The Dancing Calvinists of Montauban: Testing the Boundaries of a Reformed Community in the 1590S in France

Chapter 3 The Dancing Calvinists of Montauban: Testing the Boundaries of a Reformed Community in the 1590s in France

Graeme Murdock

The town of Gaillac on the river Tarn to the east of Montauban was affected by waves of violence between rival Catholic and Reformed communities during the wars of religion. In 1562 Calvinists destroyed some images and statues in the church of Saint Pierre. Tensions rose in the town between the two sides, and Catholics soon had an opportunity to respond to this provocation. At Pentecost in 1562 a Catholic crowd took murderous revenge on the heretics. The corpses of some Calvinists were deposited in the river while others who escaped beyond the town walls were killed by waiting Catholic peasants. Some Catholics then marched through the town dressed in the clothes of their vic- tims, and performed a dance of the dead to reinforce their message about the fragility of life and the need for all to prepare for divine judgement. In 1568, Reformed forces took control of Gaillac and this time it was the Catholics who were attacked and had to flee. Calvinists then gleefully cleansed the town of all objects they deemed to be agents of idolatry and immorality. After 1570, Catholic worship was permitted again in Gaillac under the terms of the peace of Saint Germain. However, this attempt to share space in the town between Reformed and Catholic proved to be short-lived. In the wake of the Saint Bar- tholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris in 1572, dozens of Calvinists were killed in Gaillac in another explosion of violence. Thereafter, Gaillac remained firmly under Catholic control.1 Outbreaks of religious violence such as those that took place at Gaillac sug- gest that the physical presence of heretics so outraged Catholic notions of sacral community that some people felt compelled to take matters into their own hands. Physical violence became incorporated within a repertoire of religious ritual as Catholics tried to cleanse their societies and appease immi- nent divine wrath. A parallel set of ideas about the extreme dangers posed by polluting agents of false religion drove Calvinists in Gaillac and elsewhere

1 Mentzer, “The French Wars of Religion,” 332. Mentzer, Blood and Belief. For an account of events in Gaillac see Blouin, Les troubles à Gaillac; Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu, 1:297–302.

The Dancing Calvinists of Montauban 45 to attack Catholic churches and priests and to torture Catholic cultic objects. Calvinists celebrated the desecration of Catholic churches and revelled in de- stroying statues and images that were very much more than mere wood and stone to their Catholic neighbors. Such moments of conflict between Catholic and Reformed communities were popular contests over doctrinal truth fought out in the streets of towns and villages across the French kingdom during the wars of religion.2 The interpretation of such contests first offered by Natalie Zemon Davis as “rites of violence” remains very persuasive.3 This notion helps greatly in un- derstanding the particular character of this popular violence, the occasions when such violence took place, and the objectives of violent crowds. Indeed, arguments about “rites of violence” in France have proven so persuasive that it has encouraged research into why there were not more religious riots during this period and why some areas were more affected by violence than others. In answer to these questions, historians have tended to highlight the importance of local environmental factors. They have argued that the frequency and inten- sity of religious riots can often be related to delicately-balanced patterns of local confessional demography, and to struggles between rival parties for control of space and political power in towns and regions.4 Historians have also paid attention to why there was a season of popular religious violence that did not last very long. There is no evidence that Reformed and Catholic communities came to the conclusion that the pollution of heresy was not as dangerous as had once been thought. However, a reluctant, uncomfortable, incomplete, and reversible process of adjusting to living in relative peace with heretics slowly emerged in French communities towards the end of the sixteenth century. Local contexts were certainly important in determining the contours of this process of social accommodation to religious diversity both before and after the Edict of Nantes. A more settled religious demography was certainly one important factor that allowed for a greater sense of security within communities that enjoyed political and numerical dominance of a town or region. Many communities also seem to have grown increasingly willing to be pacified with a turn towards accepting that laws and regulations could be used to resolve

2 Garrisson-Estèbe, Protestants du Midi; Benedict, “The Saint Bartholomew’s Massacres in the Provinces”; Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion; Greengrass, “The anatomy of a religious riot in Toulouse”; Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross; Holt, French Wars of Religion. 3 Davis, “The Rites of Violence”; Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France; Davis, “Writing the ‘Rites of Violence’ and Afterward.” 4 Tulchin, “Massacre during the French wars of Religion”; Foa, “An Unequal Apportionment.”