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The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France Author(s): Natalie Zemon Davis Source: Past & Present, No. 59 (May, 1973), pp. 51-91 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650379 . Accessed: 29/10/2013 12:12

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This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE RITES OF VIOLENCE: RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE * These are the statutesand judgments,which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the Lord God of thy fathersgiveth thee... Ye shall utterly destroyall the places whereinthe nations which he shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrowtheir altars, and break theirpillars and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the gravenimages of theirgods, and the names of them out of that xii. destroy place [Deuteronomy 1-31]. Thus a Calvinistpastor to his flockin 1562.1 If thy brother,the son of thy mother,or thy son, or thy daughter,or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend,which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly,saying Let us go serve othergods, which thou hast not known,thou, nor thy fathers... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearkenunto him ... But thou shalt surelykill him; thine hand shall be firstupon him to put him to death, and afterwardsthe hand of all the people .... If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell there,saying, Certain men, the childrenof Belial are gone out fromamong you, and have withdrawnthe inhabitantsof theircity, saying Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known... Thou shalt surelysmite the inhabitantsof that citywith the edge of the sword,destroying it utterlyand all that is therein[Deuteronomy xiii. 6, 8-9, 12-13, 151. And [Jehu]lifted up his face to the window and said, Who is on my side? Who? And there looked out to him two or three eunuchs. And he said, Throw her down. So they threw [Jezebel] down: and some of her blood was sprinkledon the wall, and on the horses: and he trode her under foot ... And theywent to buryher: but theyfound no more of her than the skull and the feetand the palms of her hands ... And [Jehu] said, This is the word of the Lord, which he spake by his servantElijah... saying, In the portionof Jezreelshall dogs eat the fleshof Jezebel: And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as the face of the field ix. dung upon [II Kings 32-3, 35-71]. Thus in 1568Parisian preachers held up to theirCatholic parishioners the end of a wickedidolater.2 Whateverthe intentionsof pastors * The research for this paper has been aided by grants-in-aidfrom the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Universityof California,Berkeley. The present article is based upon a paper read at the Newberry Library Renaissance Conference marking the anniversaryof the Saint Bartholomew Day Massacre, held on May 5 and 6 1972, under the chairmanshipof ProfessorAlfred Soman. The proceedings of the Conference are being edited by Dr. Soman and will be published by Martinus Nijhoff,The Hague. 1 Histoireeccldsiastique des JlglisesRiformdes au Royaumede France (hereafter Hist. eccl.), ed. G. Baum and E. Cunitz, 3 vols. (Paris, 1883-9), i, p. 537. 2 Claude Haton, Me'moiresde Claude Haton contenantle recitdes ve'nements accomplisde 1553 a 1592, principalementdans la Champagne et la Brie, ed. Felix Bourquelot (Collection de documents inedits sur l'histoire de France), 2 vols. paginated continuously(Paris, 1857), pP. 527-8.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 52 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 59 and priests,such wordswere among the manyspurs to religiousriot in sixteenth-centuryFrance. By religious riot I mean, as a preliminarydefinition, any violentaction, with words or weapons, undertakenagainst religious targets by people who are not acting officiallyand formallyas agents of political and ecclesiastical authority. As foodrioters bring their moral indignation to bearupon the stateof the grainmarket, so religiousrioters bring their zeal to bear upon the stateof men's relationsto the sacred. The violence of the religiousriot is distinguished,at least in principle,from the action of politicalauthorities, who can legallysilence, humiliate, demolish,punish, torture and execute;and also fromthe actionof soldiers,who at certaintimes and places can legallykill and destroy. In mid sixteenth-centuryFrance, all thesesources of violencewere busilyproducing, and it is sometimeshard to tell a militiaofficer froma murdererand a soldierfrom a statue-smasher.Nevertheless, thereare occasionswhen we can separateout for examination a violent crowdset on religiousgoals. The sixteenthcentury itself had its own generalizationsabout crowdviolence. Once in a while it was seen as havinga kind of systemor sense. In CorpusChristi Day drama,the violence against Christis representedas a series of formalcompetitive "games", whichhide fromHis tormentorsthe full knowledge of what they do.3 In Diirer'sMartyrdom of the Ten Thousand,the Persiantorturers of the Christiansare spaced apart,doing theirterrible business in an orderly,methodical way.' Most ofthe time, however, as in Breugel's flamingDulle Grietand The Triumphof Death, the image of the crowd was one of chaos. Learned writerstalk of grainrioters in Lyon as "the dregs of the populace, with no order,no rein, no leader... a beast of manyheads... an insane rabble" and of the Paris mob as "an ignorantmultitude, collected from all nations... governedby theappetite of those who stir them up [to] extremerage, just lookingfor the chanceto carryout any kindof cruelty".5 3 V. A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi(Stanford, 1966), ch. 8. Also see L. Petit de Julleville,Histoire du theatreen France. Les mystdres,2 vols. (Paris, 188o), ii, pp. 391, 408, 444-5. Breugel's Processionto Calvary has some of this same gamelike, "orderly" quality. 4 Philipp Fehl, "Mass Murder, or Humanity in Death", TheologyToday, xxviii (1971), pp. 67-8; E. Panofsky, The Life and Art of AlbrechtDiirer (Princeton,1955), pp. 121-2. For the range of sixteenth-centuryexplanations of human violence, see J. R. Hale, "Sixteenth-CenturyExplanations of War and Violence", Past and Present,no. 51 (May 1971), PP. 3-26. 5 Guillaume Paradin, Memoiresde l'Histoire de Lyon (Lyon, 1573), P. 238; Hist. eccl., i, pp. 192-3. See also Christopher Hill, "The Many-Headed Monster in Late Tudor and Early Stuart Political Thinking", in C. H. Carter (ed.), From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation.Essays in honour of GarrettMattingly (London, 1966), pp. 296-324.

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Nowadaysthis hydra monster has takenon a moreorderly shape, as a result of the work of George Rude, Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, Charles Tilly, EmmanuelLe Roy Ladurie and others.6 We may see these crowdsas promptedby politicaland moraltraditions which legitimize and even prescribetheir violence. We may see urban riotersnot as miserable,uprooted, unstable masses,but as men and womenwho oftenhave some stakein their community;who may be craftsmenor better;and who, even when poor and unskilled,may appear respectableto their everyday neighbours. Finally,we maysee theirviolence, however cruel, not as random and limitless,but as aimed at definedtargets and selectedfrom a repertoryof traditionalpunishments and formsof destruction. This pictureof pre-industrialcrowd violence has been drawn primarilyfrom the studyof grain and bread riots,tax riots,craft violence,and certainkinds of peasantrevolts. The broad spectrum ofreligious riot, however, has notreceived analytical attention, except in thecase ofthe anti-Semitic pogrom and themillenarian movement,7 both of which have evidentcontemporary significance and non- religiousfeatures. To present-daychurch historians, especially in an age of ecumenicalism,the popularviolence of theirCalvinist and Catholicancestors may have been an embarrassment(as is Belfast).

6 The literatureon crowds and violence is vast. I list here only those works which have especially assisted the preparation of this paper: George Rude, The Crowd in History.A Study of Popular Disturbancesin France and England, 1730-1848 (New York, 1964); E. J. Hobsbawm, PrimitiveRebels, Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movementin the I9th and 2oth Centuries(Manchester, 1959); E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the EighteenthCentury", Past and Present,no. 50 (Feb. 1971), pp. 76-136; Charles Tilly, "Collective Violence in Nineteenth-CenturyFrench Cities" (Public Lecture, Reed College, Feb. 1968); "The Chaos of the Living City", forth- coming in Charles Tilly (ed.), The Building of an Urban World; Charles Tilly and James Rule, Measuring Political Upheaval (Princeton, 1965) - I am also gratefulto Charles Tilly for his comments on this paper; Emmanuel Le Roy Le de 2 Ladurie, paysans Languedoc, vols. (Paris, 1966), i, pp. 391-414, 495- 508, 607-29; Roland Mousnier, Fureurs paysannes (Paris, 1967); M. Mollat and Philippe Wolff,Ongles bleus,Jacques et Ciompi, Les rdvolutionspopulaires en Europe aux XIVe et XVe sikcles(Paris, 1970); J. R. Hale, "Violence in the Late Middle Ages: A Background", in Lauro Martines (ed.), Violenceand Civil Disorderin Italian Cities,1200-1500 (Berkeley,1972), pp. 19-37; Neil J. Smelser, Theoryof CollectiveBehavior (New York: Free Press Paperback, 1971). There are also some helpful classificationsof crowds in Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, tr. Carol Stewart (German edn. 1960; N.Y., 1966), pp. 48-73. As in, for instance, Philippe Wolff,"The 1391 Pogrom in Spain. Social Crisis or Not?", Past and Present,no. 50 (Feb. 1971), PP. 4-18; Norman Cohn, The Pursuitof the Millennium(2nd edn., N.Y., 1961); Sylvia L. Thrupp (ed.), Millennial Dreams in Action. Studies in RevolutionaryReligious Movements (New York, 1970).

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To socialhistorians it is theseeming "irrationality" of most sixteenth- centuryreligious riot that has been puzzling. To bear the swordin the nameof a millennialdream might make some sense, but whyget so excitedabout the Eucharist or saints'relics ? It is hardto decipher the social meaningof such an event. Not surprisingly,the pioneeringremarks of C. Verlindenand his colleagueson populariconoclasm, and of JanineEstebe on popular Catholic violence,insist upon a stronglinkage between religious conflictand economicissues. It is arguedthat a risein grainprices triggersthese disturbances,and that the Saint Bartholomew's massacresare also a "class-crime","rich Huguenotsbeing attacked and pillagedby preference". Beyondthis, Estebe accountsfor the crowdaction in themassacres as an expressionof the primitive soul of the people, pushed by eventsinto pathologicalhatred. Similarly, in PhilippeWolff's study of anti-Semiticpogroms in Valencia and Barcelonain 1391 and in George Rude's analysisof anti-Catholic riotsin eighteenth-centuryLondon, thereis a tendencyto identify the "real" elementsin the disturbanceas thesocial ones, social being definedonly in termsof a conflictof poor against rich, artisans against wealthyburghers or craftsmen,and wage-earnersagainst manu- facturersand merchants.8There is no doubt that some religious violencehas thischaracter - Wolff'sevidence for Barcelona is very good indeed- but is thisthe only kind of social meaning inherent in a religiousriot? What does one makeof popularreligious violence whereclass conflictof thistype is not present? I will tryto answerthese questions in regardto sixteenth-century France in the courseof thispaper. My firstpurpose is to describe the shape and structureof the religiousriot in French cities and towns,especially in the I56os and early1570s. We will lookat the goals, legitimationand occasionsfor riots; at the kinds of action undertakenby the crowdsand the targetsfor theirviolence; and brieflyat theparticipants in theriots and theirorganization. We will considerdifferences between Protestant and Catholicstyles of crowd behaviour,but will also indicatethe manyways in whichthey are 8 C. Verlinden, J. Craeybeckx,E. Scholliers, "Mouvements des prix et des salaires en Belgique au XVIe sidcle", Annales. E.S.C., x (1955), pp. 185-7. Janine Esthbe, Tocsinpour un massacre.La saison des Saint-Barthdlemy(Paris, 1968), pp. 97-8, 196 I135-6, 189-98. Though I will take issue at several points in this paper with Esthbe's interpretationof the massacres, her valuable book is surelythe most imaginativestudy we have had of the social psychology of that event. Wolff,"Pogrom", p. I6; Rud6, Crowd in History,pp. 62, 138: M. Wolffcharacterizes the pogromat Valencia, where "violence directedagainst the Jews predominates,committed moreover by persons fromthe most diverse social backgrounds", as "pseudo-religious" (p. I6).

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 55 alike. Our sources will be contemporaryCatholic and Protestant accountsof religiousdisturbance, from which we will do our best to sortout utterfabrication from likely fact.9 I hope thisinquiry will put the massacresof Saint Bartholomew'sday in a new perspective, and also deepen our understandingof the religiousriot as a typeof collectivedisturbance. I Whatthen can we learnof the goals of popularreligious violence? What werethe crowdsintending to do and whydid theythink they must do it? Their behavioursuggests, first of all, a goal akin to preaching:the defenceof true doctrineand the refutationof false doctrinethrough dramatic challenges and tests. "You blaspheme", shoutsa woman to a Catholicpreacher in Montpellierin I558 and, havingbroken the decorumof the service, leads partof the congrega- tionout ofthe church. "You lie", shoutsa sheathmakerin themidst of the Franciscan'sEaster sermon in Lyon, and his words are underscoredby the gunshotsof Huguenotswaiting in the square.10 9 Where possible, I have triedto use both Catholic and Protestantaccounts of the same episode. For instance, for events in Toulouse in 1562, I have used among othersthe account of the Catholic G. Bosquet (Histoirede M. G. Bosquet, sur les troublesAdvenus en la ville de Tolose l'an 1562 [Toulouse, 1595]) and that of the Reformed Histoireeccldsiastique. I have taken especially seriouslydes- criptionsof Catholic violence coming fromCatholic writers(as in the Memoires of the priestClaude Haton) and descriptionsof Protestantviolence comingfrom the Histoire ecclesiastique. These sources are not necessarilytelling the whole truth about their party's violence, but at least we can assume that what they positively describe did occur. I have also taken especially seriously the omissionof certainkinds of violence in accusations made by one partyabout the opposing party (for instance, that Catholic accounts say very little about the desecrationof corpses by Protestantcrowds), since these writersshow so little willingness to put their opponents in a favourable light. If certain kinds of violence are regularlynot attributedto the enemy, then I thinkwe can assume that they did not in fact occur very often. In regard to accepting evidence about acts of desecrationof corpses, torture and acts of filth,where there is no way of getting "impartial" eye-witness accounts, I have used my judgement,based on a general understandingof the range of possibilities in sixteenth-centurybehaviour. My guides here have been French legal practice and penalty, Rabelais, descriptions by Pierre de L'Estoile of behaviour in Paris in the late sixteenth century, and the commentsof Montaigne on torturesin his time("On Cruelty","Of Cannibals"). 10 Hist. eccl.,i, p. 248; Jean Gueraud, La chroniquelyonnaise de Jean Gudraud, ed. Jean Tricou (Lyon, 1929), p. 151. Other examples: Geneva, Advent 1533, a young man interruptsa sermon of the Catholic theologian Guy Furbity, "Messieurs, listen... I will put myselfin the fireto maintain that all he has said are lies and words of the Antichrist"; "Into the fire", shout some of the congregation: Jeanne de Jussie, Le levain du Calvinisme ou commencementde l'hdrdsiede Genkve(Geneva, 1865), p. 74. Rouen: a barber's journeymandenies at the end of a Franciscan's sermon that there are seven sacraments,insisting that thereare only two: Hist. eccl., i, p. 355. Rouen, March 1562 in Hist. eccl., iii, p. 713, n. I. Toulouse, 4 May 1562 in Bosquet, Histoire,p. 38. Provins, 1560, Protestantsdisturb a Catholic sermon: Haton, Mimoires,pp. 136-7.

