The Theology of Early French Protestantism: From the Affair of the Placards to the Edict of Nantes

By Martin I Klauber

To understand the great theologians of the past, we must understand the circumstances that formed them. In the newest volume of the Reformed Historical Theological Studies series, Martin I. Klauber and his troupe of capable historians survey the history and doctrine of the French Reformation. This volume provides a quality introduction to French Reformed theology that will help readers grasp the political and ecclesiological climate in which Reformed like giants John Calvin and Theodore Beza wrote.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reformation Heritage Books
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781601789853

Book preview

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REFORMED HISTORICAL-THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

General Editors

Joel R. Beeke and Jay T. Collier

Books in Series:

The Christology of John Owen

Richard W. Daniels

The Covenant Theology of Caspar Olevianus

Lyle D. Bierma

John Diodati’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture

Andrea Ferrari

Caspar Olevian and the Substance of the Covenant

R. Scott Clark

Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism

Willem J. van Asselt et al.

The Spiritual Brotherhood

Paul R. Schaefer Jr.

Teaching Predestination

David H. Kranendonk

The Marrow Controversy and Seceder Tradition

William VanDoodewaard

Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought

Andrew A. Woolsey

The Theology of the French Reformed Churches

Martin I. Klauber, ed.

Doctrine in Development

Heber Carlos de Campos Jr.

The Theology of the Huguenot Refuge

Martin I. Klauber, ed.

The Claims of Truth

Carl R. Trueman

Providence, Freedom, and the Will

Richard A. Muller

Arminius and the Reformed Tradition

J. V. Fesko

The Theology of Early French Protestantism

Martin I. Klauber, ed.

The Theology of Early

French Protestantism

From the Affair of the Placards to the Edict of Nantes

Edited by Martin I. Klauber

Reformation Heritage Books

Grand Rapids, Michigan

The Theology of Early French Protestantism

© 2023 by Martin I. Klauber

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Direct your requests to the publisher at the following addresses:

Reformation Heritage Books

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Klauber, Martin I., 1956- editor. | Muller, Richard A. (Richard Alfred), 1948- writer of foreword.

Title: The theology of early French Protestantism : from the affair of the placards to the Edict of Nantes / edited by Martin I. Klauber ; foreword by Richard A. Muller.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : Reformation Heritage Books, 2023. | Series: Reformed historical-theological studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023015761 (print) | LCCN 2023015762 (ebook) | ISBN 9781601789846 (paperback) | ISBN 9781601789853 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Protestantism—France—History—16th century. | Theology—France—History—16th century.

Classification: LCC BX9454.3 .T49 2023 (print) | LCC BX9454.3 (ebook) | DDC 267/.18040944—dc23/eng/20230512

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023015761

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023015762

For additional Reformed literature, request a free book list from Reformation Heritage Books at the above regular or e-mail address.

To my children,

BONNIE AND BILLY

Table of Contents

Foreword — Richard A. Muller ix

Introduction — Martin I. Klauber 1

Part One: The Historical Background

1. National Synods and French Reformed Polity —Glenn S. Sunshine

2. The French Wars of Religion —Martin I. Klauber

3. Une Horrible Boucherie on St. Bartholomew’s Day —Michael A. G. Haykin and Martin I. Klauber

4. The Conversion of Henri IV —Lana Martysheva

5.The French Monarchomachs —Martin I. Klauber

Part Two: Theology and Theologians

6. Guillaume Farel’s Trinitarian Prayers —Theodore G. Van Raalte

7. Nicolas Des Gallars and the Colloquy of Poissy —Jeannine Olson

8. John Calvin’s Use of Ambrose —Anthony N. S. Lane

9. Sebastian Castellio and the Travail of Religious Toleration in France —Gary W. Jenkins

10. Peter Ramus in History and Theology —Donald K. McKim

11. Antoine de Chandieu’s Quiet Opposition to the Jesuits —Theodore G. Van Raalte

12. Simon Goulart’s Impact on the French Reformation —Karin Maag

13. Theodore Beza, Reformer in Exile —Scott M. Manetsch

14. Pierre Viret, Reformer on the Margins —Michael W. Bruening

15. Philippe du Plessis-Mornay’s Use of Augustine —Martin I. Klauber

Selected Bibliography

List of Contributors

Subject Index

Foreword

The Theology of Early French Protestantism: From the Affair of the Placards to the Edict of Nantes, although last published, is the first volume chronologically in a series followed by The Theology of the French Reformed Churches: From Henri IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (2014) and The Theology of the Huguenot Refuge: From the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes to the Edict of Versailles (2020). As in the two previous volumes, Martin Klauber has assembled an eminent group of scholars to produce a substantial contribution to the study of the Reformed tradition in France.

The Theology of Early French Protestantism divides into two main sections. The first section (chapters 1–5) is historical and thematic, including chapters on the national synods of the French Reformed churches, the Wars of Religion, and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, followed by essays on the conversion of Henry IV and the political views of the French Monarchomachs. The second section (chapters 6–15) focuses on significant movers of the Francophone Reformation who belonged to the first three generations of Reformed Protestantism.

