PIERRE BOAISTUAU - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

actively endorsing the doctrine during the early modern period. 700 Martin Luther
recast its basic features in the sixteenth century, and although there were differences
between the Catholic, Protestant and Reformed versions, the principal context
remained the same. 701 As Christian religion was the essence of a well-ordained
kingdom, rulers had to defend it at all costs.
It was for this reason that Boaistuau exhorted them to punish heretics and
blasphemers severely: ‘Les Princes ayans pourueu aux choses qui concernent la
religion, ilz doiuent donner ordre et police de chastier et corriger vne infinité de
pariuremens, et blaphemes qui regnent entre le peuple, auec telle seuerité, qu’ilz se
recentent de leur iustice’. 702 Later, he added: ‘ilz doiuent employer leur principal
estude, et s’euertuer à toute extremité de nettoyer leurs Royaumes de loups
rauissans, faux prophetes, seducteurs, faulx docteurs, hypocrites, heretiques’. 703
To further stress this point, Boaistuau referred to the persecutions and hardships
meted out to the first Christian Church by Roman Emperors such as ‘Neron,
Domitian, Traian, Adrian, les Antonis, Seuere, et Diocletian’, and to the various
heresies (‘Ariens, Pelagiens, Manichées, Euuoniens, Macedoniens, Nestoriens,
Entichiens’) which endangered its very existence. 704 Such examples provided
additional material to justify the protection of the true faith, and at the same time
praised the ability and power of Christianity to survive. However, no threat had ever
posed greater danger for the Church’s survival, according to the writer, than the
700
See Chambers, D. S., Popes, Cardinals and War: The Military Church in Renaissance and Early
Modern Europe (London, 2006).
701
See Francisco, A., Martin Luther and Islam: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Polemics and Apologetics
(Leiden, 2007).
702
Boaistuau, P., L’Histoire de Chelidonius Tigurinus, p. 54r.
703
Ibid, p. 55r. Bold font is mine.
704
The persecutions inflicted on the first Christian Church were the subject of Boaistuau’s Histoire des
persecutions de l’Eglise chrestienne et catholique, which will be examined in the following section.
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