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"Look", criesa weaverin Tournai,as he seizesthe elevated host from the priest,"deceived people, do you believethis is the King, Jesus Christ,the true God and Saviour? Look!" And he crumblesthe waferand escapes. "Look", says a crowdof image-breakersto the people of Albiac in I56i, showingthem the relicsthey have seized fromthe Carmelitemonastery, "look, they are onlyanimal bones".11 And the slogan of the Reformedcrowds as theyrush throughthe streetsof Paris,of Toulouse, of La Rochelle,of Angoulemeis "The Gospel! The Gospel! Long live the Gospel!"12 Catholiccrowds answer this kind of claim to truthin Angersby takinga FrenchBible, well-boundand gilded,seized in the homeof a rich merchant,and paradingit throughthe streetson the end of a halberd. "There's the truthhung. There's the truthof the Huguenots,the truthof all the devils". Then, throwingit intothe river,"There's the truthof all the devils drowned". And if the Huguenotdoctrine was true,why didn't the Lord comeand savethem fromtheir killers? So a crowd of Orleans Catholicstaunted its victimsin 1572: "Whereis yourGod? Whereare yourprayers and Psalms? Let himsave youif he can". Even thedead weremade to speak in Normandyand Provence,where leaves of the Protestant Bible werestuffed into the mouthsand woundsof corpses. "They preachedthe truthof theirGod. Let themcall himto theiraid".13 The same refutationwas, of course, open to Protestants.A Protestantcrowd cornersa baker guardingthe holy-waferbox in Saint Medard's Churchin Paris in 1561. "Messieurs",he pleads, "do nottouch it for the honour of Him who dwells here". "Does your God of paste protectyou now fromthe pains of death?" was the Protestantanswer before they killed him.14 True doctrinecan be defendedin sermonor speech,backed up by the magistrate'ssword againstthe heretic. Here it is defendedby dramaticdemonstration, backedup by the violenceof the crowd. 11 Jean Crespin, Histoire des Martyrspersecutez et mis acmort pour la Verite de l'Evangile, depuisle tempsdes Apostresjusques a present(1619), ed. D. Benoit, 3 vols. (Toulouse, 1885-9), ii, pp. 307-8. Ibid., iii, p. 515 fora similarepisode in Flanders. Hist. eccl., i, p. 931. 12 Haton, Mdmoires,p. I82. "Relations de l'emeute arriv6ea Toulouse en 1562", in L. Cimber and F. Danjou (eds.), Archivescurieuses de l'histoirede France (hereafterArch. cur.) (Paris and Beauvais, I834-40), iv, p. 347. Hist. eccl., iii, p. 989. [Richard Verstegen], Thgatredes cruautdsdes herdtiquesau seizizme sidcle, contenant les cruautes des Schismatiques d'Angleterre.. . les cruautesdes Huguenotsen France, et les barbariescruelles des CalvinistesGueux aux Pays-Bas. Reproductiondu texte... de 1588 (Lille, 1883), p. '38. 13 Hist. eccl., ii, pp. 650-I; "Massacres de ceux de la Religion Orl6ans", Arch. cur.,vii, p. 295. Hist. eccl.,ii, p. 839 (Valognes), iii, p. 315 (Orange). 14 From the memoirs of Canon Bruslart of Paris, quoted in Arch. cur., iv, p. 57, n.I .

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A more frequentgoal of these riots,however, is that of ridding the communityof dreaded pollution. The word "pollution" is oftenon thelips ofthe violent, and theconcept serves well to sum up the dangerswhich rioterssaw in the dirtyand diabolic enemy. A priestbrings ornaments and objectsfor singingthe Mass into a Bordeauxjail. The Protestantprisoner smashes them all. "Do you wantto blasphemethe Lord's nameeverywhere? Isn't itenough that the templesare defiled? Must you also profaneprisons so nothing is unpolluted?"15 "The Calvinistshave pollutedtheir hands with everykind of sacrilege men can thinkof", writesa Doctorof Theology in 1562. Not long afterat the Sainte Chapelle,a man seizes the elevatedhost with his "pollutedhands" and crushesit underfoot. The worshippersbeat him up and deliverhim to the agents of Parlement.16 The extentto whichProtestants could be viewed as vesselsof pollutionis suggestedby a popularbelief about the origin of the nickname"Huguenots". In the cityof Tours, le roi Huguet ("King Huguet") was the genericname for ghostswho, insteadof spendingtheir time in Purgatory,came back to rattledoors and haunt and harmpeople at night. Protestantswent out at nightsto their lasciviousconventicles, and so thepriests and thepeople began to call them Huguenotsin Tours and then elsewhere. Protestantswere, thus,as sinisteras the spiritsof the dead, whomone hoped to settle in theirtombs on All Souls' Day."7 One does not have to listenvery long to sixteenth-centuryvoices to hear the evidencefor the uncleanlinessand profanationof either side. As for the Protestants,Catholics knew that,in the styleof earlierheretics, they snuffed out the candles and had sexual inter- course after the voluptuous Psalmsingingof their nocturnal conventicles. When theirservices became public,it was no better, fortheir Holy Supper was perceived(in the wordsof a merchant- draper of Lyon) as disorderedand drunken,"a bacchanalia".18 15Crespin, Martyrs,ii, p. 470. "1 Claude de Sainctes, Discourssur le saccagementdes Eglises Catholiques,par les Heretiquesanciens et nouveaux Calvinistesen l'an 1562 (1563) in Arch. cur., iv, p. 368; Haton, Mimoires,p. 375. 11Hist. eccl., i, p. 308. On popular attitudestoward ghosts and the souls of the dead, see Arnold Van Gennep, Manuel de FolkloreFrancais, 4 vols. (Paris, 1943-58), ii, pp. 791-803; Andr' Varagnac, Civilisationtraditionnelle et genres de vie (Paris, 1948), ch. 7; Roger Vaultier,Le Folklorependant la guerrede Cent Ans d'apres les Lettresde Remissiondu Trdsordes Chartes (Paris, 1965), p. 80; Keith Thomas, Religionand the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), PP. 587-606. 18 Haton, Me'moires, pp. 49-50, and p. 511 on "incest" among Huguenots, spurred on by reading the Bible in French. Crespin, Martyrs, ii, p. 546. Gabriel de Saconay, Genealogie et laTFin des Huguenaux, et descouvertedu Calvinisme(Lyon, 1573), fo. 68v, who cites a work by Antoine Mochi, alias (cont.on p. 58)

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But it was notjust the fleshly licence with which they lived which was unclean,but thethings they said in their"pestilential" books and the thingsthey did in hatredof the Mass, the sacramentsand whole Catholicreligion. As the representativeof the clergysaid at the Estates of Orleans,the hereticsintended to leave "no place in the Kingdomwhich was dedicated,holy and sacred to the Lord, but would onlyprofane churches, demolish altars and breakimages".1" The Protestants'sense of Catholicpollution also stemmedto some extentfrom their sexual uncleanness,here specifically of the clergy. Protestantpolemic nevertired of pointingto the lewdnessof the clergywith their "concubines". It was rumouredthat the Church of Lyon had an organizationof hundredsof women,sort of temple prostitutes,at the dispositionof priestsand canons; and an observer pointedout withdisgust how, after the First Religious War, the Mass and the brothelre-entered Rouen together. One ministereven claimed that the clergywere for the most part Sodomites.20 But more serious than the sexual abominationsof the clergywas the defilementof the sacred by Catholicritual life, from the diabolic magicof the Mass to theidolatrous worship of images. The Mass is "vile filth";"no people pollutethe House of the Lord in everyway morethan the clergy". Protestantconverts talked of theirown past

(note18 cont.) De Mochares, Apologie contrela Cene Calvinique, printed in Paris in 1558. Gueraud, Chronique,p. 147. Also, note the reactionof the Catholics Florimond de Raemond and Claude de Rubys to male and female voices joining together in the Psalms: Florimond de Raemond, L'histoire de la naissance,progrez et decadence de l'herdsiede ce sikcle(Rouen, 1623), p. I,010; Claude de Rubys, Histoireveritable de la ville de Lyon (Lyon, 1604), pp. 390-I ("Leurs chansons Androgynes",etc.). 19Gentian Hervet, Discourssur ce que les pilleurs,voleurs et brusleursd'Eglises disentqu'ils n'en veulentqu'auz Prestres.Au Peuple de Rheims,et des environs (Paris, 1563): "The execrable words of diabolic ministers","pestilential little books full of poison"; Haton, Mbmoires,p. I5o; harangue of Canon Jean Quintin at Orleans, Dec. I56o, in Hist. eccl., i, p. 476. Another Catholic quotation expressing these attitudes and fears is: "Nothing remains in the churches. The impious takes away everything. He destroys,he overturns,he pollutes all holyplaces" - fromthe MS. "De tristibusFrancorum" illustrated with pictures of the iconoclastic Protestants of Lyon with animal heads: Leopold Niepce, Monumentsd'art de la Primatiale de Lyon, ddtruitsou aliends pendant l'occupationprotestante en 1562 (Lyon, 1881), pp. 16-17. 20 Le Cabinet du Roi de France, described in Jean-Jacques Servais and Jean-PierreLaurend, Histoireet dossierde la prostitution(Paris, 1965), p. 170. Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 324, i, PP. 385-90. [Pierre Viret], Le Manuel ou Instructiondes Curez et Vicaires de l'Eglise Romaine (Lyon, 1564), p. 137; for the identificationof the authorof this work see R. Linder, The Political Ideas of Pierre Viret(Travaux d'humanisme et renaissance,lxiv, Geneva, 1964), p. 189.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 59 lives as a time of befoulmentand dreadedpresent "contamination" fromCatholic churches and rites.21 Pollutionwas a dangerousthing to sufferin a community,from eithera Protestantor a Catholicpoint of view, forit would surely provokethe wrathof God. Terriblewind stormsand floodswere sometimestaken as signs of His impatienceon this count.22 Catholics,moreover, had also to worryabout offending Mary and the saints; and thoughthe anxious,expiatory processions organized in the wakeof Protestantsacrilege might temporarily appease them, the hereticswere sure to strikeagain.23 It is not surprising,then, that so manyof the acts ofviolence performed by Catholicand Protestant crowdshave (as we shallsee morefully later on) thecharacter either of ritesof purificationor of a paradoxicaldesecration, intended to cut down on uncleannessby placingprofane things, like chrism,back in the profaneworld where they belonged. This concern of Catholic and Protestantcrowds to destroy pollutingelements is reminiscentof the insistenceof revolutionary millenarianmovements that the wicked be exterminatedthat the godly may rule. The resemblanceis real, but is limited. Our Catholic and Protestantrioters have a convictionnot so much of theirimmanent godliness as of the rightnessof theirjudgement, envisagenot so mucha societyof saintsas a holiersociety of sinners.

21 Hist. eccl.,i, p. 486; "R6cit de l'oeuvre du Seigneur en la ville de Lyon pour action de grace" and "Epigramme du Dieu des papistes" in Anatole de Montaiglon (ed.), Recueil de podsiesfrangoises des XVe et XVIe sikcles(Paris, 1867), vii, pp. 36-9, 42-5. On the loathsome and magical aspects of the Mass, Antoine de Marcourt, Declaration de la messe(Neuchitel, 1534). Les cauteles, canon et ceremoniesde la messe (Lyon, 1564) (see n. 82 below). Thomas, Religion,pp. 33-5. Jean Calvin, Institutionde la religionchretienne, Book Iv, para. i8, in loannis Calvini Opera quae supersuntomnia, ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss, 57 vols. (Brunswick, 1863-96), iv, col. 1,o77 (ces villaines ordures). Calvin's comments on the "mire" of his earlier life in the Preface to his Commentaries on the Psalms, Commentairesur le livre des Pseaumes in Opera omnia,xxxi, col. 22. On the danger of "pollution" and "contamination"from Catholic religious life, Crespin, Martyrs, i, p. 563 and Haton, Mimoires, pp. 407-8. 22 Haton, Mdmoires,pp. 427-8; [Jean Ricaud], Discours du massacrede ceux de la ReligionReformee, fait &Lyon par les catholiquesromains, le vingthuictieme de moisde et ensuivantde l'an aoat jours 1572 (1574) (Lyon, 1847), pp. IIO-II ; De l'effroyableet merveilleuxdesbord de la riviare du Rhosne en 1570 (first published Lyon, 1576; Lyon, 1848 edn.), p. 6. 23 There were expiatoryprocessions in Paris in the wake of "execrable crimes" against religiousstatues in 1528, 1547, 1550, 1551, 1554 and 1562, described in Le Journald'un bourgeoisde Paris sous le rdgnede Franfois ler (1515-1536), ed. V. L. Bourrilly (Paris, I9Io), pp. 290-4; M. F6libien and G. A. Lobineau, Histoirede la ville de Paris (Paris, 1725), iv, pp. 676-9, 728, 748, 755, 765, 804-5; Arch. cur., iv, pp. 99-102. Note also the expiatoryprocession in Lyon afteran iconoclastic outrage in 1553 in Gueraud, Chronique,pp. 65-6.