The importance of this volume stems from the general absence of scholarly literature that combines a historical overview of the early French Reform and an introduction to major figures in the Reform movement in addition to Calvin and Beza. Taken together, the essays in the first section, in addition to providing a detailed history of the life and conflicts of sixteenth-century French Protestantism, also includes much of the historical context needed to understand the essays found in the second section of the book, in particular, to clarify the relationship of the several theologians to the work of Reform in France. Thus, the chapter on the national synods offers context for the work of Viret, Calvin, Beza, and Chandieu described in some detail in later chapters. It was Chandieu who was responsible for much of the congregational and synodical organization of the French churches and whose arguments, together with those of François Morel, convinced Calvin of the need for and wisdom of drafting a new confession for the French Reformed. The chapter on the Monarchomachs not only serves historically to illustrate reaction to the French Wars of Religion and the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, it identifies the roles of Calvin, Beza, Francis Hotman, and the author of the Vindiciae contra Tyrranos (either Du Plessis-Mornay or Languet) in framing Huguenot political thought.

In the second part of the volume, we find treatments not only of Calvin (his use of Ambrose) and Beza’s life and role in the preservation of Reformed Protestantism in an era of turmoil and debate, but also of the piety of Guillaume Farel and the role of Nicolas Des Gallars at the Colloquy of Poissy. An essay on Pierre Viret examines the work of Calvin’s neglected associate, in particular, his contribution to the Reformation in the Vaud, where unlike Geneva, Reformation had been forced on the population by the Bernese. Sebastian Castellio appears not only for his opposition to Calvin, but as one who influences the course of arguments for toleration and freedom of thought in France. Peter Ramus appears as one of the major educational reformers of the era, devoted to the encyclopedic organization of knowledge. An essay on Antoine de Chandieu outlines research into his anonymous publications countering Jesuit polemic against the Reformation—a hitherto unexamined aspect of his work and a little-examined aspect of Protestant publishing in the era. Simon Goulart, exiled in Geneva and less studied than either Calvin or Beza, is examined for his understanding of ministry and pulpit and for his impact on local Huguenot communities in France. The final chapter, on Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, looks to his work on sacramental theology, in particular his use of Augustine, as a way both to affirm a Protestant view of the Lord’s Supper and to argue for its catholicity.

The second volume in Klauber’s series begins with a chapter that surveys the French scene from the Reformation and the Edict of Nantes (1598) giving toleration to Protestants up to the Revocation of the edict in 1685. A chapter on Theodore Beza and the crisis of Reformed Protestantism in France serves to move the narrative fully into the seventeenth century. In the historical chapters that follow, French Protestantism is traced through its synods, its relation to the international Reformed conclusions against Arminianism in the Canons of Dort, and the rise of absolute monarchy, to the final years of the edict and the renewal of persecution. The remaining nine chapters focus on individual French Reformed theologians and key aspects of their work, ranging from the work of the Saumur theologians, Cameron, Amyraut, and Pajon; to the polemical opponent of Arminianism and Amyaldianism, Pierre du Moulin; to studies of spiritual and pastoral theology (Drelincourt, Claude, and Jurieu); to Daillé’s work on the church fathers and Rivetus’s international impact. The volume concludes with excerpts from the Edict of Nantes and a translation of the Revocation.

The third volume takes the historical narrative of French Protestantism from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes through the Huguenot diaspora, the Camisard rebellion, and the era of the so-called Churches of the Desert, to the return of a form of toleration in the Edict of Versailles in 1787—a chronicle of the hardships of survival by a persecuted minority in a hostile country. Building on this issue of the hardship of the desert, the final chapter of the volume offers a sermon of Antoine Court, translated with introduction, that gives consolation and teaches perseverance to the persecuted minority. Given the intensity of persecution and the suppression of Protestantism in France, the greater part of published Huguenot theology in the century between the Revocation and the Edict of Versailles came from the theologians and pastors in the diaspora. The remaining seven chapters of the volume provide an introduction to this theology by way of the examination of the apocalyptic historiography of Pierre Jurieu, the apologetics of David Martin and Jacques Abbadie, the attempt to develop a political apologetic for Huguenots remaining in France by Claude Brousson, and the pastoral and homiletical theologies of Jacques Basnage and Daniel de Superville. An appendix provides the Edict of Versailles.

Taken together, the three volumes provide a significant contribution to the history of French Protestant thought from the early Reformation through the Huguenot diaspora of the eighteenth century. The theologians examined, although only a selection, provide an introduction to major issues and themes of French Protestant thought and its distinctive characteristics within the larger Reformed tradition.

