The 1560s: the apogee of Huguenot power?

[Tamrin]

The 1560s: the apogee of Huguenot power?

[Excerpt - Prof. R.J. Bonney, University of Leicester - Linked Above]

In April 1559, Henri II went in person to the Parlement of Paris to root out heresy in the most important lawcourt of the land. There, he heard Anne du Bourg, the son of a Chancellor of France, proclaim that 'he had read some of Calvin, but not Luther' and declare it improper for the king 'to make laws concerning religious affairs'. To the king, this was arrogant heresy, which suggested that the legal profession was being subverted by Calvinism. Anne du Bourg was arrested and executed the following December. In fact, Calvinism never dominated the Parlement, though in the 1550s, lawyers provided a number of converts to Calvinism, as did the upper nobility. Their first national synod was held illegally in France in 1559. The difficulty of their position was that the Calvinists embodied in their confession of faith an oath to obey the king; yet the king was a Catholic obliged by his coronation oath to extirpate heresy in his kingdom. However, not until 1560-1 was the Calvinist movement politicized. Nor was the term 'Huguenot', almost certainly of Swiss origin, used widely before this date as being synonymous with a French Calvinist. Estimates vary greatly, but it is probable that by 1559 there were a million Huguenots, roughly one-fifteenth of the population. In 1562, Coligny claimed that there were 2,150 Protestant churches and three million Huguenots, but he may well have been exaggerating their strength in order to impress the Regent.