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in the last twenty years as a serious approach for this period. Denis Crouzet for example,
challenges the conventional political interpretation by arguing that a collective mentality of
eschatological fear caused Catholics to take up arms against the Protestants.
y
5 Also using a
religious approach to the wars is Mack Holt, who views the battles as being fought primarily
over matters of faith, but that faith had a social rather than a theological meaning. 6
While scholars continue to debate the meaning of the Wars of Religion, one aspect on
which they agree and the feature that most informs my research is the three-sided struggle that
emerged following the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572. 7 The battle lines that were
initially drawn between the Huguenots and Catholics took on a third dimension when divisive
elements developed among adherents to the Roman faith. On one side of the disagreement
historians recognize a group of conservative Catholics, who believed that the Huguenots should
not hold any religious rights. On the other side were more moderate members of Catholicism,
who despite viewing the Reformed faith as heretical, thought that in order to bring peace to the
country the religious minority would have to be granted some degree of toleration. The lack of
unity within Catholicism not only complicated further the ongoing battles, but it also failed to
dissipate by the end of the Wars of Religion, instead finding new forms of discord in the
seventeenth century. This dimension of the conflict greatly impacted the reigns of Maria de’
Medici and Louis XIII, contributing to each monarch’s decision to support churches.
The origins of these differences can best be understood by exploring the major events of
the wars. First among these is the expansion of Protestantism in early sixteenth-century France,
a development that Robert Knecht characterizes as being due in large part to the inaction of the
reigning monarchs. 8 The new faith made its first appearance in Paris in 1519 in the form of
Martin Luther’s creed. 9 Despite a censure on Protestantism by the Faculty of Theology at the
University of Paris, King François I (1515-1547) favored many of the humanistic ideas
associated with the Reformed religion and did little to curb the movement‘s initial growth in
Parisian circles. 10 As the Reformed faith spread through the provinces, the French parlements,
or courts of law, increasingly prosecuted acts of heresy, but François I’s prolonged militar
campaigns in Italy against Emperor Charles V prevented the king from acting on the domestic
issue once he realized the extent of the dissenting religious movement. 11
When Henri II succeeded his father François I in 1547, he too became involved in the
wars against the Habsburg Empire, leaving little time to deal with the growing heretical
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