The Reformation in France, 1515–1559.

For a full measure of the Protestant Reformation in France in the first half of the sixteenth century, we must look beyond the insurgence itself to the closing settlements. In their own way they marked a stage. After so much feuding and fanatic bigotry, the new men at the forefront of affairs came willingly or unwillingly to temper the righteousness of their cause with mingled feelings of chagrin, exhaustion, and uneasy compromise. The dynasty of Valois-Angoulême had faded and disappeared, leaving Henry of Navarre to claim the rich patrimony of the Crown. In a jaunty mood of elation he may well have said that Paris was worth a mass. Yet, when on 25 July 1593 before the archbishop of Bourges in the great church of Saint-Denis he abjured the tenets of his Protestant upbringing, the moment of truth and disillusionment was patently clear: France remained staunchly Catholic. He had to recognise that profound reality before validating his inheritance. For all the show of undeniable pugnacity, the Protestant cause could not reach beyond the posture of a minority. Its stance and conduct betrayed the very attitudes of a minority. All the more striking, therefore, was its success in carving out a niche of recognition in the structured life of France. Here lay one of the great dramas of early modern Europe and summed up a host of novelties, crises of conscience, deeply felt desires for reform as much by those who followed the path of revolt as by those who remained in or returned to the doctrines and traditions of Catholicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]