—Richard A. Muller

Introduction

Martin I. Klauber

The Early Reformation in France

Protestants in France were commonly referred to as Huguenots even during the sixteenth century. No one knows for sure where the term originated. Several possibilities have been suggested. One idea is that it comes from the Flemish word Huisgenooten, meaning housefellows, those who met together for the study of the Bible, or the German word Eidgenossen, meaning confederates bound together by an oath. The confederates were the Genevans who fought together for independence from the Duchy of Savoy. A second possibility is that the word was of French origin, coming from King Hugo’s Gate in the French city of Tours. The ghost of Le Roy Huget allegedly came out at night to oppress the living people of the community, just as the French Protestants had to worship secretly by night. In any case, the term began to be widely used after the Conspiracy at Amboise in 1560.¹

The early years of the Reformation in France lagged somewhat behind its German and Lutheran counterparts. Yet one cannot deny a direct and strong connection between the two. As early as the 1520s, a virtual flood of Lutheran writings was being widely read and discussed in France. In 1523 the Parlement of Paris confiscated Lutheran works from booksellers and a humanist scholar of some prominence in Paris, Louis de Berquin. Upon examination of his library, investigators found works by Luther, Melanchthon, and Karlstadt, as well as Berquin’s translations of some of these writings. He was arrested by the parlement but was spared by the king, who was initially more tolerant.²

In addition, the spread of humanism spurred an interest in a return to the sources (ad fontes), and when applied to the Christian faith this meant returning to the original biblical texts written in Hebrew and Greek rather than relying on the Latin Vulgate. The great Erasmus had already published his first edition of the Novum Testamentum in 1516 based on better Greek texts than Jerome had available to him. Others in France followed a similar humanist pattern.

The universities quickly became a hotbed for Lutheran ideas that was difficult to stop, especially with a substantial number of students coming to study at places like the University of Paris from the Germanic territories that formed the German nation.

One of the most important early humanists in the pre-Reform era in France was Guillaume Briçonnet, whose father (also named Guillaume Briçonnet) had been a wealthy financier, but when his wife died he entered the ministry and became a cardinal and the archbishop of Reims. His son became the abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, sought to reform the monastery, and gathered around him a coterie of reform-minded colleagues in 1507 who would later become part of the so-called Group at Meaux.³

When Briçonnet became the bishop of Meaux in 1515 and took up residence there in 1517, he sought to reform the diocese by training clergy to preach more biblically and requiring them to be resident in their parishes. He developed a humanist circle and invited several well-educated humanist scholars to join him, including Guillaume Farel, Gérard Roussel, and the famed Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. They studied the church fathers and Scripture together as they worked to reform the diocese, which was about thirty miles east of Paris. They were concerned about some of the same issues as the Lutherans, such as the misuse of the sale of indulgences, and some within the circle began to question key Roman Catholic doctrines such as the existence of purgatory. Although the bishop officially condemned the use of Luther’s writings, he did not remove any of the offending clergy, which included Pierre Caroli, who would later run afoul of Calvin.⁴

Lefèvre had already established himself as one of France’s leading humanist scholars and had written commentaries on the Psalms, the Pauline Epistles, and the Gospels. It was his commentary on the Gospels in 1522 that drew the ire of the theologians at the Sorbonne, who suspected him of evangelical sympathies. Furthermore, the writings of Lefèvre and Briçonnet contained mystical tendencies that echoed some of the ideas of the late medieval mystics and the works of pseudo-Dionysius. It also de-emphasized the role of human merit in the scheme of salvation in favor of an emphasis on union with God.⁵

Briçonnet was well connected to the royal family and served as a spiritual advisor to Marguerite of Angoulême, the sister of Francis I and the wife of Henri d’Albret, the king of Navarre. Briçonnet’s influence can be seen in Marguerite’s work Mirror of a Sinful Soul. Here God disciplines His followers so that as God looks at Himself in the mirror, He is pleased to see the reflection of Himself in a purged creation. Her strong connection with Briçonnet is reflected in their correspondence and her subsequent protection of his key followers.⁶

Briçonnet named Lefèvre manager of the hospital in Meaux and then his vicar-general. At Meaux, Lefèvre published a fresh translation of the New Testament in French in 1523, and Briçonnet had copies distributed to the poor within his diocese. As early as 1505, Lefèvre had espoused ideas similar to Luther’s about Scripture being the sole rule for Christian doctrine, and in his commentary on the book of Romans he emphasized the priority of faith in justification.⁷

From February 1525 to March 1526, while the king, Francis I, was being held captive in Spain, his mother, Louise of Savoy, serving as regent in his absence, ordered that the Lutheran sect be stamped out in France. The Parisian Parlement then decreed that all French translations of the Bible should be suppressed, and they put together a commission to investigate the circle at Meaux for heterodox ideas. Lefèvre was suspected of pro-Lutheranism and had to flee to Strasbourg. After the king had been ransomed, he appointed Lefèvre as tutor for the royal family and as royal librarian at Blois. In 1530 he published a complete translation of the Bible into French based on the Vulgate. However, in 1531 he had to leave for the protection of Marguerite of Angoulême in Nérac, where in 1533 he completed a new translation of the Bible, based this time on the Hebrew and Greek texts. Others among the Meaux group joined him, including Roussel, who became Marguerite’s chaplain and the bishop of Oloron.⁸

