Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris

by Barbara B. Diefendorf

The religious conflicts of sixteenth-century France, particularly the St. Bartholomew's Day massacres of 1572, continue to draw a good deal of attention from historians. What started as a limited coup against the Huguenot leadership became instead a conflagration that left two thousand or more Protestants dead in the streets and ushered in a series of bloody religious battles. Until now, however, historians have been preoccupied with the political aspects of the conflicts, and histories have focused on the roles of the king and high noblemen in the assassinations that sparked the massacres, rather than the mass violence. In this compelling and unique study, Diefendorf closely examines popular religious fanaticism and religious hatred. She focuses on the roots and escalation of the conflicts, the propaganda of Catholic and Protestant preachers, popular religious beliefs and rituals, the role of the militia, and the underground activities of the Protestant community after the
massacres. Drawing on a wide array of published and unpublished sources, Beneath the Cross is the most comprehensive social history to date of these religious conflicts.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 1991

Reviews

[Selina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taken from an excerpt of a review essay that I wrote during university, examining scholarship about popular religious violence in sixteenth-century France:

Barbara Diefendorf’s Beneath the Cross takes ‘a middle path’ between political and religious legitimation, and in doing so determines that it is possible to evaluate religious violence of the period without focusing on one at the expense of the other. Building off her 1985 article ‘Prologue to a Massacre: Popular Unrest in Paris, 1557–1572’, Diefendorf paints a comprehensive and nuanced analytical narrative of social tensions in Paris in the fifteen-year period leading up to and including the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 24 August 1572. A student of Natalie Davis, she not only persuasively establishes the collective mentality for both Parisian Protestants and Catholics, but she also constructs what Holt describes as ‘easily the most convincing explanation for the causes of the popular massacres in the capital’. Her examination of the fluctuating waves of religious hatred, as well as how the worsening economy exacerbated tensions, commendably demonstrates the significance of the early years of the French Wars of Religion: a period that should not be viewed as merely the ‘first act’ in the drama, but as an important stage in the long struggle over the Reformation of the Christian faith. That collective piety for Parisians included allegiance to the municipality, the monarchy, as well as to Catholic spirituality, indicates that secular and religious tensions were inseparable, and so further illustrates that political and religious justifications are both essential in evaluating religious violence.

Particularly effective, however, is Diefendorf’s recognition of the role of provocative preachers in Paris. Focusing primarily on printed sources, such as pamphlets, published sermons, inquisitions, as well as judicial and magisterial records, she proposes that messages from the Catholic pulpit were strongly effective in mobilising Parisian ‘hearts and minds’. Whereas preachers such as François Le Picart and Pierre Dyvolé renewed an emphasis on ritual and dogma, it was Simon Vigor, the radical curé of Saint-Paul’s parish in Marais, who was the most inflammatory in stressing the importance of sacrifice for the sake of religion. Thus, Diefendorf suggests, the clergy’s role in escalating the ‘psychology of fear’ should not be underestimated.

[Hotavio · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Beneath the Cross, Barbara B. Diefendorf focuses on the early years of religious conflict, particularly from 1557 to 1572. 1557 marks a notable seizure on a Calvinist service on rue Saint-Jacques and relays some of the conflicts between arrestees, while Diefendorf denotes 1572, the date of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre as the apogee of religious violence in a series of civil strife that would not end until 1594. Diefendorf points out the often overlooked importance of these years by saying that, it is within the duration of this time, which Catholics become polarized in their opinion of the new faith to the point of being violently uncontrollable. Encouragement by vehement pastors, fanatical Catholics in the civilian militia, and an increasingly weak monarchy leads to the slaughter that is Saint Bartholomew’s Day and will further dictate the separation of the bourgeois into the extremist Catholic League and the religious moderate Politique Party.
One aspect that was prevalent throughout the book that was particularly dealt with in the introduction and in the conclusion was the weakness of the crown. The policy of moderation that was begun with the Edict of Amboise in 1563 and continued with similar recognitions are reinstatements of Protestant rights and property and was a feeble attempt at appeasing notables often at the ire of the Catholic majority. While this was to keep Paris stabilized for a short amount of time, the masses became more and more unmanageable, a dilemma that an uncooperative civilian guard was often instigating through their abundant prosecution of heretics and lack of crowd control.
Diefendorf has a tendency to utilize names where available. In many cases broad sweeping statements would be punctuated with distinctions, particularly when records of Protestants are available. For instance, Diefendorf provides one family’s births, deaths, marriages, professions, and their relation to the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre when she talks of records left behind by 2 notaries.
While I appreciate Diefendorf’s ability to outline this particular part of the religious wars of France and use them to form an argument, I am a little disappointed, as someone who has only limited knowledge of the subject, that her scope was not a little larger. In stating the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was a milestone in the conflicts, it left me with wanting more on the outcome of the wars of religion. I felt she did a great job explaining the symbolism of the Eucharist, the Mass, and the corporeal metaphor and its driving force behind the desire to rid Paris of the Protestants. Likewise, the Calvinist ideology and the relationship between the Genevan and Parisian churches were also important in giving the reader a basic understanding of a church’s incipient days. Limited as they were, some of the illustrations showed the same thing. Figure 7-5 differs from 7-4 in that it shows a ratio of accused Protestants to taxpayers in geographic zones of Paris. 7-4 shows it in percentages. I would have rather had this space taken by some examples of the psalms, literature, of pamphlets that so divided the people of Paris.