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For Catholiczealots, the exterminationof the heretical"vermin" promised the restorationof unity to the body social and the guaranteeof its traditionalboundaries: And let us all say in unison: Long live the Catholicreligion Long live the King and good parishioners, Long live faithfulParisians, And mayit alwayscome to pass That everyperson goes to Mass, One God, one Faith,one King.24 For Protestantzealots, the purging of thepriestly "vermin" promised the creationof a new kind of unitywithin the body social, all the tighterbecause false gods and monkishsects would no longerdivide it. Relationswithin the social order would be purer,too, for lewdness and love of gain would be limited. As was said of Lyon afterits "deliverance"in 1562: Lyon has changedindeed... The profitof Mercury,the danceof Venus And presumption,too, each man has leftaside. And again: Whenthis town so vain Was filled Withidolatry and dealings Of usuryand lewdness, It had clericsand merchantsaplenty. But once it was purged And changed By theWord of God, That broodof vipers Could hope no more To live in so holya place.25 "4"Et dironstous d'une bonneunyon: /Vive la catholicquereligion/ Vive le Roy et les bonsparroyssiens,/ Vive fidelles Parisiens,/ Et jusquesa tantn'ayons cesse/Que chascunaille A la messe/Un Dieu, une Foy,un Roy": "Dl1uge des Huguenotzfaict A Paris" in Arch.cur., vii, p. 259. On Protestantsas "vermin", Gu6raud, Chronique,p. 141; Saconay, Genealogie,p. 64a; Claude de Rubys, Histoireveritable, p. 404. I have triedin this paragraphto generalizeEsthbe's important insight in regardto the popularaspect of the SaintBartholomew's Day massacres:that theProtestants appeared as "profaners"(pp. 194-5). Thereseems to me very littleevidence, however, that the Catholickillers wished to exterminate"a foreignrace" (p. 197). This exaggeratesand misreadsthe evidence in regard to thekilling of pregnantwomen and thecastration of males(see below,pp. 78, 82-3 and n. 87). Hereticswere hatedfor pollutingand disorderlyactions, notas a "race"; andthe crowds sometimes forced them back to theMass rather thankilling them. 25 "Lyon est bien change... /De Mercurele gain,& de Venus la dance/ Tout hommea delaiss6,& toute outrecuidance":Eglogue de deux Bergers, Demonstrantcomme la ville de Lyon a estd reduite a la Religion vrayement Chrestienne,par la pure predicationde l'Evangile (Lyon, 1564), A 4r. "Quand cesteville tant vaine/ Estoit pleine/ D'idolatrie et procks/D'usure et de paillar- (cont.on p. 61)

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Crowdsmight defend truth, and crowdsmight purify, but there was also a third aspect to the religiousriot - a political one. E. P. Thompsonhas shownhow in the eighteenth-centuryEnglish food-riot,the crowd's behaviourwas legitimatedby a widelyheld beliefthat it was actingin place of the government.If the justices of the peace failedto do theirlegal dutyin guaranteeingthe food supply,then the crowdwould carryout the provisionsof the Assize forthem."2 I have foundthe same thingto be true,at leastas far as the menupeuple ("the littlepeople") are concerned,in the great grain-riot,or GrandeRebeine, of Lyon in 1529. Under the slogan, "The communeis risingagainst the hoardersof grain",the crowd met on the groundswhere municipal assemblies were ordinarily held and then went about openingthe municipalgranary and seizing grainfrom wealthy people withample supplies,actions which the citycouncil had undertakenin thepast, but had failedto do promptly duringthe currentcrisis. In the grain-riotof Provinsin 1573,the artisansseized grain that had been sold at a high price to non- residentsof the city because the civic authoritieshad failed to provisionthe townat an honestprice.27 Now we can deducesome of the same assumptions from the actions of the religiouscrowds of the mid-sixteenthcentury. When the magistratehad not used his swordto defendthe faithand the true churchand to punishthe idolators,then the crowdwould do it for him. Thus, manyreligious disturbances begin withthe ringingof the tocsin,as in a time of civic assemblyor emergency. Some riots end with the marchingof the religious "wrongdoers"on the otherside to jail. In 1561, for instance,Parisian Calvinists, (note 25 cont.) dise/Clercs et marchanseut asses./Mais si tostqu'en futpurgee/ Et changee/ Par la Parollede Dieu:/ Cetteengence de vipere/Plus n'espere/D'habiter en si sainctlieu": AntoineDu Plain,"De l'assistanceque Dieu a Faite~ sonEglise de Lyon" in H. L. Bordier(ed.), Le chansonnierhuguenot au XVIe sizcle(Paris, 1870),p. 221. On Catholicclergy as "vermin",see Discoursde la vermineet prestraillede Lyon,dechasse par le brasfort du Seigneur,avec la retraictedes moines... Par E.P.C. (1562) in Montaiglon,Recueil, viii, pp. 24-45. For the theoryin this paragraph,I have foundhelpful Mary Douglas's remarkson the relationbetween pollution fears and concernfor social boundaries(Purity and Danger,An Analysisof Conceptsof Pollution and Taboo [London, 1966], ch. 7) and the definitionsby Neil J. Smelserof "value- orientedmovements" (Theory of Collective Behavior, pp. 120-9and ch. x). 6 Thompson,"Moral Economy",pp. 91-115. 27 The essentialdocuments on the Rebeineare reprintedin M. C. and G. Guigue,BibliothBque historique du lyonnais(Lyon, 1886); and on theProvins riot in Haton, Mgmoires,pp. 714-25. For the relationof the food-riotto governmentalaction in France in the late seventeenthand eighteenth centuries,see Louise Tilly,"The Food Riot as a Formof PoliticalConflict in France",Ji. of InterdisciplinaryHistory, ii (1971), pp. 23-57.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 62 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 59 fearingthat the priestsand worshippersin Saint M6dard's Church wereorganizing an assaulton theirservices in the Patriarchegarden nextdoor, first rioted in Saint M6dard and thenseized some fifteen Catholicsas "mutinous"and led themoff, "bound likegalley-slaves", to the Chiteletprison.28 If the Catholickilling of Huguenotshas in some waysthe formof a riteof purification,it also sometimeshas the formof imitatingthe magistrate. The mass executionsof Protestantsat Merindol and Cabrieresin Provenceand at Meaux in theI540s, dulyordered by the Parlementsof Aix and of Paris as punishmentfor heresy and high treason,anticipate crowd massacres of later decades. The Protestants themselvessensed this: the devil, unable to extinguishthe light of the Gospel throughthe sentencesof judges, now tried to obscure it throughfurious war and a murderouspopulace. Whereasbefore theywere made martyrsby one executioner,now it is at thehands of "infinitenumbers of them,and the swordsof privatepersons have becomethe litigants,witnesses, judges, decrees and executorsof the strangestcruelties".29 Similarly,official acts of tortureand officialacts of desecrationof thecorpses of certaincriminals anticipate some of the acts performed by riotouscrowds. The publicexecution was, of course,a dramatic and well-attendedevent in the sixteenthcentury, and the wood-cut and engravingdocumented the scene far and wide. There thecrowd mightsee the offendingtongue of theblasphemer pierced or slit,the offendinghands of the desecratorcut off. There the crowdcould watchthe traitor decapitated and disemboweled,his corpsequartered and the partsborne off for public displayin differentsections of the town. The body of an especiallyheinous criminalwas dragged throughthe streets,attached to a horse's tail. The image of exemplaryroyal punishment lived on forweeks, even years,as the corpses of murdererswere exposed on gallows or wheels and the heads of rebelson posts.30 We are not surprisedto learn,then,

les Prestres 2, Histoire veritablede la mutinerie,tumulte et sedition,faite par Sainct Medard, contreles Fideles, le Samedy XXVII iour de December1562 [sic for 1561] in Arch. cur., iv, p. 55; memoirs of Canon Bruslart,Arch. cur., iv, p. 57, n. I; Haton, Mdmoires,p. 181. On Toulouse Catholic crowds leading Protestantsto prison, see Hist. eccl., iii, pp. 17-18. 19 Crespin, Martyrs,i, pp. 381-418, 494-500, iii, p. 639. a0 Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., "Maniera and the Mannaia: Decorum and Decapitation in the SixteenthCentury", in F. W. Robinson and S. G. Nichols, Jr. (eds.), The Meaning of Mannerism (Hanover, N.H., 1972), pp. 67-103; Journal d'un bourgeois,pp. 229, 373, 384-5; Claude Bellibvre, Souvenirs de voyages en Italie et en Orient.Notes historiques,ed. C. Perrat (Geneva, 1956), p. 26, n. 27; Haton, Mimoires,p. 375; Gueraud, Chronique,pp. 28-9; Pierre de (cont.on p. 63)

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUSRIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 63 thatthe body of AdmiralColigny had alreadybeen thrownout ofthe windowby the king'smen and stonedby the Duc de Guise hours before the popular attacks on it began in 1572. Furthermore, crowdsoften took their victims to places of officialexecution, as in Paris in 1562, when the Protestantprinter, Roc Le Frere, was draggedfor burning to the Marcheaux Pourceaux,and in Toulouse the same year, when a merchant,slain in frontof a church,was draggedfor burningto the town hall. "The King salutes you", said a Catholiccrowd in Orleansto a Protestanttrader, then put a cord aroundhis neck as officialagents might do, and led him offto be killed.31 Riots also occurredin connectionwith judicial cases, eitherto hurrythe judgementalong, or whenverdicts in religiouscases were consideredtoo severeor too lenientby "the voice of the people".32 Thus in 1569 in Montpellier,a Catholiccrowd forced the judge to condemnan importantHuguenot prisoner to deathin a hasty"trial", thenseized him and hangedhim in frontof his house. In 1551 a masked Protestantgroup kidnapped and released a goldsmith's journeyman,who had been condemnedin Lyon forheresy and was being removed to Paris. And in 1561 in Marsillargues,when prisonersfor heresy were released by royaldecree, a Catholiccrowd "rearrested"them, and executedand burnedthem in the streets.33 The mostfascinating example of the assumptionof the magistrate's

(note 30 cont.) L'Estoile, Medmoires-journaux,ed. Brunet et al., 12 vols. (Paris, 1888-96),ii, pp. 323-4;F. A. Isambertet al. (eds.),Recueil gendral des anciennes lois franfaises (Paris,1822), xii, nos. 115,210, xiii,nos. 18, 90; Edme de la Poix de Fremin- ville, Dictionnaireou traite'de la policegnderale des villes,bourgs, paroisses et seigneuriesde la campagne(Paris, 1758), pp. 56, 171; Le Roy Ladurie,Paysans, p. 5o6; Roland Mousnier,L'assassinat d'Henri IV (Paris, 1964), pp. 32-4; A. Allard,Histoire de la justicecriminelle au seiziemesikcle (Ghent, I868), pp. 333-4. 31 Hist.eccl., ii, p. 175. Forthe Marche aux Pourceaux as a placeof execution for heretics,see the Journald'un bourgeois,pp. 384-5. Bosquet,Histoire, p. 38. 32 L'Estoile, Mimoires-journaux,ii, p. 85 (describinghere the freeingby a Parisiancrowd of a man condemnedto death forimpregnating a young woman). 33 JeanPhilippi, Mldmoires in NouvelleCollection des Memoires pour servir a l'histoirede France,ed. Michaud and Poujoulat(Paris, 1838), viii, p. 634. Crespin,Martyrs, ii, p. 37; Hist. eccl.,i, p. 983. In Rouen,a Catholiccrowd of 1563 pressured the Parlement to condemn Protestantsto death; a Catholic crowd of 1571, having had some of its membersarrested for killing Protestants, brokeinto the prisonand freedthem: Hist. eccl.,ii, p. 792, n. I; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 662-3. For twoexamples of Catholiccrowds seizing from the gallows female heretics who had been condemned merely to be hanged, and burningthem instead, see Hist. eccl.,iii, pp. 43-4 and L'Estoile,Memoires- journaux,iii, p. 166.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 64 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 59 r61eby a crowd,however, is themock trial by the boysof Provinsin Champagnein October 1572. A Huguenot had been hangedfor theftsand killingscommitted during the religious troubles. Groups ofboys put ropes around his neckand hisfeet, but a tug-of-warcould notresolve which way the corpse was to be dragged. The boysthen electedlawyers and judgesfrom among their midst for a trial. Before the eyes of a hundredspectators, they argued the penalty,appealing fromthe decision of the real judge that the Huguenotbe onlyhanged and not burned alive. Afterthe boys' decision,the corpse was draggedthrough the streetsby the feetand burned.34 The seizureof religious buildings and the destructionof images by Calvinistcrowds were also accomplishedwith the convictionthat theywere taking on the r61eof the authorities. When Protestants in Montpellieroccupied a churchin 1561,they argued that the building belongedto themalready, since its clergyhad been whollysupported by merchantsand burghersin the past and theproperty belonged to thetown. In Agenthe same year, with Reformed ministers preaching thatit was the officeof themagistrate alone to eradicatethe marks of idolatry,Protestant artisans decided one nightthat "if one tarriedfor the Consistory,it would never be done" and proceededto break into the churchesand destroyall the altarsand images.35 To be sure, the relationof a French Calvinistcrowd to the magisterialmodel is differentfrom that of a FrenchCatholic crowd. The kinghad notyet chastised the clergy and "putall ydolatryto ruyne and confusyon",as Protestantshad been urginghim since the early 1530s.3. Calvinistcrowds were usinghis sword as the kingought to havebeen usingit and as someprinces and citycouncils outside of France had alreadyused it. Withinthe kingdombefore 1560 city councilshad onlyindicated the rightpath, as theyset up municipal schools,lay-controlled welfare systems or otherwiselimited the sphere of actionof the clergy.37 Duringthe nextyears, as revolutionand conversioncreated Reformed city councils and governors(such as the

34 Haton, Mimoires, pp. 704-6. The boys were aged twelve or younger, according to Haton. 3" Hist. eccl., i, pp. 970, 889. 3- Antoine de Marcourt, The bookeof Marchauntes(London, 1547), C iv-iir The Livre des Marchandswas firstpublished in Neuchatel in 1533. Antoine de Marcourt, A declarationof themasse, the fruyte thereof, the cause and themeane, whereforeand howe it oughte to be maynteyned(Wittenberg: Hans Luft [sic, for London, John Day], I547), D ivV, conclusion written by Pierre Viret. Marcourt's work firstappeared in French at Neuchitel in 1534. 37 Municipal schools in Toulouse, Lyon and Nimes among otherplaces, and urban welfare systems in Paris, Rouen, Lyon, Troyes, Toulouse and other cities. See N. Z. Davis, "Poor Relief, Humanism and Heresy: The Case of Lyon", Studies in Medieval and RenaissanceHistory, v (1968), pp. 216-75.