Most of the circle at Meaux wanted to stay within the Roman Catholic church but desired either moral reform or favored some evangelical ideas. Only a handful, such as Guillaume Farel, would join the ranks of the Protestants. Then, in 1526, the parlement issued a list of heretical doctrines coming out of Lutheranism. Persecution of Protestants started as early as 1524, when a weaver was executed, and in 1529 Louis de Berquin was put to death for failure to recant his Lutheran views. Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor in Geneva, would later remark that for a hundred years, no one had died as a better Christian than Berquin.⁹

As the repression of these ideas continued, many of the early French supporters of evangelical ideas had to flee the country, settling in places like Basel, Geneva, and Strasbourg, and they began to develop their ideas and organize the Reformation in France from abroad.¹⁰

One of the major figures who fled for Basel was Nicolas Cop, the son of the king’s physician. He had been a classmate of John Calvin at the Collège de Montaigu. When he was elected rector of the University of Paris for the fall term of 1533, he delivered an inaugural address on November 1, 1533. The address expressed sympathies with Lutheran ideas and was condemned by many among the faculty. When two Franciscans appealed to the parlement, Cop was forced to appear and then to flee to Basel. John Calvin, according to Beza, was the real author of the address, and a copy of the manuscript is written in Calvin’s handwriting. So he either wrote the address or liked it enough to make his own copy. In either case, Calvin himself was at this early date sympathetic with these ideas. The fact that Calvin quickly left Paris for refuge in the home of his friend Louis du Tillet near Angoulême serves as a further confirmation.¹¹

One of the major turning points in the movement was the Affair of the Placards that took place on October 17–18, 1534. As Parisians were on their way on Sunday morning to attend Mass, they found placards posted all over the city. Some were also displayed in the Loire Valley. The broadsheet included the headline A true account of the horrible, great and unbearable abuses of the Papal Mass, invented specifically contrary to the Last Supper of Jesus Christ. The author was an exile from Picardy, Antoine Marcourt, who had been serving as a pastor in Neuchâtel since 1531.¹² This vicious attack against the sacrament at the heart of Roman Catholic worship included the following words of incitement: I invoke heaven and earth in witness of the truth, against that pompous and vain Papal Mass by which the world is and will be—unless God comes to our rescue—totally ruined, despoiled, destroyed and desolated, since in it our Lord is so outrageously blasphemed and the public misled and blinded. These early Protestants were not subtle in their belief that the resacrifice of Christ in the Mass was an insult to Christ and His finished work on the cross. The transubstantiation of the elements into the body and blood of Christ was depicted as idolatrous, and the placard ends with the phrases, By this Mass they live without care, they need to do nothing, let alone study. It is not to be marveled at if they vigorously uphold it; they kill, they burn, they destroy, they torment like bandits all those who contradict them, for they have no recourse but force. Truth they have not; truth threatens them; truth follows and pursues them; truth terrifies them, and by it they will soon be destroyed.¹³

One of the placards was pinned to the door of the king’s bedchamber at his estate in Blois. Another was found in the bowl where he kept his kerchief. This truly frightened Francis I, and sensing his life was being threatened, he reacted swiftly.¹⁴ He instructed the lieutenant general of Paris, Jean Morin, to find and root out the Lutherans. In January of the following year, the king issued an edict promising a share of any confiscated property to those who revealed the identities of any offenders. The effort was, in part, successful, and followers of Lutheran ideas were rounded up and nine were burned at the stake. Many others, including the celebrated French poet, Clément Marot, fled the country.¹⁵

The king returned to Paris in December 1534, and on January 21, 1535, he ordered a massive public procession through the streets that included representatives of the crown, religious orders, the University of Paris, the law courts, city magistrates, and craft guilds, along with some of the most precious relics including the crown of thorns. The highlight was the Corpus Christi carried by the bishop of Paris under a canopy and accompanied by the king’s three sons and the duke of Vendôme. Then, to top it all off, the king himself followed behind the canopy dressed in black without his crown. All of this was designed to offer public support for the sacrament of the Eucharist at a time when it was clearly under attack.¹⁶

As Reformation ideas spread throughout the country, the crown tried several measures to stop it. One way was through the legal system. In 1547, as the number of heresy cases increased beyond the ability of the court system to handle, the crown set up special courts in Rouen made up of ten or twelve judges to focus solely on cases of heterodoxy. The king then started the practice in Paris, and upon Francis’s death in 1549, his son and successor Henri II expanded its scope to the point where it gained the reputation as the chambre ardente. Between May 1548 and March 1550, the special court tried 323 people for heresy, issued orders for thirty-seven people to be executed, six of whom were burned at the stake and the rest hanged. Most of the cases resulted in rather mild punishment, such as public penance, fines, banishments, and beatings. Others were exonerated and charged with the command to live as good Roman Catholics. Mack Holt points out that the chambre ardente marked a significant increase in the number of people tried partly because it was devoted solely to prosecuting heresy while prior courts had to also try other legal cases. He notes that over a third of the cases involved members of the clergy who were particularly targeted.¹⁷

