Religion in Europe: Religious Conflict

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Origins and Causes. Wars of religion exemplified the extent to which animosity between Catholics and Protestants had developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Protestantism spread throughout northern Europe, Protestants of different nationalities felt closer to members of their own faith than to their countrymen. The same was true of Catholics. For instance, the Spanish king, ruling over the Netherlands, sent twenty thousand Spanish soldiers to suppress religious and political dissidents in 1567. In 1570 the Pope excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, thereby freeing English Catholics from owing allegiance to her and giving them the right to overthrow her. Elizabeth tried to assist the Dutch by sending six thousand troops to Holland. The Spanish king, Phillip II, believed that the best way to defeat the English was to send an armada, or fleet, to defeat England’s weak navy. However, England defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 and emerged as a stronghold of Protestantism.

The Case of France. The French witnessed much more horror in the wars of religion. French Protestants, the Huguenots, were radical in their demands: to them, no middle road existed. The Huguenots threatened the monarchy’s power, and the king was intent on destroying them. Some monarchs as well as Catherine de Medici, regent for her young son, tried to straddle a middle ground between Catholic and Huguenot. Catherine issued the Edict of St. Germaine in 1562, which proclaimed limited but legal recognition of the Huguenots. This edict led to violence as the Duke of Guise, staunch leader of the Catholic faction, commanded his troops to fire shots at the Protestants. This was the beginning of three generations of violence and took power away from Calvinist clergy, putting it into the hands of nobles. Ultimately, with the Edict of Nantes, issued during the rule of Henry IV (himself a former Protestant) in April 1598, the monarchy reached an agreement with the Huguenots. Unity, not toleration, was the aim. Huguenots were given full civil rights, including admission to college and the ability to hold public office. Their right to worship freely was severely restricted. It was a settlement which pleased neither side and which cost Henry his life; an unhappy Catholic murdered the king in 1610. (Louis XIV would revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685.) Persecutions, including burnings at the stake, began in the 1530s, and in all there were eight wars. Some Huguenots fled to present-day Florida and South Carolina to escape persecution and build Huguenot havens, though with limited success. The wars of religion lasted for several more decades in France, not ending until 1648.

Effects. The wars of religion did not only affect Europe, where they took place, nor did they influence only matters of faith. They touched economics, politics, and society. They also contributed to the ability of France to participate in overseas exploration and colonization. The more France had to focus its attention and resources on civil wars, the less it had to give to colonization.

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Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1529–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).