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Queen of Navarre)within France, Calvinist crowds finally had local magistrateswhose actions they could promptor imitate. In general,then, the crowdsin religiousriots in sixteenth-century France can be seen as sometimesacting out clerical r6les - defendingtrue doctrineor riddingthe communityof defilementin a violentversion of priestor prophet- and as sometimesacting out magisterialr1les. Clearly some riotous behaviour,such as the extensivepillaging done by bothProtestants and Catholics,cannot be subsumedunder these heads; but just as the prevalenceof pillaging in a war does not preventus fromtyping it as a holy war, so the prevalenceof pillagingin a riotshould not preventus fromseeing it as essentiallyreligious. II Whatever made the people thinkthey could rightfullyassume the r6les of priest, pastor and magistrate? Like other Catholic writers,when the Jesuit Emond Auger composed his Pedagogue d'Armesin 1568 to urge a holy war to exterminatethe heretics,he addressedhis instruction only to CharlesIX.38 Like otherReformed preachers,Pastor Pierre Viret told his flockthat private individuals should nevertake it upon themselvesto stop public scandalsunder coverof havingsome "extraordinaryvocation". There was no way thatone could get certainevidence from a Scriptureto showthat a particularprivate individual had such a calling,and everythingwas best left to those who held political power.39 When Protestant resistancetheory was fullydeveloped it too neverconceded a clear rightof violentdisobedience to privatepersons.40 Nor weresecular authoritiesin sixteenth-centurycities in the habitof telling the "little people" thatthey had a rightto riotwhen they felt like it. Yet the crowdsdid riot,and thereare remarkablyfew instances reported of remorse on the part of participantsin religious disturbances. Of the many Catholic murderersmentioned in

38 Emond Auger, Le Pedagogue d'Armes. Pour instruireun Prince Chrestiena bien entreprendreet heureusementachever une bonneguerre, pour estrevictorieux de tousles ennemisde son Estat, et de L'Eglise Catholique.Dedie au Roy, Par M. Emond, de la Compagniede lesus (Paris, 1568), especially fos. 18r-24v. 9 Letter from Pierre Viret to the Colloque de Montpellier,15 Jan. 1562 in Hist. eccl., i, pp. 975-7. Pierre Viret, L'Interim, Fait par Dialogues (Lyon, I565), PP. 396-7. Linder, Political Ideas, pp. 137-8. Robert Kingdon, Geneva and the Consolidationof theFrench Protestant Movement (Madison, Wis., 1967), pp. 153-5. 40 See, for instance, the Vindiciaecontra Tyrannos(trans. by J. H. Franklin) on this subject in J. H. Franklin (ed.), Constitutionalismand Resistancein the SixteenthCentury (New York, 1969), pp. 154-6.

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Crespin'sBook of Martyrs,only three were said to have fallenill in thewake of theirdeeds, to have becomemad and died invokingdevils or denyingGod. Leading killersin the Lyon Vespers of 1572 exhibitedtheir bloody pourpoints in the streetsand braggedof the numbersthey had slain; theirsubsequent absolution by a papal legate appearsa formal,political affair. In caseswhere Protestants returned to Mother Church, there may well have been some regretfor smashingstatues or assaultingpriests, but here only as partof a whole patternof "heretical"behaviour. So long as riotersmaintained a given religiouscommitment, they rarelydisplayed guilt or shame fortheir violence. By everysign, the crowdsbelieved their actions legitimate.41 One reasonfor this conviction is thatin some,though by no means all, religiousriots, clerics and politicalofficers were active members ofthe crowd, though not precisely in theirofficial capacity. In Lyon in 1562, PastorJean Ruffy took part in the sack of the Cathedralof SaintJean with a swordin his hand.42 Catholicpriests seem to have been in quite a fewdisturbances, as in Rouen in 1560, whenpriests and parishionersin a CorpusChristi parade broke into the housesof Protestantswho had refusedto do the processionhonour.43 (In othercases, the clergywas said to have been busybehind the scenes organizingthe crowds.44) At Aix a band of Catholicrioters was headed by the First Consul of thatcity, while at Lyon in 1562 the merchant-publisherand Consul, Jeande La Porte,led a Protestant

41 Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 694, 701, 711-12 and 717. The infrequencyof these tales of remorseis all the more significantbecause they could be used so readily by Protestantsto show the just punishment of God: cf. Hist. eccl., i, p. 357. Pastor Jean Ruffy,formally rebuked by Calvin for hisr6le in an iconoclasticriot in Lyon in 1562 (Robert Kingdon, Geneva and theComing of the Wars of Religionin France, 1555-1563 [Geneva, 1956], p. IIo), led a Protestant crowd against dancing Catholics in 1565 (de Rubys, Histoire, p. 406). On ambivalence about disobedience and violentbehaviour that might be embedded deep in the feelingsof rioters,I have no evidence one way or the other. 42Gueraud, Chronique, p. 155; Charles Du Moulin, Omnia... Opera, 5 vols. (Paris, I68I), v, p. 618; Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming,p. Iio. 43 Hist. eccl.,i, p. 352. For otherallegations that priests took part in Catholic riots in Toulouse, 1562 (ibid., iii, pp. 4-5); in Lavaur, 156I (i, pp. 938-9); in Clermont in Auvergne, 1568, Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 651. Also see the commentsof the priest Claude Haton about brawling priestswith swords in their hands, Mdmoires,pp. 17-18. 44For instance,priests at Nemours were said to have helped plan an attackon Protestantsthere in 156I, and Dominicans at Revel are alleged to have organized an attack on Psalm-singersthe same year: Hist. eccl., i, pp. 833-4, 959. The bishop of Autun was accused of organizinggroups of artisans to exterminate Protestantsin that city in 1562, and Cardinal Strozzi, the bishop of Albi, was supposed to have helped to organize a massacre in Gaillac in May 1562: ibid., iii, pp. 487-8, 8o-1.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 67 groupto an assaulton thecloister of Saint Just.45 The fightingcrowd of Protestantswhich "arrested" Catholics at SaintMedard's Church in 1561had in its midstthe chief officer of the "royal watch" in Paris. And amongthe image-smashers of Agenthe same yearwas thetown executioner. "It is my officeto set fire",he said as he put the statuesto theflames.46 Finally,there is thewell-known participation of some of the militiaofficers in the Saint Bartholomew'sDay massacresin Paris and in the Lyon Vespers. Their murderingand sacking,as JanineEstebe has pointedout forParis, went beyond any informalencouragement that they had fromthe king and clearly beyondthe official orders given them by theBureau de la Ville.47 On the otherhand, not all religiousriots could boast of officersor clergyin thecrowd, and othersources of legitimation must be sought. Here we mustrecognize what mixed cues weregiven out by priests and pastorsin theirsermons on heresyor idolatry. If we do notknow whetherto believethe Catholic priest, Claude Haton,in his claimthat a Huguenot preacher at Sens told his congregationthat "to exterminatepapal verminwould be a greatsacrifice to God", it is surelysignificant that iconoclasticriots in Gien and Rouen both occurredon 3 May 1562after sermons on thetext from Deuteronomy xii withwhich I opened this study.48 Howevermuch Calvin and otherpastors opposed such disturbances(preferring that all images and altarsbe removedsoberly by the authorities),they nevertheless werealways more ready to understandand excusethis violence than, say,that of a peasantrevolt or of a journeymen'smarch. Perhaps, afterall, the popularidol-smashing was due to "an extraordinary power (vertu)from God". How else was it possible, says Jean Crespinabout iconoclasmin the Netherlandsin 1566, for a small numberof men,women and children,badly equipped and of modest condition,to demolishin fourdays whatit would have takenmany

45 Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 390-I; Leopold Niepce, "Les tresorsdes Eglises de Lyon", Revue lyonnaise,viii (1884), p. 40, n. I. 4" Haton, Mdmoires,p. 182; Histoireveritable de la mutinerie... faite par les PrestresSainct Medard, in Arch. cur.,iv, p. 56. On the positionof the chevalier du guet,or chiefofficer of the watch, in Paris, see Isambert, Recueil,xii, no. 296. Hist. eccl., i, p. 889. 47 Estebe, Tocsin,pp. 137-40. The ordersgiven to the militiaofficers of Paris from22 Aug. to 30 Aug. 1572 are printedin HistoireGindrale de Paris. Rdgistres des ddliberationsdu Bureau de la ville de Paris, ed. F. Bonnardot, 19 vols. (Paris, 1883-1958), vii, pp. 9-20. Also see the leadership of doctors of theologyand militiacaptains in an unofficialburning of Protestantbooks by a Catholic crowd in Paris in 1568: Felibien and Lobineau, Histoire,iv, p. 828; I am gratefulto Alfred Soman for this reference. 4" Haton, Mimoires,p. 191. Hist. eccl., ii, pp. 537-8, 719-20.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 68 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 59 masons twice as long to do? How else to explain the fact that artisans,women and childrenhad been able to clean out fifty churchesin Rouen in onlytwenty-four hours ?49 PastorPierre Viret mayhave similarlywondered about God's r61ein a crowdseizure of Nimes cathedralin December1561. Though he had opposedsuch actions,he was neverthelesswilling to preachto the Calvinistsin the churchthree days later.50 The r61eof Catholicpreachers in legitimatingpopular violence was even more direct. If we don't know whetherto believe the Protestantclaim that Catholicpreachers at Paris were tellingtheir congregationsin 1557 that Protestantsate babies, it is surely significantthat, in the year of the attackon the rue St. Jacques conventicle,Catholic preachers did blame the loss of the battleof SaintQuentin on God's wrathat thepresence of heretics in France.51 In the next years,they held up Ahab and his wife Jezebel,and Belshazarand othersas examplesof the terrible end thatwould come to those who toleratedidolatry. Before a Catholic riot at the Cimiti"redes Innocents,Brother Jean de Han toldhis listenersin the churchthat they could not count on royaljudges to punishLutherans and would have to take mattersinto theirown hands.52 On St. Michael's Day I572 at Bordeaux,a few days beforethe massacres there,the JesuitEmond Augerpreached on how the Angel of the Lord had alreadyexecuted God's judgementin Paris, Orleansand elsewhere,and would also do so in Bordeaux.53 And if Protestant pastorscould timidlywonder if divinepower were not behindthe extraordinaryforce of the iconoclasts,priests had no doubts that certainmiraculous occurrences in the wake of Catholicriots were a signof divineapproval, such as a coppercross in Troyesthat began to changecolour and curepeople in 156I, the yearof a riotin which Catholicsbested Protestants,and the long-barrenhawthorn tree at

49 Crespin, Martyrs, iii, pp. 519-22; Hist. eccl., ii, pp. 719-20. Also, see Cond6's letter to the king of May 1562, in which he argues that though "le peuple" was at faultfor destroying images withoutwaiting for an orderfrom the magistrate,nevertheless, their action could be imputed to "a secret movement of God, inciting the people to detest and abhor idolatry, and not to any disobedience or rebellion": Hist. eccl., ii, p. 74. 50 Ann Guggenheim,"Calvinism and the Political elite of SixteenthCentury Nimes" (New York UniversityPh.D. thesis, 1968), ch. 6, p. 214. 51Crespin, Martyrs,ii, pp. 538, 546. Hist. eccl., i, pp. 268-9. 52 Haton, M'moires, pp. 527-9; Hist. eccl., i, pp. 192-3, 48I. 53 Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 727; Henri Hauser, "Le pere Emond Auger et le massacre de Bordeaux, 1572", Bulletin de la socidtdd'histoire du protestantisme franfais,5th ser., viii (19II), pp. 289-306.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 69 the Cimitieredes Innocents,which began to bloom from the beginningof the Saint Bartholomew'smassacres.54 In all likelihood,however, there are sourcesfor the legitimationof popularreligious riot that come directlyout of the experienceof the local groupswhich often formed the nucleusof a crowd- the men and womenwho had worshippedtogether in thedangerous days of the nightconventicles, the men in confraternities,in festivegroups, in youthgangs and militiaunits. It shouldbe rememberedhow often conditionsin sixteenth-centurycities required groups of "little people" to take the law into theirown hands. Royal edictsthem- selvesenjoined any person who saw a murder,theft or othermisdeed to ring the tocsin and chase after the criminal.55Canon law allowedcertain priestly r6les to laymenin timesof emergency,such as the midwife'sresponsibility to baptize a babyin dangerof dying,56 while the r61leof preachingthe Gospel was often assumed by Protestantlaymen in thedecades before the Reformed Church was set up. Talking about the Bible among themselves,some Calvinist city-dwellersdecided that privatepersons might be obliged to act independentlyof the magistratein defenceof religion,and even publisheda tract- The Civil and MilitaryDefense of theInnocents and of the Churchof Christ- in supportof this view with Old Testamentprecedents. 57

54 Haton, Memoires,pp. 195-7, 681-2. Protestantwriters also stress divine interventionto show God's disapproval of Catholic riotersand violence. For instance, in Draguignan two Protestantskilled by a crowd were found three months later with no sign of corruptionin their bodies and with theirwounds still freshin appearance. A Catholic who had been guarding the bodies was killed by Protestantsoldiers and his body instantlybecame rotten,and was eaten by crows and dogs. Hist. eccl., i, p. 428. In Marennes (Charente-Maritime), a rich burgherwho tried to preventa Protestantservice being held and beat up one of the Protestantsdied shortlyafter from apoplexy. This was viewed as the "hand of God" and led to the conversionof his childrento the new religion. Ibid., i, p. 357. 5 Freminville, Dictionnaire, p. 400, citing edicts of 1536 and 1550. Isambert, Recueil, xii, no. 115 (Edict of Sept. 1523), p. 531 (Edict of 25 Jan. 1536), pp. 557-8 (Edict of 9 May 1539). 56 Jacques Toussaert, Le sentimentreligieux en Flandresa' la fin du Moyen Age (Paris, 1963), p. 90; T. J. Schmitt, L'organisationecclesiastique et la pratique religieusedans la diocesed'Atun de i650o 1750 (Autun, 1957), P. 166. Until the Council of Trent, canon law allowed that a marriage promised between two persons privately,without the presence of a priest, and consummatedwas a sacrament. Even after Trent, it took some time for the 1564 legislation requiring a priest's presence to be widely known and followed. 57La Deffensecivile et Militaire des Innocens et de l'Eglise de Christ was published in Lyon in 1563, and burned on 12 June 1563 aftera condemnationby the pastors of Lyon and Governor Soubise: Du Moulin, Opera, v, pp. 17-22. On Old Testament precedents for private individuals killing tyrants, see Mousnier, Assassinat,p. 28.