Despite the chambre ardente, persecution of Protestants under Henri II during the early 1550s diminished, in part because of the inability and unwillingness of the French parlements to enforce the king’s wishes. In addition, because of the French government’s hostility to the Hapsburgs, the king may not have wanted to appear too harsh to the Lutheran princes of the empire. So, the strategy shifted more toward censorship. In 1551, Henri issued the Edict of Châteaubriant to ratchet up the persecutions of Protestants in the realm. The preamble to the edict contains an admission that previous attempts at religious repression had failed and that new measures were needed. These included the role of civil and ecclesiastical courts to try suspects for heresy and to confiscate the property of anyone convicted, with one-third of the spoils going to the accuser. Any Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism was given a full pardon if they cooperated in exposing their former coreligionists. A large portion of the document was devoted to the prohibition of Protestant books, with the faculty at the University of Paris serving as the censors. Booksellers were given instructions to include a list of prohibited books alongside the books they were selling. The idea was to stop the influx of Reformation ideas into France. Furthermore, the edict contained provisions forbidding writing letters to people in Geneva or sending money to Huguenot refugees there. Here the crown recognized Geneva as a major source fueling the growth of Protestantism in France even though the city was not yet training pastors to be sent back to France.¹⁸

When these measures proved ineffective in stopping the growth of the movement, Henri issued the Edict of Compiègne in 1557, which contained a provision ordering the death penalty for those convicted of relapsing, for anyone going to Geneva or publishing books there, for illegal preaching, and for iconoclasm. This edict even more clearly recognized the threat coming from Geneva and the influx of trained Reformed pastors coming back to France to serve the needs of growing congregations.¹⁹

The Genevan influence on the Reformation in France was a natural one by the 1550s, especially as Calvin gained dominance over the Perrinist faction. Strasbourg, which had early on been a major source, had moved to the Lutheran camp while the French Protestants had migrated toward Reformed theology. By 1559 the Genevan Academy was formed and the number of pastors being sent back to France increased. These fledgling churches needed to be organized and naturally looked to the French-speaking city where so many refugees from France had resettled, including Calvin himself.²⁰

One cannot overemphasize the impact that Calvin had on the Reformation in France. Forced to flee after the Affair of the Placards, Calvin ended up in Basel in January 1535, where he lodged with his friend and former classmate Louis de Tillet. Calvin had spent some time at the de Tillet estate in Angoulême following the Nicolas Cop affair and spent a considerable amount of time in the family library, where he began to study theological works including the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, who would prove to be one of his most important sources. Basel was a popular choice for French refugees. It had moved to Protestantism under the leadership of Johannes Oecolampadius, who died in 1531, and the great Erasmus was living there as well. Calvin’s friend Nicolas Cop had fled there, and it was at Basel that Calvin met the fiery Reformer who had served as part of the circle at Meaux, Guillaume Farel. Calvin continued his studies in theology and composed the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, published in 1536 in Latin.²¹

Calvin wanted to continue his work in Strasbourg, and after settling some of his family affairs in Picardy, he was headed there. However, the road was unsafe and he had to detour through Geneva. It was there that Farel confronted him and threatened God’s judgment upon his desired tranquil life of a scholar if he did not stay in Geneva and help with the reform movement. Calvin consented, but his early experiences in Geneva were nothing but quiet.²²

The complete narrative of Calvin’s career and ministry in Geneva has been overwhelmingly well-documented, so it will not be repeated here. One cannot overemphasize, however, the enormous role that he played in events in France and in its ecclesiastical and theological development. Through his correspondence, his publications, his advice, and his training of pastors to serve the fledgling French Reformed congregations, Calvin loomed as a person of enormous influence. Many aspects of his impact can be gleaned in the chapters that follow.²³

The narrative of the early Reformation in France, then, picks up at this point in the first chapter by Glenn Sunshine, who details how the early French Reformed churches were organized and how they functioned. The growth of these fledgling churches was remarkable, as was their influence, especially among members of the French nobility.

Outline of the Book

This book is divided into two sections. The first focuses on the history of the French Reformed churches during the tumultuous sixteenth century. Although this is by no means intended as an exhaustive survey of the period, a general discussion of the major events provides important context for the development of a uniquely French Reformed theology.

The contributors to this volume include some of the leading historians of sixteenth-century France. Glenn Sunshine, the author of the chapter on the organization of the French Reformed churches, is one of the leading experts on the French synods, both national and provincial, and he has published the 1572 version of the French Discipline, which provides important insights into how the churches functioned on a day-to-day basis with no single congregation having priority over the others.²⁴ While he does provide an excellent account of the French consistories that maintained discipline over the congregations, a more thorough description of how these bodies functioned can be found in the groundbreaking work of Raymond Mentzer.²⁵

One of the major events leading to the outbreak of religious war in France was the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561, a last-ditch effort to arrive at some kind of peaceful coexistence between Catholics and Protestants. Jeannine Olson, professor at Rhode Island College, one of the leading experts of the Huguenot leader Nicolas Des Gallars, highlights his participation in the affair. Since most studies of Poissy focus on the role of Theodore Beza, this essay provides an interesting twist. Furthermore, as the chapter is as much or more about Des Gallars than the colloquy itself, this chapter is included in the theologian section rather than the historical part of the book.