[Gia Gurgone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information, interesting, but very dense
Read for class

[Alexander Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Beneath the Cross Barbara Diefendorf presents her work as a middle ground which claims that both religion and politics played important roles in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. For the Catholics, society was collectively the body of Christ. Thus, heresy is a cancer that needs to be cut out from the community. There could be no compromise. Cancer cannot remain in the body. The body metaphor does seem to have missed the point that Paul originally used it for, though, since the people were largely ignorant of the mysteries, and the church officials often acted like a head who did not view the feet or arms to be equally important body parts. In this respect, the massacre was a sort of religious purging, but since religion was such a crucial building block of society no religious conflict at the time could be divorced from politics.
Once again, processions served a royal function. Diefendorf asserts that “they ritually enacted a vision in which the civic, monarchical, and Catholic symbols merged” (48). A clear example of this was the procession with the Blessed Sacrament, literally the body of Christ, and the king after the massacre. The procession served to re-sanctify the city. Also crucial to community life was the notion of the collective body of the community which was drawn upon by the charismatic preacher, Vigor. Diefendorf sums up his message by stating that “heresy threatens not just individual salvation but the entire social order” (153). Vigor also draws upon famous Biblical cleansers of heresy like Josiah and Hezekiah who had cleaned up corrupt Temple practices that had been leading the people astray. For Catholics, allowing heretics to remain in their midst threatened their own salvation.
Diefendorf objects to viewing the masses as puppets manipulated by the elites. She admits that there was a political struggle going on but an inflammatory new element had been introduced to the political struggle, religion. “But the religious element in the conflict meant that stakes had changed. The interests involved were no longer just those of a handful of courtiers and the crown” (180). The people were not pawns being moved by the elites who had a political stake in the conflict. Since religion was dividing the factions, everyone had a huge stake in the conflict. Both Protestants and Catholics looked for the divine will in contemporary action. They were running the risk of becoming like Ahab. Drawing upon the sufferings of the Psalmist, Protestants were willing to endure some trials from the Lord and Catholics interpreted famines and other natural disasters as divine vengeance for allowing heretics to live within their midst. They were running the risk of becoming like Ahab. There is also a lengthy description of Paris for those interested in that.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara Diefendorf’s Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (1991) is a social history which aims to systematically re-examine religious conflict in sixteenth-century Paris in the years leading up to the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in order to answer the following questions: Why did the 1572 coup against Huguenot leaders escalate into a city-wide massacre of Protestants? What was the nature of the religious conflict in Paris, and what role did Paris play in the larger Wars of Religion?

Like a good detective, Diefendorf notices that the traditional historiography of the Wars of Religion, and especially for the Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre, is suspiciously focused on the political and gives little analysis on the role of popular religion. (I suppose all good historians are detectives—and Beneath the Cross does read a bit like a murder mystery, crime scene and all.) She suggests that confessional bias is partly to blame: both Catholic and Protestant historians were embarrassed by the religious violence and hatred, and even historians without confessional bias were uncomfortable looking too closely at popular fanaticism (5). Not until the 1970s and 1980s do historians begin examining popular piety, most notably in Denis Crouzet’s “radical thesis”—which is radical in that it focuses entirely on religious belief as the source of the violence!

Diefendorf’s historiographical intervention builds on this work: she pays particular attention to the religious factors that contributed to the conflict, although she also discusses political factors. Her premise: historians should study Saint Bartholomew’s day as not just a prelude to a political crisis that leads to absolute monarchy, but as an “episode in the struggle over the Reformation of the Christian faith” (177). Diefendorf argues that in the fifteen years of social, economic, and political tensions due to famine, plague, and war immediately before the massacre (1557-1572), non-elites among Catholics and Huguenots are increasingly religiously radicalized, despite the interests of Parisian officials and the king’s court in keeping peace, which ultimately results in the 1572 massacre and the revolt of the Catholic League. At the same time, the early foundations of the “politique” faction are established by Parisian officials who recognize that moderation is critical to preventing anarchy are also to be found in this period. Ultimately, Diefendorf uses a breadth of evidence to argue that the massacre is not the result of “top-down” political violence but, rather, the result of a crusade against heresy by the common people that gets reflected back to the level of city officials and kings, who have very little power to curb it.

[Ellis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, this book was one of the hardest books I've ever read. Diefendorf seems to have done so much research and then put every fact she found that had anything at all to do with Paris or Huguenots or really anything from the 16th century. It had no direction and was poorly organized. I'm not sure what I learned because it was so hard to follow.

Jesse: Barbara Diefendorf is a prof from Boston University. Did you have her?

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely interesting history of religion in Paris. It's been written in a way in which it quickly grabs the reader's attention.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overview of the French Huguenots and their relations to Catholics during the Huguenot Wars