Luc Racaut PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Crouzet is the first historian to construct a systematic argument explaining the
explosion of religious violence in sixteenth-century France. As such, he is in the
difficult position of having to face the criticisms of all those who did not have his
courage, and should be given the credit that he is due. The complexity of Crouzet's
ideas is reflected in his use of language which is sometimes somewhat opaque. It is
nonetheless clear that Crouzet describes France in the sixteenth century as a
civilization of anguish where everyone was afraid of the Last Judgement. Crouzet
explains the rise of Calvinism by the fact that it provided a desangoissement to its
adherents whose anxiety was relieved. This argument is not new and can be found in
the work of Jean Delumeau, among others, who argued that Luther's sola fide was a
specific remedy to anguish. 15 An obvious implication of this argument, which is left
unexplored, is that Catholicism could not fulfil this role. It also implies that people
were more afraid of the end of time in the sixteenth century than at any other time in
the history of Christendom. It seems difficult to accept the specificity of the sixteenth
century in terms of its eschatology, since no period of history (including our own) is
devoid of apocalyptic fears. What Crouzet is arguing about the sixteenth century is
also true of the Middle Ages as Mark Greengrass argues in his review of Les
Guerriers de Dieu. 16 What is specific to the sixteenth century is that apocalypticism
found new means of expression in print which were unavailable to the medieval
peddlers of doom, and Crouzet's impressive bibliography lists many printed
astrological tracts which add credibility to his argument. Crouzet argues that the
success of this genre is an indication that France was a 'civilization of astrological
anguish' even before the beginning of the Reformation in France. 17 This numerical
15 Jean Delumeau, Naissance et affirmation de la rdorme (Paris, 1965), pp. 48, 55; J.
Delumeau, La Peur en Occident, XIVe-XVIIIe siêcles (Paris, 1980); Steven Ozrnent,
Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century
Germany and Switzerland (London, 1975), p. 42.
16 M. Greengrass, 'The Psychology of Religious Violence', FH, 5 (1991), no. 4, 467-
474, p. 472.
17 Crouzet, Guerriers de Dieu, I. p. 131.
18