Chapters on the Wars of Religion and on certain scholars, often referred to as Monarchomachs, who provided the theological justification for war provide important context to the development of French Reformed theology. The chapter on the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which I authored with Michael Haykin, a noted scholar of the Reformed tradition at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, also contributes to an ethos of conflict that highlights what Mack Holt has correctly surmised, namely, that religious differences played an essential role not only in military conflict, but also in theological development and the role of martyrologies as sources of religious inspiration.²⁶ Such an era of persecution and conflict intensified personal but also theological animosity as theological discourse took on a strongly polemical character.

When Henri IV converted to Roman Catholicism on July 25, 1593, it secured his control over the crown. Although he probably never said that Paris was worth a mass, his conversion altered the religious terrain, and the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes in 1598 inaugurated a period of limited toleration for the Huguenots that lasted until the Revocation in 1685. The author of chapter 4, Lana Martysheva, completed her doctorate at the Sorbonne on Henri IV under one of the leading scholars of this period in French history, Dennis Crouzet, whose works are prominently referenced throughout this volume.²⁷

Theodore Van Raalte has written the chapters on Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, the first pastor of the Reformed church in Paris, and Guillaume Farel, an important figure within the reform in the diocese of Meaux who threatened Calvin with God’s judgment if he did not stay and help him with the reform in Geneva. Van Raalte is the author of an important recent monograph on Chandieu and has coauthored a major work on Farel.²⁸ He argues convincingly that Chandieu was likely the author of an anti-Jesuit treatise published under a pseudonym. In his essay on Farel, Van Raalte points to Farel’s robust Trinitarianism in his prayer manuals, which ran counter to the charges by Pierre Caroli, who also ministered in Meaux under Briçonnet, that both Calvin and Farel were anti-Trinitarians.

This book includes an important chapter written by Anthony Lane, a leading expert on Calvin’s use of the church fathers.²⁹ Patristic sources were of particular importance for French Protestant authors such as Calvin to counter the charge made by Cardinal Sadoleto and others that they were innovators and schismatics who had abrogated the concept of apostolic succession. Augustine served as a major source for the Reformers because of his strong emphasis upon divine grace in the process of justification. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, played a major role in Augustine’s conversion and was a significant Latin father in his own right. So, if Calvin could establish a connection with Ambrose, it would bolster his defense of the legitimacy of the Reformed faith as recovering the theology of the early church while supporting the charge that it was the Roman Catholics who had deviated from it. This is not to say that Calvin agreed with Ambrose on every point, but as with any other source there were areas of continuity and discontinuity. Another key issue that Lane unpacks is the problem of sources, namely, that some works were attributed to Ambrose that he clearly did not write. Since there has been very little published to date on the connection between Calvin and Ambrose, Lane’s essay covers fresh ground and helps to advance contemporary understanding of Calvin’s sources.

As the moderator of the Company of Pastors in Geneva and as a leader in the growing international form of Reformed theology, Calvin was not immune to personal and theological conflict. After the execution of Michael Servetus, one of his leading critics was Sebastian Castellio, a former teacher in Geneva whose acquaintance with Calvin dated back to Calvin’s ministry in Strasbourg. Castellio penned the famous work Concerning Heretics: Whether They Are to Be Persecuted and How They Are to Be Treated (1554). Gary Jenkins shows how Castellio should be remembered for his other scholarly work. Jenkins has recently published a monograph detailing the work of some of Calvin’s most strident opponents, including Castellio.³⁰

Donald McKim’s chapter on Peter Ramus, the famous French Reformed theologian who was tragically killed during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, details Ramus’s reform of Aristotelian logic and his impact on English Puritanism, especially in the thought of William Perkins. McKim is the author of a major book on Ramus and has written extensively on the development of Reformed theology.³¹

Scott Manetsch, one of the world’s leading scholars of the Reformed tradition in French-speaking Europe, and of Theodore Beza in particular, composed the chapter on Beza. He is currently working on a critical biography of the Genevan Reformer, and this chapter provides a preview of this highly anticipated study.

Michael Bruening, also a well-renowned scholar of French Calvinism, especially in the Pays de Vaud, wrote the chapter on Viret.³² He is the author of numerous works on Viret and of a fascinating study of opponents to Calvin in sixteenth-century France. In some respects, his essay on Viret places the Lausanne Reformer in the ranks of contemporaries of Calvin who wrote on theological issues unique to the Reformation in a particular location.³³

Karin Maag, the director of the Meeter Center for Calvin Studies at Calvin University, and a well-respected scholar of the Reformation, has contributed a very helpful chapter on Simon Goulart, an important French Reformer who enjoyed a lengthy career as a pastor in Geneva and succeeded Beza as the moderator of the Company of Pastors. She describes some of the conflicts among Goulart, the city council, and at least one of his pastoral colleagues; his ministry in France, where he almost was caught up in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris; his martyrologies and chronicles of the history of France, especially under the controversial reign of Charles IX; and his advice to the growing number of Nicodemites in France after the massacre.