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Finally,the very experienceof singingthe Psalms togetherin Frenchin a large armedgroup intenton challengingthe religious practicesof the worldaround it; thevery experience of beingpart of a CorpusChristi day procession at a timewhen danger threatened the sanctityof the host - theseprocessional experiences in themselves would feed a popularcertitude that the group did indeed have the righton occasionto move intothe realmof violencefor the sake of religion. III What then of the occasionsfor religiousriot? By "occasions" I don'tmean here the specific events, such as theSaint Bartholomew's rumourof conspiracy to killthe king, which have triggered particular instancesof religiousriot. Nor do I here mean anythingas grand as theories of structuralstrain, relative deprivationamong the people or crisesamong the elite, which might account for the timing of all riots. In fact,I am consideringthe chronologicalquestion of timingvery little in thispaper . . thatis, I am not askingwhy there are a clusterof religious disturbances in Lyon,say, in theearly '50s,58 a clusterof religiousdisturbances throughout France in the early '6os, and so on. I don'thave theextensive data upon whichto base such an analysis. Workingfrom the crowdbehaviour itself, I have 'merelystressed the fact that religious riot is likelyto occurwhen it is believedthat religious and/or political authorities are failingin their dutiesor need help in fulfillingthem. All I wouldadd in regardto thetiming and triggersof religious riot is thata risein grainprices does notseem to be a significantvariable. For instance,the religiousdisturbances in Toulouse in the firstfive monthsof 1562correspond to a periodof grain prices which were the sameas, or lowerthan, those of the preceding two years. The supply was surelymore abundant there than duringthe hard timesin the spring and early summerof 1557, when there was no religious

disturbance.I 59 The Catholicattack on the conventicleon the rue 58These disturbancesincluded armed marches of hundredsof Psalm-singing Protestant artisans and their wives in the spring of 1551; "assemblies and sedition" in the wake of hereticalpreaching by a Florentineat the St. Lawrence Hospital in August 1551; the theftof all the ornamentand the Sacramentfrom the Church of Fourvibresin October 1551; the desecrationof a crucifixand an image of Saint Anne in January 1553, etc. Gueraud, Chronique,pp. 54-5, 58, 65-6; Archives departementalesdu Rh6ne, B, Senechauss&e, Sentences, 1551-2, Dec. 1551. 59Georges and Genevieve Freche, Les prix desgrains, des vins et des ldgumes& Toulouse(1485-1868) (Paris, 1967), pp. 44-5. The famineand plague of 1557 were interpretedin Toulouse as the hand of God falling on the city for its iniquities. The local governmentthen tried to purge the town of the "idle vagabonds", to feed the starvingin Toulouse and fromnearby villages, and to get rid of "infecting vapors" and other filth in the streets. Antoine Noguier, Histoire Tolosaine (Toulouse, n.d., royal privilege, 1559), PP. 126-33.

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SaintJacques in September1557 occurredat a timewhen grain had droppedto a good low pricein Paris and was plentiful. The Saint- Medardriot at theend of 1561took place whenprices were rising, but were far fromwhat contemporarieswould have thoughta famine level.s As forthe 1572 massacres,they occurred at a timeof slowly rising grain prices, but not yet of serious dearth,with August- Septemberprices in Paris beinga littlelower than those of October 1571 and in Toulouse lowerthan in theimmediately preceding sum- mermonths.61 In short,grain prices are relevantto religiousriot in Franceonly in the generaland indirectsense that the inflation of the lastforty years of the sixteenth century had an effecton manyaspects of life,as did the ReligiousWars themselves. Perhapsit is onlyin thisbroad sense thatthey are partof the backgroundto the Flemish iconoclasticmovement of 1566 (I am here raisinga queryabout the interpretationof Verlindenand his colleagues),the specifictrigger forthe riots being more likely, as Crespinclaimed, the sudden upsurge in public Protestantpreaching.62 What are specificrises in grain prices correlatedwith in France? Why, with grain riots and penitentialwhite processions to beg forrain.63

60Micheline Baulant and Jean Meuvret, Prix des cereales extraits de la Mercuriale de Paris (1520-1698), 2 VOIs. (Paris, 1960), i, pp. 47, 49, 152-3. Maximum prices for wheat in December 1561 were somethingover 5 livres tournoisper setier,but a famineprice would be thoughtof in Paris as something like the 91 i.t. per setier,to which wheat rose in the summer of 1546. "' Freche, Prix, p. 46; Baulant and Meuvret, Prix, i, pp. 56-7. 62 See p. 54 and note 8 above. Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 518-9. A recent study of fifteenth-centurySpain has shown how complex the relation was between a rise in food prices and anti-Semitic pogroms. Its author suggests that a prolonged rise in food prices is part of the general background for a varietyof popular risings. The sharper the price rise, the more likely the disturbance was not to be "exclusively anti-Semitic in character". Angus MacKay, "Popular Movements and Pogroms in Fifteenth-CenturyCastile", Past and Present,no. 55 (May 1972), pp. 58-9. 63 As in the white processionsin Lyon in the springof 1504 and in the great grainriot, or GrandeRebeine, of Lyon in 1529: Paradin, Memoires,p. 281I;Davis "Poor Relief", pp. 227-30. The assertion of the physician Symphorien Champier,whose granarywas sacked in the GrandeRebeine, that the crowd also smashed religiousstatues in his house is surelyfalse and was not takenseriously by contemporaries:ibid., n. 43, and H. Hours, "Proces d'heresie contreAim6 Meigret", Bibliothdqued'humanisme et renaissance,xix (1957), pp. 20-I. During the droughtof spring 1556 in the Lyonnais, there were both penitentialwhite processionsof rural parishionersto Lyon and a crowd attackon boats removing grain fromthe cityfor the Order of Malta: Paradin, Memoires,p. 357; Gu'raud, Chronique,p. 95. For famine prices and grain riots in Provins in 1573 see Haton, Mimoires, pp. 714 ff; famine prices and a penitentialprocession in Paris in June 1521, Baulant and Meuvret,Prix, i, p. 94 and Journald'un bourgeois,pp. 82-3; and for extraordinaryprices and a bread riotin Paris in July1587, Baulant and Meuvret, Prix, i, p. 223 and L'Estoile, Me'moires-journaux,iii, p. 58.

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Questionsof chronologicaltiming apart, then, the occasion for mostreligious violence was duringthe timeof religiousworship or ritualand in the space whichone or both groups were using for sacredpurposes. There wereexceptions, of course. Profanationof religiousstatues and paintingsmight occur at night,especially in the earlyyears when it was a questionof a smallnumber of Protestants sneakinginto a church.64 Widespreadmurder, as in the 1572 massacres,might occur anywhere - in thestreets, in bedrooms. But much of the religiousriot is timedto ritual,and the violenceseems oftena curiouscontinuation of the rite. Almost everytype of public religiousevent has a disturbance associatedwith it. The sightof a statueof the Virginat a crossroad orin a wall-nicheprovokes a Protestantgroup to mockeryof those who reverenceher. A fight ensues. Catholics hide in a house to entrapHuguenots who refuseto dofftheir hats to a Virginnearby, and thenrush out and beatthe heretics up.65 Baptism:in Nemours, a Protestantfamily has its babybaptized on All Souls' Day according to the new Reformedrite. With the help of an aunt, a group of Catholicssteals it away forrebaptism. A drunkardsees the father and the godfatherand otherProtestants discussing the eventin the streets,claps his sabots and shouts,"Here are the Huguenotswho have come to massacreus". A crowdassembles, the tocsinis rung, and a three-hourbattle takes place.66 Funeral: in Toulouse, at Easter-time,a Protestantcarpenter tries to buryhis Catholicwife by the new Reformedrite. A Catholiccrowd seizes the corpse and buries it. The Protestantsdig it up and tryto reburyher. The bellsare rung,and witha greatnoise a Catholiccrowd assembles with stonesand sticks. Fightingand sackingensue.67 Religiousservices: a CatholicMass is the occasionfor an attack on the Host or the interruptionof a sermon,which then leads to a

64 As in Paris on the day afterPentecost 1528, when some hereticscut offthe head of a Virgin in a wall-niche at night: Journal d'un bourgeois,p. 291. Iconoclastic episodes in Lyon in January 1553 probably occurred at night: Gu6raud, Chronique,p. 65. For iconoclasticriots in Annonay at nightin 1561 see Achille Gamon, Mimoires in Nouvelle Collectionsdes Memoirespour servir a l'histoirede la France, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (Paris, 1838), viii, p. 6II. For an iconoclastic riot by sailors of Dieppe at night in 1562, see Hist. eccl., ii, p. 796. Haton, Mimoires, 340-I; Hist. i, p. 284. 6166 pp. eccl., Ibid., i, pp. 833-4; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 2Io. 67 Hist. eccl., iii, pp. 4-5; Bosquet, Histoire, pp. 67-9. For an episode concerninga Reformed burial at Bordeaux on All Souls' Day I56I, see Hist. eccl., i, pp. 870-1.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 73 riot.68 Protestantpreaching in a homeattracts large Catholic crowds at the door, who stone the house or otherwisethreaten the worshippers.69In theyears when the Reformedservices are public, therivalry of the rites becomes graphic. Side byside at Saint-Medard, the Vesperbells are rungto drownout the pastor'ssermon; side by side at Provins,the Huguenotssing theirPsalms to drownout the Mass.70 But theseencounters are as nothingcompared to the disturbances thatcluster around processional life. Corpus ChristiDay, withits crowds,coloured banners and great crosses,was the chance for Protestantsnot to put rugs in frontof theirdoors; for Protestant women to sit ostentatiouslyin theirwindows spinning; for heroic individuals,like the painterDenis de Vallois in Lyon, to throw themselveson the"God ofpaste" so as "to destroyhim in everyparish in the world". CorpusChristi Day was the chancefor a procession to turninto an assaulton and slaughterof thosewho had so offended the Catholicfaith, its participantsshouting, as in Lyon in 1561,"For the fleshof God, we mustkill all the Huguenots".71 A Protestant 8sE.g., at the Vespers service on the 18 March 1562 in Rouen (Hist. eccl., ii, p. 713, n. I); at Paris at the Sainte Chapelle in 1563 (Haton, Mdmoires, p. 375); at Toulouse at the Eglise Saint Sernin while the Inquisitor della Lana was preaching,4 May 1561 (Bosquet, Histoire,pp. 38-9). Bosquet claimed that an hereticalmerchant was killed by the zealous menupeuple afterhe shouted, "You lie, hypocriticalmonk" and other blasphemous remarks. A Protestant account claims that the merchantwas actually a Catholic, dissatisfiedwith the seditious remarks made by the preacher (Hist. eccl., i, p. 905). Protestant sources report other episodes in which jumpy Catholic worshippers killed persons as hereticswho were in fact Catholics. The victimshad been merely asking for more room or had laughed at a neighbour's remark(e.g., Angers in 1561, ibid., i, p. 837; Paris, Church of Saint Eustache, 1558, and at the Cimitiere des Innocents, 1559, ibid., i, pp. 193-4). 69 In addition to the well-known attack on the conventicle on the rue St. Jacques in Paris in 1557, there were four attacks on conventiclesin Paris in April-May 1561: F61ibienand Lobineau, Histoire,iv, pp. 797-8; R. N. Sauvage, "Lettre de Jean Fernaga,' procureur syndic de la ville de Caen, touchant les troubles survenus Paris en avril 1561", Bulletin de la socidtdde l'histoiredu protestantismefranfais, 5th ser., viii (1911), pp. 809-12. Crowds in Lyon in Sept. 1561 were out to sack all houses in which "people were having certain assemblies" and threatened the house of the Protestant merchant Jerome Pellissari: Archives d6partementalesdu Rh6ne, B, S6n6chauss6e, Audience, Sept.-Dec. 1561. For an attackon a conventiclein Auxerreon 9 Oct. 1561, see Hist. eccl., i, p. 852, and on one in Cahors on 16 Nov. 1561: Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 211. 70 Histoireveritable... in Arch. cur., iv, p. 52; Haton, Medmoires,pp. 179-82, 147, 177-8; F61ibien and Lobineau, Histoire,iv, p. 8oo. Also see the conflict between a Protestant service at a pastel mill at Castelnaudryand a Catholic procession for Pdques fleuriesin 1562: Hist. eccl., iii, p. 157. 71E.g., at Geneva at the Fite-Dieu, see Jeanne de Jussie, Le levain du calvinisme,p. 94. At Le Crosic, Brittanyin 1558, and at Rouen in 1560; Hist. eccl., i, pp. 179-80, 352. For the Lyon episode on Corpus Christi Day, 1560, see Gueraud, Chronique,pp. 133-4 and Archives d6partementalesdu Rh6ne, B, S6n6chauss6e, Sentences, 1561-2, sentence of 12 Sept. 1561. At Clermont- Ferrand in 1568, Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 651.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 74 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 59 processionwas a parade of armed men and womenin theirdark clothes,going off to servicesat theirtemple or outsidethe citygates, singingPsalms and spiritualsongs that to Catholicears sounded like insultsagainst the Churchand her sacraments. It was an occasion forchildren to throwstones, for an exchangeof scandalouswords - "idolaters","devils from the Pope's purgatory","Huguenot heretics, livinglike dogs" - and thenfinally, for fighting.72 Sometimes the two processionsencountered each other,as in Sens in 1562. The Calvinistswould not give way and insistedupon passingthrough the centreof the Catholic procession. The groupsconfronted each other again afterservices, and the Catholics,aided by processionsfrom peasantvillages, prevailed in a bloodybattle.73 The occasionswhich express most concisely the contrastbetween thetwo religious groups, however, are those in whicha popularfestive Catholicismtook over the streetswith dancing,masks, banners, costumesand music - "lasciviousabomination", according to the Protestants. In Lyon, when Catholics did their traditional summerdancing on St. Peter's Day 1565, the Huguenotsattacked themin a riot that led eventuallyto the exile of PierreViret and anotherpastor from the city. In Montpellier,in the summerof theconfraternities of hundredsof 156I, organizedSunday processions men,women and childrenwith pains bdnits ("blessed loaves of bread") - dancing,jumping, and crying,"In spite of the Huguenotswe dance". 74 But festivitiesled to more than spite and intimidation.For Mardi Gras at Issoudun in 1562, a Catholic group organizeda dramaticcostumed dance for thirteen pilgrims, thirteen reapers, thir- teen wine-harvestersand thirteentithe-collectors, each armedwith largemacabre tools. The Protestantsgot hold of the scenario for this grislycarnival and wereable to getthe players arrested.75 In Pamiers

