tel classique se devait d'etre reimprime. Dans sa postface a la nouvelle edition, Robert Kingdon livre moult details sur la genese de l'ouvrage dont l'edition initiale remonte a la Guerre froide.