The final chapter of this volume, on one of Henri IV’s key supporters, Philippe du Plessis-Mornay highlights the importance of eucharistic theology, which would play a major role in seventeenth-century France when theologians engaged in a century of disputes over the authority and views of the early church fathers in sacramental theology. As a major source for Reformed views on the Eucharist, Augustine’s views on a number of topics, including divine grace, would loom large in the seventeenth-century conflicts between the Jansenists and Jesuits in France. So this chapter sets the stage for what would follow in theological controversy during the era of the Edict of Nantes from 1598 to 1685.

Although this book does not include a chapter devoted solely to the Edict of Nantes, readers can go to the companion volume on the theology of the French Reformed churches for a more complete discussion.³⁴ In addition, in any volume of collected essays there is some degree of overlap and repetition between chapters. For example, a discussion of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre is also covered in part in the chapter on the French Wars of Religion. It was such a significant event and the subject of so much recent scholarship that it warranted a separate chapter, yet this event was also an integral aspect of the narrative of the religious wars in sixteenth-century France.

Furthermore, there were other important French theologians that could have been the subject of separate essays in this volume, including such luminaries as Franciscus Junius. However, the goal was not an exhaustive treatment of French Reformed theology in the sixteenth century, but to provide readers with an introduction to it and to point to areas for further research. I hope this collection will contribute to that endeavor.

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1. Janet G. Gray, The Origin of the Word Huguenot, Sixteenth Century Journal 14, no. 3 (1983): 349–59.

2. Francis M. Higman, La diffusion de la Réforme en France 1520–1565 (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1992), 18.

3. Jacob Vance, Secrets: Humanism, Mysticism, and Evangelism in Erasmus of Rotterdam, Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet, and Marguerite de Navarre (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 52.

4. Richard M. Cameron, The Charges of Lutheranism Brought against Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1520–1529), Harvard Theological Review 63, no. 1 (1970): 119–49.

5. Vance, Secrets, 54.

6. See Christine Martineau, Michel Vessière, and Henry Heller, eds., Guillaume Briçonnet et Marguerite de Navarre: Correspondance, 1521–1524 (Geneva: Droz, 1975).

7. Jean-Claude Margolin, Érasme, Guillaume Briçonnet et les débuts de la Réforme en France, Revue d’Histoire de L’Église de France 198 (1991): 13–28.

8. Michael W. Bruening, Refusing to Kiss the Slipper: Opposition to Calvinism in the Francophone Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 15–35.

9. Jonathan A. Reid, King’s Sister—Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492–1549) and Her Evangelical Network (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 22; Theodore Beza, Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France, en laquelle est descrite au vray la renaissance & accroissement d’icelles depuis l’an M.D.XXI. iusques en l’année M.D.LXIII (Antwerp: Jean Remy, 1580), 1:8.

10. Mark Greengrass, The French Reformation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 8–20.

11. Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 37–38.

12. On Marcourt’s authorship, see Gabrielle Berthoud, Antoine Marcourt: réformateur et pamphlétaire du «Livre des Marchans» aux Placards de 1534 (Geneva: Droz, 1973).

13. Donald R. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 13–14.

14. Lewis W. Spitz, The Rise of Modern Europe: The Protestant Reformation 1517–1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 200.

15. Kelley, Beginning of Ideology, 14–15.

16. Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 20.

17. Holt, French Wars, 27–29.

18. Gianmarco Braghi, The Emergence of Pastoral Authority in the French Reformed Church (c. 1555–c. 1572) (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 42–44.

19. Braghi, Emergence, 45.

20. For more on the impact of Geneva, see Robert M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France, 1555–1563 (Geneva: Droz, 1956).

21. G. Sujin Pak, John Calvin’s Life, in John Calvin in Context, ed. R. Ward Holder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 11.

22. Pak, John Calvin’s Life, 12.

23. For more information, see Gordon, Calvin.

24. Glenn S. Sunshine, French Protestantism on the Eve of St. Bartholomew: The Ecclesiastical Discipline of the French Reformed Churches, 1571–1572, French History 4, no. 3 (1990): 340–77.

25. Glenn S. Sunshine, Reforming French Protestantism: The Development of Huguenot Ecclesiastical Institutions, 1557–1572 (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2003); Raymond A. Mentzer, La construction de l’identité réformé aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles – le role des consistoires (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006).

26. See Holt, French Wars.

27. Lana Martysheva, Le pari de l’Hérétique. Les prélats royalistes et la légitimation d’Henri IV (PhD diss., University of Paris, 2018).

28. Theodore G. Van Raalte, Antoine de Chandieu: The Silver Horn of Geneva’s Reformed Triumvirate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Jason Zuidema and Theodore G. Van Raalte, Early French Reform: The Theology and Spirituality of Guillaume Farel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011).