72 The firstbig Psalm-singingparades seem to have occurredin 155I1in Lyon, with artisans, and especially printers' journeymen, taking the initiative in organizing them: Gueraud, Chronique,pp. 54-5; lettersof Claude Baduel to Calvin in 1551 in Jean Calvin, Opera ... Omnia,xiv, pp. I6ff. See Gu6raud on an episode in Lyon in Dec. 1561, Chronique,p. 145. Also see Haton, Mimoires, pp. 177-8, 190; Bosquet, Histoire,p. 60, and Hist.eccl.,iii, p. 2 on Toulouse in 1562. See L'Estoile, Mimoires-journaux,i, p. 157 on the stoning of "Huguenot troops" returningfrom services into Paris in Sept. 1576, followedby a violent melde. 7 Haton, M'moires, pp. 189-94. 74 De Rubys, Histoire,p. 406; Hist. eccl., i, pp. 969-70 and 970, n. I. In Rouen in 1562, Protestantmenu peuple stoned the membersof the festiveAbbey of Conards as they were about to begin their Mardi Gras activities: ibid., ii, p. 713. 75 Hist. eccl., i, p. 844.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 75 in 1566,however, the festive youth society, with its popes,emperors, bishops and abbots,was able to dance its Pentecostaldance to the end. The Calvinists,who had stonedearlier dances, tried to prevent the affair,but the Catholicgroup insisted. "If [the heretics]can preach secretly,then we can dance - or it will cost fivehundred heads". Aftera processionwith relics and a silverstatue of St. Anthony,the dancingbegan, three by three,with tambourines and minstrels. When theygot to the quarterwhere Pastor Du Moulin was preaching,the song turnedinto "kill,kill', and seriousfighting beganwhich was to dividethe town for three days. "It's a longtime since I was up to myelbows in Huguenotblood", one of the dancers said. He was to be disappointed,for this time it was the Huguenots who won.76 These occasionsfor religious riot show us how characteristicwas the scenariofor the Paris St. Bartholomew'smassacres. A marriage - one of the greatrites of passage,but here,as withthe baptismof Nemoursand the burialat Toulouse, conflictover whether its form shouldbe Catholicor Protestant- and thenwedding masques of all kinds. In one, laterseen as an allegoryof comingevents, the king and his brothersprevent wandering knights from entering Paradise and are pulleddown to Hell by demons.77 Soon after,as in Pamiers, the festivityturned into a riteof violence. IV As withliturgical rites, there were some differencesbetween the rites of violence of Catholic and Protestantcrowds. The good Calvinistauthors of the Histoireecclhsiastique went so faras to claim thatoutside of the murder of a certainSeigneur de Fumel,killed in the Agenois "not for religionbut for his tyrannies","those of the 76Discours des troublesadvenus en la Ville de Pamies le 5 luin 1566. Avec un briefrecit des calamitez souffertesl'Annee precedente(1567) in Arch. cur., vi, pp. 309-43. On the relation between carnival and masked festivities,and various kinds of disturbance, see Le Roy Ladurie, Paysans, i, pp. 395-9; N. Z. Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-CenturyFrance", Past and Present,no. 50 (Feb. 1971), pp. 68-70; and A. W. Smith, "Some Folklore Elements in Movements of Social Protest", Folklore,77 (1966), pp. 241-51. 77 Relation du massacrede la Saint-Barthelemyin Arch. cur., vii, pp. 88-9; Frances Yates, The FrenchAcademies of the SixteenthCentury (London, 1947), pp. 254-9. Marriage as a possible occasion for slaughterremained in the mind of Henri de Navarre. In I588 he feared that the festivitieswhich an Armagnac nobleman was givingfor his daughter'swedding were an occasion for a plot on his life. To preventthis, one of Navarre's supporters,a neighbourof the nobleman, entered the house with a band of men during the festivitiesand slaughtered about thirty-fivegentlemen: L'Estoile, Memoires-journaux,iii, p. 121.

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ReformedReligion made war only on imagesand altars,which do not bleed,while those of the Roman religion spilled blood withevery kind of cruelty".78Though there is some truth in this distinction, Protestantrioters did in factkill and injurepeople, and notmerely in self-defence;and Catholic riotersdid destroyreligious property. At the Patriarchegarden in Paris, at Vassy, at Senlis, Catholics smashed the pulpits and benches used in Reformedworship; at Amiensthey went on to burn them.79 As houses whichhad been used forProtestant worship in Meaux and Paris wereordered to be razed by Parlementarydecree, so in Lyon in I568 a Catholiccrowd razed the ProtestantTemple du Paradis,which hundreds of Psalm- singingmen, women and childrenhad builtonly a fewyears before.80 BothProtestant and Catholiccrowds destroyed books. The Catholic targetwas especiallythe FrenchBibles which they had so oftenseen burnedpublicly by the authoritiesin the I540s and I550s.81 The Calvinisttargets were especially the priests' manuals, the missals and the breviarieswhich Protestantwriters like Viret had already desecratedin grossand comicsatire.82 Nevertheless,when all this is said, the iconoclasticCalvinist

78 Hist. eccl., i, p. 887. 79 Histoire veritablede la mutinerie... faite par les PrestresSainct Medard ..., p. 62; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 205; Hist. eccl., ii, pp. 425, 433-5. 80Crespin, Martyrs,i, pp. 495-8; Discours de ce qui avint touchantla Croix de Gastines l'an 1571, vers Noel, extractedfrom Mimoires... de Charles IX, in Arch. cur.,vi, pp. 475-8. De Rubys, Histoireveritable, pp. 402, 412. [Jean Ricaud], Discoursdu massacrede ceux de la ReligionReformde, fait & Lyon par les catholiquesromains, le vingthuictiemedu mois de aozit et jours ensuivantde l'an 1572 (1574) (Lyon, 1847), PP. 9-13. 81 Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 204; Hist. eccl., ii, pp. 650-1, 839, 883, 932-3; iii, 15, 315; F6libien and Lobinaux, Histoire,iv, p. 828. 82 Bosquet, Histoire,pp. 22, 143-4; Haton, Mimoires, p. 18I; de Sainctes, Discourssur le saccagement... in Arch. cur., iv, p. 384; Hist. eccl., i, p. 935, ii, pp. 720, n. I and 925, iii, p. 515. A Catholic polemical piece fromToulouse describes the opening Protestant"crime" in that city as the sale by Protestant librairesof the Canon de la Messe, which the Calvinists had depraved. This is in all probabilitya Protestantedition of the Missal, with mocking and satirical footnotesthroughout, which had various editions, including one in Lyon in 1564: Les cauteles,canon et ceremoniesde la messe.Ensemble la messe intituli, Du corpsde Iesuchrist.Le touten Latin et en Franpois:Le Latin fidelementextraict du Messel a l'usage de Rome imprime' Lyon par lean de Cambray l'an mil cinq cens vingt(Lyon: Claude Ravot, 1564). In the comic traditionof Marcourt's Livre des Marchands,the work resemblesin organizationPierre Viret's satirical Manuel, ou Instructiondes Curez et Vicaires (Lyon: Claude Ravot, 1564). As with statue-smashing,Protestant pastors much preferredthat ecclesiasti- cal librariesbe confiscatedand catalogued by the authorities(as in the Archives departementalesdu Rh6ne, 3E566, Inventoryof Io May 1562) and not destroyed by the crowds. The Histoire eccldsiastique,iii, p. 515, expressed regretat the insolence of Huguenot soldiers who destroyedan enormous quantityof books at the Abbey of Cluny under the impressionthat they were all Missals.

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crowdsstill come out as thechampions in thedestruction of religious property("with more than Turkishcruelty", said a priest). This was not onlybecause the Catholicshad morephysical accessories to theirrite, but also becausethe Protestants sensed much more danger and defilementin thewrongful use of material objects. In Pamiers,the Catholicvicar might drop his BlackVirgin of Foix whenshe failedto bringgood weather;but thenhe tenderlyrepaired her brokenneck withan iron pin. When the Protestantsfound her, they promptly burnedthe head in Pamiersand the bodyin Foix.83 In bloodshed,the Catholicsare the champions(remember we are talkingof the actionsof Catholicand Protestantcrowds, not of their armies). I thinkthis is due notonly to theirbeing in thelong run the strongestparty numerically in mostcities, but also to theirstronger sense of thepersons of hereticsas sourcesof dangerand defiliment. Thus, injuryand murderwere a preferredmode of purifying the body social. Furthermore,the preferredtargets for physical attack differ in the Protestantand Catholiccases. As befittinga movementintending to overthrowa thousandyears of clerical"tyranny" and "pollution", the Protestants'targets were primarilypriests, monks and friars. That theirecclesiastical victims were usuallyunarmed (as Catholic criticshastened to pointout) did not makethem any less harmfulin Protestanteyes, or any more immunefrom the wrathof God.84 Lay people weresometimes attacked by Protestantcrowds, too, such as thefestive dancers who werestoned at Pamiersand Lyon,and the worshipperswho were killed at Saint-Medard'sChurch.85 But there is nothingthat quite resembles the style and extentof the slaughter of the 1572 massacres. The Catholiccrowds were, of course,happy to

83 Hervet, Discours sur.. . les pilleurs; Hist. eccl., i, p. 957. On the complexityof Catholic attitudestowards their statues, see Richard C. Trexler "Florentine Religious Experience: The Sacred Image", Studies in the Renaissance,xix (1972), pp. 25-9. 84 That priests and religious were the preferred(though not the exclusive) target for Protestantcrowds is a fact emergingnot only from an analysis of many crowd actions,but also fromCatholic literature.The Thdatredes Cruautes des heritiquesgives few examples of lay persons murdered,but many of priests and religious. Claude de Sainctes's Discours sur le saccagement(1563) also stresses Protestant attacks on priests. Gentian Hervet's Discours sur . .. les pilleurstalks with horrorof the Protestantwar against unarmed priests,and the Protestantclaim that their grudge is against the priests only. He warns that once all the churches are destroyed,the Protestantswill starton the common people. 85 Discours des troublesadvenus en la Ville de Pamies..., p. 318; de Rubys, Histoireveritable, p. 406; Haton, Memoires,p. I81.

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catcha pastorwhen they could,86 but the death of any heretic would helpin thecause of cleansingFrance of these perfidious sowers of disorderand disunion.Indeed, while the number of women killed by Protestantcrowds seems to have been verysmall, observers' reportsshow about one out of ten people killed by Catholic crowds in the provincesin 1572was a woman,and the ratiowas higherin Paris.87 Clearly,crowds that attacked unarmed priests and unarmed women werenot tryingto destroyonly the physicallypowerful. But is JeannineEstebe right in suggestingthat the 1572 massacres were also anexpression ofclass hatred, by which she means a risingof the people againstthe rich Huguenots ?88 We can evenbroaden her question and ask whetherit's trueof otherCatholic disturbances and of Protestantriots as well. As CharlesTilly and JamesRule have askedin MeasuringPolitical Upheaval, is the"isomorphy" of these disturbanceshigh or low, by which they mean is therea highor low "degreeof correspondencebetween the divisionsseparating the 86 Amongthe pastorskilled or assaultedby Catholiccrowds were Leonard Morelat Vassy, 156I; PastorsRicher and Marcil at Poitiers,1562; Pastor Giscart at Castelnaudary,I562; a pastorat Gaillac,1562; and PastorBonnet at Macon, 1562. MartinTachard, formerly pastor at Val d'Angrogneand Montauban, was led in mockerythrough Foix in 1567. Amongthe pastors killed in the1572 massacreswere: Bugnette, Le More and Des Gorrisat Paris;Jacques Langlois and N. Dives at Lyon; PierreLoiseleur dit de Villiersand Louis Le Coq at Rouen; and a ministerat Bordeaux. 87 Estimatesin Crespinof personskilled in the 1572 massacresgive, for Rouenabout 550 menand about50 women;for Orleans, I,8oo adultmen and were fromthe I5o adultwomen. No femaledeaths reported Lyon Vespers. So manywomen were victims at Paristhat word went out on the28 or 29 Aug. 1572that no morewomen were to be killed,especially pregnant women. Even here,the listings show many fewer female deaths than male. The sameis true forearlier crowd actions by Catholics, as in Provencein 1562: Crespin,Martyrs, iii, pp. 695, 721, 7Io ff.,678, 371-88. It is clearfrom these estimates that pregnantwomen could not have beenpreferred targets, though they obviously werenot spared. Whetherthey were the "choicevictims" (victimes de choix) of Catholiccrowds, as Estebe claims(Tocsin, p. 197), I do not know. She associatesthis, as well as the castrationof male corpses,with an attemptto extinguish"a foreignrace, a hatedand cursedrace". As suggestedabove (n. 25), I findno evidenceof the perceptionof the Huguenotsas a "race". By theirheresy, they appeared outsiders and finallynon-human to theirkillers, butthis is nota racialdistinction. On thecastration of corpses and thekilling of unborninfants as ultimateefforts to humiliateand weakenthe dangerous enemy,see belowpp. 82-3. As forProtestant killing of women, Catholic sources report women killed by the Huguenotsin the Saint-Medardmassacre at Paris,in the May eventsat Toulousein 1562and in the dioceseof Angouleme:Haton, Mdmoires, p. 181; Relationsde l'meutede Toulouse,p. 351; Thdatredes cruautis, p. 44. Bosquet reportsnuns raped at Montaubanin 1562; Histoire,ch. ii. On the whole, accountsof Protestantcrowd action say little about assaults on females;with statuesof the Virginand femalesaints, it is anothermatter. 88 Est"be,Tocsin, p. 196.

