Luc Racaut PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

such atrocities.23
In defence of Davis's work, one should add the similarity between the
debasement of Huguenots through implication of 'sexual promiscuity' and the
popular custom of derisively portraying one's enemy as a lecher or a cuckold. Such
was the sole purpose of the Charivari, well represented in all parts of Christendom,
which featured the cuckold riding backwards on a donkey accompanied by the clatter
of various kitchen implements to the great rejoicing of onlookers. 24 The social
implication of such practices and the seasonal evocation of symbolic misrule and
inversion during Carnival have been studied often enough to avoid the need for
recapitulation here. 25 The theme of inversion and the world upside down, familiar to
scholars of popular culture, features prominently in the polemic of the French Wars
of Religion. Antoine Du Val's Mirouer des calvinistes (1559) provides a notable
example: '0 que si aujourd'huy ii estoit libre en France a un chacun vivre a sa
fantasie, sans crainte & punition, combien en verroit on lever les comes, combien
verroit on de seditions, combien de dissensions & mutineries es maisons entre peres,
meres, & enfans?'.26
This familiar appeal to the cohesion of the 'great chain of beings' appeared
whenever order was threatened. In this case the threat came from the Reformed faith
which questioned the foundations of the social fabric. The cohesion of the social
23 Crouzet, Guerriers de Dieu, I. pp. 233, 248, 255.
24 Martin Ingram, 'Ridings, Rough Music and the "Reform of Popular Culture" in
Early Modern England', P&P 105 (1984), 79-113.
25 Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The idea of witchcraft in early modern
Europe (Oxford, 1997).
26 Antoine du Val, Mirouer des Calvinistes et Annure des Chrestiens, pour rembarrer
les Lutheriens & nouveaux Evangelistes de Geneve (Paris, Nicolas Chesneau, 1562),
fol. 28".
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