29. Anthony N. S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999).

30. Gary W. Jenkins, Calvin’s Tormentors: Understanding the Conflicts that Shaped the Reformer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).

31. Donald K. McKim, Ramism in William Perkins’ Theology (repr., Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2018).

32. Michael W. Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud, 1528–1559 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005).

33. Bruening, Refusing to Kiss the Slipper.

34. See Martin I. Klauber, ed., The Theology of the French Reformed Churches: From Henri IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014).

Part One

The Historical Background

CHAPTER 1

National Synods and French Reformed Polity

¹

Glenn S. Sunshine

While officially Catholic, France was a religiously chaotic kingdom in the 1520s and 1530s. Catholic scholastics vied with Catholic humanist reformers of various stripes. Popular Catholicism was given to superstition and obsessed with signs and portents, as documented by Denis Crouzet in his monumental Les guerriers de Dieu.² Meanwhile, Protestant ideas influenced by Luther, Zwingli, and others were also making inroads into the kingdom, with Protestant cells and nascent churches scattered throughout France. It was, in Lucien Fèbvre’s memorable description, a long period of magnificent religious anarchy.³

The monarchy was officially opposed to much of this, especially to Protestantism, though Francis I’s sister Marguerite was herself a supporter of religious reform and shielded reformers in her own court. Things got worse for the Protestants with the Affaire des placards (1534), where broadsheets attacking the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation appeared across Paris and reportedly on the door of the king’s bedchamber. For reasons explained by Christopher Elwood in The Body Broken,⁴ this was taken as an attack on the monarchy itself, and Francis I began to persecute Protestants more intensely, a practice continued by his son and successor, Henry II.

The 1540s saw two important developments in French Protestantism. First, its demographic makeup changed. To this point, most Protestants in France had come from the Third Estate, primarily from among the educated and urban elites, yet in the 1540s a significant number of the nobility adopted Protestantism. These conversions occurred up and down family and patronage networks and extended all the way to Princes of the Blood. This made persecution a considerably more dangerous proposition for the monarchy as the nobles had their own military forces, and if pushed, could resist the crown. Nonetheless, persecution, particularly of commoners, did continue through Henry II’s reign and beyond.

During this same decade, Calvin began publishing the first serious theological works written in French. These shifted the theology of Protestants in the kingdom decisively toward Geneva, rapidly making Calvinism the dominant school of Protestantism in France, and helped open the doors for a flood of Geneva-trained pastors into the kingdom.⁵ The nobility took note and began requesting pastors trained in Geneva for their households as well. Perhaps the most important consequence of this turn to Calvinism was a growing emphasis on church discipline, understood in the narrow sense of enforcing morality. Increasingly, being Protestant in France involved adherence to a strict moral code that emphasized obedience to God and the magistrate and enforced within the community via consistories—church courts patterned after the model of the Genevan consistory instituted by Calvin.

The First Attempt at a Church Order

Throughout this period, French Protestantism was congregational in structure: the movement began as individual churches and cells, and this remained unchanged into the 1550s. By the late 1550s, however, influential leaders within French Protestantism saw the need for a more systematic church order on the local, provincial, and national levels to reconcile the conflicting institutions and practices that had developed in different regions of France, or indeed in individual churches. Thus in 1557, the church at Poitiers summoned Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, a lawyer and the Geneva-trained pastor of the Reformed church of Paris, to a meeting to consider a proposed church order they had prepared entitled Articles polytiques.⁶ Although this church order was never adopted, it did articulate the bedrock ecclesiastical principle of French Protestantism in the period: the rejection of any form of primacy among the churches. In practice, this meant that although churches were free to govern their own affairs, they could not make a decision that affected another church without the approval of an ad hoc synod to deal with the issue or without the consent of the affected church.⁷ This was simultaneously a principled and pragmatic stance. Minister and churches were equal, and further, the article noted that primacy leads to tyranny as seen in the papacy. Along with this, given that churches had to this time been independent, it was unlikely that they would voluntarily place themselves under the authority of another church or pastor.

Whether because of his training as a lawyer or as a theologian, Chandieu found the Articles polytiques wanting in several respects, notably its lack of regular synods. Nonetheless, he did recognize the value in setting out a systematic order for the churches. In 1558, Chandieu left the church at Paris to become pastor of the church at Orléans. He enlisted the aid of François Morel, another Geneva-trained pastor at the Reformed church of Paris, to organize a synod of the churches of the kingdom to adopt a confession of faith and a discipline (i.e. a church order) to unite the churches of the kingdom theologically and ecclesiastically. The First National Synod of the French Reformed Churches would meet in 1559 in Paris with Morel as moderator and adopt the Gallican Confession and the Discipline ecclésiastique.

Morel had taken on the task of preparing the Gallican Confession. He consulted Calvin, who initially opposed the writing of a new confession, believing that the existing confessions were adequate and that for ecumenical reasons the French churches should subscribe to one of them. Morel argued that this would not do. One of the goals of the French Reformed churches was to convince the monarchy that it was