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antagonists in a . . . disturbance and those prevailing in the social systemwithin which the disturbanceoccurs"?89 Though only extensivequantitative research could establishthe point, it seems to me that Estebe's view does not hold for these urbandisturbances. To be sure,pillaging played its r61ein all riots. To be sure, the Catholic crowds who threwslime and shouted "putains" ("whores") at the Protestantnoblewomen being led from the rue Saint Jacquesconventicle to prisonin 1557 were savouring social resentmentas well as religioushatred. So probablywere the embroiderer'sjourneyman who slew a notablejewel merchant in 1572 at Paris and the cutlerwho slew a lawyerin Orl6ans.90 For Protes- tantsat Valence in I562 who killedthe Sire de La Motte Gondrin, lieutenant-governorof the Dauphine,there were political grievances to reinforcereligious and social complaint.91 Nevertheless,despite such individualcases of "high isomorphy", the overallpicture in these urban religiousriots is not one of the "people" slaying the rich.92 Protestantcrowds expressed no preferencefor killingor assaultingpowerful prelates over simple priests. As for Catholic crowds, contemporarylistings of their victimsin the 1572 massacresshow that artisans, the "littlepeople", are representedin significantnumbers. In Lyon, for instance,in a list of 141 males killedin the Vespers,eighty-eight were artisans, thirty-fourwere merchantsand six were lawyers."" Reportsfrom 89 Tilly and Rule, Political Upheaval, pp. 59-60. 90Crespin, Martyrs,ii, p. 545, iii, pp. 676, 696. 91Hist. eccl., iii, pp. 301-5. So also in Troyes, where a stockingmakerkilled the merchant-provostof the town, who had formerlybeen a member of the Reformed Church, one expects that political grievances reinforcedreligious hatred: Crespin,Martyrs, iii, p. 685. At Meaux, Crespin reportsthat one Gilles Le Conte was killed in the 1572 massacres,less because of his ReformedReligion than because he was a tax-farmerfor Catherine de Medicis and was sometimes hard on Catholics: Martyrs,iii, p. 682. 92 Though numerous other examples of "high isomorphy"can be found,the pages of Crespin are full of examples where artisans and merchants slew people in their trade (ibid., iii, p. 675) and where relatives slew relatives (iii, pp. 676, 697). There are also individual cases of "high isomorphy",where the killing occurred "downward" - that is, the wealthy Catholic killed a poor Protestant. Indeed, the author of the Tocsain contreles massacreurs(in Arch. cur., vii, pp. 58-9) asked the followingquestion: as for the little people who professed the Reformed Religion, what humanitycould they expect afterthe illustriousfamilies had been treated in such a fashion? 93 Figures compiled from Premiereliste des chretiensmis aimort et igorgesa Lyon par les catholiquesromains a' l'poque de la S. Barthelemiaoat 1572, ed. P. M. Gonon (Lyon, 1847) and Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 707-18. Letters from Lyon to Paris in early September reportedthat between six and seven hundred persons were killed in all: A. Puyroche, "Le Saint-Barthelemya Lyon et le gouverneur Mandelot", Bulletin de la socidte de l'histoiredu protestantisme frangais,xviii (1869), p. 365; Jacques Pannier, L'Eglise Reform&ede Paris sous Henri IV (Paris, 1911), p. 369, n. I. These estimatesseem high on the basis of all the available evidence fromwills and burials.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 80 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 59 othercities give a similarspread, as can be seenin thefollowing table. Only in Orleanswere moremerchants reported to have been killed than artisans,while in Rouen and Meaux the "littlepeople" out- numberthe wealthier merchants among the victims many times over. The distributionsare all the moresignificant because the prominent and rich who were slain were especiallylikely to be remarked. If we had fullerevidence about the massacres,it would doubtless multiplythe namesof victimsof modestbackground.

TABLE I SOCIAL-OCCUPATIONALDISTRIBUTION OF MALE VICTIMS IN CONTEMPORARYLISTINGS OF THE 1572 MASSACRES* Nobles Law- Mer- Teach- Artisans Un- Occu- CITY t yers, chants ers, skilled, pation TOTAL Officers Pastors Ser- un- vants known Bourges o 7 6 0 8 o 2 23 Meaux 0 5 13 o 10 I 0 229 (+200) Troyes o I II 0 22 2 0 36 Orleans 2 15 50 2 47 11 15 142 Rouen 3 9 18 3 I19 3 31 186 Lyon 0 6 34 3 88 5 5 141 Paris 36 14 13 5 40 2 II 121 * Sources for Lyon are given in n. 93. Other lists are from Crespin, Martyrs,iii. t Nobles are here definedas personslisted with the title"Sieur de" in Crespin. Some of the lawyersand high officerskilled may also have been ennobled. $ The names of ten artisansare listed forMeaux, afterwhich the author says and "other artisans to the number of 200 or more". This figurehas been added, not because it is believed to be accurate, but because it reflectsthe impressionof contemporariesas to what level of the population was hit by the massacres.

As I showin detailin myforthcoming book Strikesand Salvation at Lyon,Catholic and Protestantmovements in Frenchcities up to 1572cut vertically through the social structure, but had eacha distinc- tiveoccupational distribution. On thebasis of limitedevidence, that distributionseems to be fairlywell reflectedin the victimsof crowd action,94and (as we willsee morefully in a moment)in the make-up

94In my forthcomingbook Strikesand Salvation at Lyon, an analysis of the social and vocational distributionof several thousand male Protestantsin Lyon in the period up to 1572 shows themto be drawnfrom the Consular elite,notables and menupeuple in numbers roughlyproportional to their distributionin the population at large, but to be selected especiallyfrom the newer or more skilled occupations,occupations where the literacyrate was higher,or occupations(such as tavernkeeping)which had been transformedby the urban developmentsof the (cont.on p. 81)

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of the crowds. Only the mostvulnerable of the urbanpoor - the gagnedeniers,that is, theunskilled, the day labourers and thejobless - are not amongthe killersor the killed. Neithercommitted to the Calvinistcause nor well integratedinto the Catholic city parish, these "bilitres"("rascals") appear only afterthe violenceis over, stolidlyrobbing clothing from the corpses.95 Is popularreligious violence in sixteenth-centuryFrance never then correlatedin a systematicway with socio-economicconflict? Not when it is among the city-folk,who account for most of the disturbances;but when peasantsraise theirarms for the faith,the relationshipis morelikely to exist. How else to explainthe dispatch withwhich peasant pilgrims fell upon the Huguenotburghers of Sens, surprisingeven the urban Catholicsby theirinitiative? And when Protestantpeasants in the Agenoispursued their persecuting lord, the Seigneurof Fumel, theywere shouting,"Murderer! Tyrant!" Even Catholicpeasants joined in the seige of his chateau.96 Beforeturning to thecomposition of the urbancrowds, let us look a littlefurther at whatI have calledtheir rites of violence. Is there anyway we can orderthe terrible, concrete details of filth, shame and torturethat are reportedfrom both Protestantand Catholicriots? I would suggestthat they can be reducedto a repertoryof actions, derivedfrom the Bible, fromthe liturgy,from the actionof political authority,or fromthe traditionsof popularfolk justice, intended to

(note94 cont.) early sixteenthcentury. At the top of urban society,it is the new elite rather than the more established elite that tends to produce Protestants(in Lyon, therefore,among the Consular familiesit is the wealthymerchants rather than the lawyers who tend to become Protestant). This vocational distributionis, of course, not perfectlyexpressed in the victimsof the massacres,since so many factorsoperated in the choice of any one person as a victim. For instance,very few persons fromthe publishing trade were killed in the Vespers at Lyon (the libraires Jean Honor6, Mathieu Penin, and Jean Vassin, the bookbinder Mathurin Le Cler and the proofreaderJean de Saint Clement), though a very large percentage of the industryhad been Protestantin the I560s and many mastersand publishers still were so in 1572. It is my impressionthat in other cities, members of the publishing trade, though certainlyfound among the victims, were under-representedrelative to their presence in the Reformed Church. This can probably be explained by the special relationsamong the men in the trade or by their absence from France. 9, Rdlation du massacrede la Saint-Barthelemy,reprinted from Memoiresde l'Etat de France sous Charles IX in Arch. cur., vii, p. 151; Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 703. 96 Haton, Memoires,pp. 190-3; Hist. eccl., i, pp. 885-6. See also a religious riotwith "high isomorphy"in Beaune, a small town with a veryhigh percentage of winegrowers- thatis, a large ruralelement - withinits walls. In 1561 the winegrowersand othersof the "little people", supported fromabove by one of the city councillors, attacked Protestantsreturning from services. The latter group included some of the wealthierfamilies in Beaune. Ibid., i, pp. 864-5.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 59 purifythe religiouscommunity and humilitatethe enemyand thus makehim less harmful. The religioussignificance of destructionby wateror fireis clear enough. The riverswhich receive so manyProtestant corpses are not merelyconvenient mass graves, they are temporarily a kind of holy water,an essentialfeature of Catholicrites of exorcism. The fire whichrazes the house of a Protestantapothecary in Montpellierleaves behindit not the smellof death,of the hereticwhom the crowdhad hanged,but of spices,lingering in the air fordays, like incense. If Protestantshave rejectedholy waterand incense,they still follow Deuteronomyin acceptingfire as a sacred means of purification."9 Let us take a more difficultcase, the troublingcase of the desecrationof corpses. This is primarilyan action of Catholic crowdsin the sixteenthcentury. Protestantcrowds could be very cruel indeed in torturingliving priests, but paid littleattention to them when they were dead.98 (Perhaps this is related to the Protestantrejection of Purgatoryand prayersfor the dead: the souls ofthe dead experienceimmediately Christ's presence or thetorments of the damned,and thusthe dead bodyis no longerso dangerousor importantan objectto the living.) Whatinterested Protestants was diggingup bonesthat were being treated as sacredobjects by Catholics and perhapsburning them, after the fashionof Josiahin I Kings.99 The Catholics,however, were not content with burning or drowning 91On Catholic rites of exorcism, see Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, chaps. 2 and I5. For the Montpellier episode, see Philippi, Mimoires, p. 634. Cf. the somewhat differenttreatment by Estebe of the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre as a "ritual crime" and purificationrite: Tocsin, p. 197. 98Though Catholic writerssuch as the priest Claude Haton admit to various acts of desecrationof corpses by Catholic crowds (e.g., Mimoires,pp. 704-6), they make remarkablyfew accusations against Protestantsfor the same kind of acts. Haton gives only one example - the dismembermentof a doctor of - theology,killed in the Saint Medard massacre (ibid.,p. 18I) thoughhe accuses the Huguenots of many other kinds of vicious actions. Bosquet's book on Toulouse gives one example of Protestantsdisemboweling a priest and display- ing his entrails(Histoire, pp. 9-Io, at Montauban), but stressesmuch more the Protestanthumiliation and tortureof livingpersons. The Thdatredes cruautes des hiritiques, which would surely have mentioned the Protestant acts of desecration of corpses if they had been common, talks only of the tortureof living priests. In contrast, Protestant writings are full of descriptions of Catholic desecrationof corpses, and Catholic sources describe these as well. 99Calvin on Purgatoryand the whereaboutsof the soul between death and the Last Judgementin the Institutes,Book III, ch. 5, sections6-Io; Book III, ch. 25, section 6. See also Keith Thomas's discussion of Protestantattitudes towards the dead in Religion,pp. 588-95, 602-6; Claude de Sainctes, Discours sur le saccagement,p. 381 (burning of "holy bones" at Orleans). For the diggingup and throwingaround of saints' bones at Lyon, see Gu6raud, Chronique,p. 156, and Niepce, Monuments,p. 42-3.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 83 hereticalcorpses. That was notcleansing enough. The bodieshad to be weakenedand humiliatedfurther. To an eerie chorus of "strangewhistles and hoots", they were thrownto the dogs like Jezebel,they were dragged through the streets, they had theirgenitalia and internalorgans cut away,which were then hawked through the cityin a ghoulishcommerce.100 Let us also take the embarrassingcase of the desecrationof religiousobjects by filthy and disgustingmeans. It is theProtestants, as we have seen, who are concernedabout objects,who are tryingto showthat Catholic objects of worshiphave no magicalpower. It is not enoughto cleanseby swiftand energeticdemolition, not enough to purifyby a greatpublic burning of the images, as in Albiac,with the childrenof the townceremonially reciting the Ten Commandments around the fire.10' The line betweenthe sacred and the profane was also re-drawnby throwing the sacred host to thedogs, by roasting thecrucifix upon a spit,by usingholy oil to greaseone's boots,and by leavinghuman excrement on holy-waterbasins and otherreligious objects.10 2 And what of the living victims? Catholics and Protestants humiliatedthem by techniquesborrowed from the repertoryof folk justice. Catholiccrowds lead Protestantwomen through the streets withmuzzles on - a popularpunishment for the shrew- or with a crownof thorns.103A formof charivariis used,where the noisy thronghumiliates its victimby makinghim ride backward on an ass. 100 Strange sounds in Paris at the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacres: Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 681. Bodies thrownto the dogs in Draguignan and in Frdjus in 1560 (Hist. eccl., i, pp. 421, 429) and in Orl6ans (Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 693). Parts of corpses were sold at Villeneuve d'Avignon in 1561 ("Five pence for a Huguenot's liver!"); at Vire in 1562 ("who wants to buy the tripe of Huguenots?"); at Paris in 1572; at Lyon in 1572 (where an apothecary rendered fat fromProtestant corpses and sold it at 3 blancs the pound): Hist. eccl., i, p. 978; ii, p. 846; Le Tocsain contreles autheursde Massacre de France in Arch. cur., vii, p. 51; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 713. There are also a few reportsof cannibalismby Catholics in the wake of crowd murder("not forhunger", as Montaigne says of "Cannibals" in his Essais, "but to representan extremevengence"): at Carcassone in 1561, Troyes in 1562 and Sens in 1562: Hist. eccl., i, p. 94; ii, p. 478; iii, pp. 419-20. Le Roy Ladurie reports a curious story of cannibalism among Protestantsat Lodeve in 1573: the body of Saint Fulcran, miraculouslyconserved, was shot and then eaten by order of the Huguenots in the wake of an uprisingthere: Les paysans, i, p. 398, n. 5. 101 Hist. eccl., i, p. 931. 102Haton, Mimoires, pp. 181-2; Gueraud, Chronique, p. 156; Bosquet, Histoire,p. 148; de Sainctes, Discours,p. 372. See pp. 58-9 and n. 21 above. 103 For the muzzle at Toulouse in 1562, and the crowns of thorns at St. Martin de Castillan and Brignolles in 1562, see Hist. eccl., iii, p. 43; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 386-7. On punishmentsfor the shrew, see Davis, "Reasons of Misrule", pp. 52, 56, n. 48. Prisonerswere sometimesmuzzled on the way to execution: L'Estoile, Mimoires-journaux,iii, p. 166.

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In Bloisin 1562,the Catholics did thisto a Protestantsaddler, poking him witha pike and shouting,"Oh, don't touchhim, he belongsto the Queen Mother". In Montauban,a priestwas riddenbackward on an ass, his chalice in one hand, his host in the other,and his missalat an end of a halberd. At the end of his ride,he mustcrush hishost and burnhis ownvestments. And,as in thefestive parade on an ass of henpeckedhusbands it was sometimesnecessary to get a neighbourto replacethe husband,so sometimesa Protestanthad to replacethe priest. Dressed in holy vestments,he would be led throughthe streets pretending to saymass, while the crowd with him sang in derisionTe Deum Laudamusor a requiem.'04 With such actions,the crowds seem to be movingback and forthbetween the ritesof violenceand the realmof comedy. Are we at a Mardi Grasgame, with its parodies and topsy-turvymockery? At Lyon, a Protestant,in the midstof sackingthe Churchof Saint Iren&e,dresses up as theSaint with his episcopal ring around his neck. At Rouen,the hostis paradedat the end of a Rogation'sDay lance witha dragonon it: "The dragonhas eatenthe host"!"'- At Macon in 1562, the familiarblessing from Numbers vi. 24-6 is parodiedas Protestantsare slain: "The lordGod ofHuguenots keep you, the great Devil bless you,the Lord makehis faceto shineupon you who play the dead". Murderfinally began to be called a "farce" in Macon, the "farceof SaintPoint", the lieutenant-governor.The game was to go withsome womenafter a partyand get one or two Protestant prisonersfrom jail, have theladies chat pleasantly with them, as they walkedto the Sa6ne bridge,and thendrown them.'10 104 Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 311-2; Hist. eccl., i, p. 935; Bosquet, Histoire, pp. 9-Io; de Sainctes,Discours, p. 384. Therewere other charivari-like actions in religiousriots: at Tours in 1562Protestant women were taken back to mass on horseback"in derision"(probably facing backward on thehorse): Hist. eccl., ii,p. 695. At Maconin 1562,Pastor Bonnet was promenaded through the town with"mockery, a thousandraps on thenose and punches",the crowd crying, "Whoeverwants to hearthis pious and holyperson preach, come to thePlace de L'Escorcherie":ibid., iii, p. 522. In 1567,Pastor Martin Tachart was led throughFoix in triumph,in a "whitebonnet, with a rosaryround his neck": Discours des troublesadvenus en la Ville de Pamies, p. 342. On charivaris,see Davis, "The Reasonsof Misrule". 105 Claude de Rubys, Oraisonprononcee a Lyon a la Creationdes Conseillers et eschevins... le iour de la feste S. Thomas... 1567 (Lyon, I568), Bb 2v; the journal of Canon Bruslart of Rouen, quoted in Hist. eccl., ii, p. 720, n. I. 10o Hist. eccl., iii, pp. 518, 524. Other examples of the renamingof objects or actionsof violence:Protestants in Beziersand Montpelliercalled the clubs with which they hit priests and religiousand other Catholic enemies dpousettesor"whiskbrooms". Catholics in Mont-de-Marsanand its region used the same termfor the clubs withwhich they hit Protestants:Hist. eccl.,iii, pp. 158-9; ii, pp. 963-4; Philippi, Mimoires,p. 624. At Agen, the gibbet on whichProtestants were hangedwas called the "Consistory":Hist. eccl.,ii, pp. 941-2. At Rouen, Catholiccrowds referredto killingHuguenots as "accomodating" them: Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 721.

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These episodesdisclose to us the underlyingfunction of the rites of violence. As withthe "games" of Christ'stormentors, which hide fromthem the full knowledge of whatthey do, so thesecharades and ceremonieshide fromsixteenth-century rioters a full knowledgeof whatthey are doing. Like thelegitimation for religious riot examined earlierin this paper,they are part of the "conditionsfor guilt-free massacre",to use a phrasefrom a recentstudy of violencein our own day.x07 The crucialfact that the killersmust forgetis that their victimsare human beings. These harmfulpeople in the com- munity- the evil priestor hatefulheretic - have alreadybeen transformedfor the crowdinto "vermin"or "devils". The ritesof religiousviolence complete the processof dehumanization. So in Meaux, where Protestantswere being slaughteredwith butchers' cleavers,a livingvictim was trundledto his deathin a wheelbarrow, while the crowd cried "vinegar,mustard". And the vicar of the parishof Fouquebrunein theAngoumois was attachedwith the oxen to a ploughand died fromProtestant blows as he pulled.x08

V Whatkinds of people made up thecrowds that performed the range of actswe have examinedin thispaper? First,they were not by and large the alienatedrootless poor that people the pages of Norman Cohn's Pursuitof theMillennium.'lo A largepercentage of men in Protestanticonoclastic riots and in the crowdsof Catholickillers in I572 werecharacterized as artisans. Sometimesthe crowds included othermen from the lower orders, as in 1562in Gaillac,where Catholic boatmenfrom Montauban participated in the May massacres,and in Dieppe, whereProtestant sailors entered the churchesat nightto smash statues. More often,the social compositionof the crowds extendedupward to encompassmerchants, notaries and lawyers,as

107 Troy Duster, "Conditions for Guilt-Free Massacre", in Nevitt Sanford and Craig Comstock (eds.), Sanctionsfor Evil (San Francisco, 1971), ch. 3. Duster especially stresses the dehumanization of victims, and this volume contains several interestingessays on this matter. 108sCrespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 684; Thddtredes cruautesdes hiretiques, p. 44. There are several examples of Catholics associating Protestantsnot only with animals, but also with excrement. Excrement is thrown at them by crowds (Crespin, Martyrs,ii, p. 545, iii, pp. 203-4, 672), and in an extraordinaryepisode in Toulouse Protestantshiding in the sewers along the river are flushed out, covered with excrement,by great streams of water poured into the cloacas by Catholics, and are drowned (Hist. eccl., iii, p. 19). 109 Cohn, Pursuit,pp. 32, 137, 281.

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 86 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER59 well as the clerics whose r6le has already been mentioned."11 Dependingon the size, extentand occasionof the disturbance,the leaders of the crowd were sometimesartisans themselves,but frequentlya mixed group. Iconoclasticdisturbances, other than those carriedout by Protestantnoblemen and theirsoldiers, were ordinarilyled by the "littlepeople", but notablepersonages led the Protestantrioters into Saint Medard's churchin I561. Of twenty leadersof the 1572 massacresat Orleans,three were lawyers, eight weremerchants, and otherswere various kinds of craftsmen-tanners, butchersand candlemakers.ll In addition,there was significantparticipation by twoother groups ofpeople who, though not rootless and alienated,had a moremarginal relationshipto politicalpower than did lawyers,merchants or even male artisans- namely,city womenand teenagedboys. As the wivesof craftsmenmarched with their husbands in the greatPsalm- singingparades, so theywere always busy in the iconoclasticriots of the Protestants. Sometimesthey are active in otherways, as in Pamiers,where a bookseller'swife set fireto thehouse of theleading enemyof the Huguenots there, and in Toulouse,where La Broquiere, a solicitor'swife, fought Catholics with firearms.112 As thewives of Catholictradesmen march with their husbandsin Corpus Christi 110 Artisansin iconoclasticriots: Hist. eccl.,i, pp. 889, 702, 719. Analysis of Catholiccrowds from Crespin, Martyrs, iii, pp. 663-733. Catholicboatmen at Gaillac,ibid., iii, p. 82; Protestantsailors at Dieppe,ibid., ii, p. 796. Catholics arrestedin the wakeof the CorpusChristi day riotat Lyon in 1561,during whichBarth6lemy Aneau, rector of the Collegede la Trinite,and otherswere killed:a boatman,a miller,a tavernkeeper,a shearer, a silkthrower(Archives departementalesdu Rh6ne,B, Senechauss6e,Sentences, 1561-2, sentence of 14 Aug. 1561). Councillorsfrom the Parlementof Toulouse in a violent Catholic crowd of May 1562 in Hist. eccl., iii, p. I5. In an interestingpaper of May 1972, given at the NewberryLibrary Conferenceon the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew'sDay, JohnTedeschi presenteda hithertounknown manuscript by Tomasso Sassetti, Newberry Lib., CastelvetroMSS. Cod. 78/2,describing the massacresat Lyon and especially in Paris: "BrieveRaccontamento del GranMacello fatto nella citth di Parigi". Sassettireported that printers were activeamong the Lyon killers;but his assertionis notborne out by any other accounts by residents of Lyon, nor by the patternsof deaths (see n. 94 above). Onlytwo merchant-publishers areknown to havehad a connectionwith the massacres - GuillaumeRouill6, who was a Consulat thetime and thusbears some responsibility for what happened, and AlexandreMarsigli, a Luccan exilewho killeda merchantPaolo Minutoliin thehope that he wouldbe pardonedin Lucca and allowedto return. Sassetti had just arrivedin Lyon whenthe Vespers occurred. 111 Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 692. 112 Hist. eccl., i, pp. 227, 719; Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 522; Discours des troublesadvenus en la Ville de Pamies, p. 325; Bosquet, Histoire,pp. 148-50. I have also treatedthis subjectin "City Womenand ReligiousChange in Sixteenth-CenturyFrance", forthcomingin Dorothy MacGuigan (ed.), A Sampler of Women'sStudies (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1973).

This content downloaded from 137.205.218.77 on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:12:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RELIGIOUS RIOT IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURYFRANCE 87 dayprocessions, so theyparticipate in Catholicreligious disturbances. They shoutinsults at a Protestantfuneral in Montaubanand throw mireat a ministerin Vassy,screaming, "Kill him,kill the evil-doer who has caused so manydeaths"; but theirmost extremeviolence seems directedagainst other women. At Aix-en-Provencein 1572, a groupof butcherwomen torment a Protestantwoman, the wifeof a bookseller,finally hanging her froma pine tree,which had been used as a meetingplace forProtestant worship.113 Adolescentmales and even boys aged ten to twelve played a strikinglyimportant r61e in both Catholic and Protestantcrowds. In Lyon and Castelnaudaryin 1562 enfantsstoned Protestant worshipperson theirway to services. In severaltowns in Provence - Marseille, Toulon and elsewhere - Catholic youths stoned Protestantsto death and burned them. The reputationof the adolescentsin Sens and Provinswas so frighteningthat a memberof a well-knownHuguenot familywas afraid to walk throughthe streets,lest the childrenof Provins(enfants de Provins)massacre him.114 In Toulouse,Catholic students take part in themassacres of 1572,and a decade earlierProtestant students had had the university in an uproar,whistling and bangingin lectureswhen the canon law or the "old religion"was mentioned. In Poitiersin 1559 and again in 1562,Protestant youngsters from ten to twelveand studentstake the initiativein smashingstatues and overturningaltars. Indeed, youthsare mentionedas part of almost all the great iconoclastic disturbances- in the Netherlands,in Rouen and elsewhere.115 I am struckhere by the similaritybetween the licence allowed 113 Hist. eccl., i, p. 913; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 203-4, 392. At Lyon a woman was among those arrestedfor her actions in the Corpus Christiday riot of 1561: Archivesdepartementales du Rh6ne, B, Senechaussee, Sentences, 1561- 2, sentence of 14 Aug. 1561. Catholic women stoned a Protestantmercer at Vire in Normandy: Hist. eccl., ii, p. 846. 114 Lyon: Gueraud, Chronique,p. 145; Castelnaudary: Hist. eccl., iii, p. 157; Marseille, Toulon, Poignans, Forcalquier: Hist. eccl., iii, pp. 412-15; Provins and Sens: Haton, Mimoires, pp. 194, 315. In addition, the "petits enfans" ("children") of Auxerrestart stoning the doors of a conventiclein 1561, and the "petits enfans" of Draguignan, egged on by priests and councillors of the Parlement of Aix, kill the importantProtestant, Antoine de Richier, Sieur de Mouvans, in 1560: Hist. eccl.,i, pp. 852, 421. The tug-of-warover a corpse by the boys, ten to twelve years old, in Provins has already been described,as has the riot in Pamiers, provokedby thejeunes hommes("young men") of the festive youth group: above, pp. 63-4 and 74-5. Already in Geneva in 1533, we see Catholic "enfants", twelve to fifteenyears old, joiningtheir mothers in Catholic crowds which stoned the hereticalwomen: Jeanne de Jussie,Levain, p. 47. 116 Toulouse: Crespin, Martyrs,iii, p. 726 (students also participatedin the 1572 massacres at Orleans, ibid., p. 695): Bosquet, Histoire,p. 46. Poitiers: Hist. eccl., i, pp. 227-8, ii, p. 703. Rouen: Hist. eccl., ii, p. 719. Flanders: Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 519, n. I, 522.

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youthto do violencein religiousriot and the festivelicence allowed adolescentsin the youth-abbeysin villagesand smalltowns to act as the conscienceof the communityin mattersof domesticdiscord. As youngteenagers and childrenparticipated in theprocessional life of,say, Rouen ("their prayers are of great merit before God, especially because they are pure and clean in theirconscience and without malice",noted a Rouennaispriest) and led some of the greatLeague penitentialprocessions in Parisin 1589,so Catholicadolescents moved into religiousviolence without much criticismfrom their elders.'1" In the Protestantcase, wheresons mightsometimes disagree about religionwith their fathers and wherethe revoltis in partagainst the paternalauthority of the clergy, youthful violence seems to havemore of the characterof generationalconflict. But ultimatelyCalvinism, too, was a movementcutting across generational lines, within which adolescentsor artisanssometimes took the earlyinitiative in open militantaction. Thus in Lyon in 1551, the firstpublic Psalm- singingmarches were organizedby printers'journeymen, while in Montpellierin 1560-6Iit was the "youngpeople" ("jeunesgens") who firstinvited a ministerto the cityand began publicPsalm singing in Frenchin frontof the cityhall.117 Finally, as this study has already suggested,the crowds of Catholicsand Protestants,including those bent on deadlytasks, were not an inchoate mass, but showed many signs of organization. Even withriots that had littleor no planningbehind them, the event was givensome structure by the situation of worship or theprocession thatwas the occasionfor many disturbances. In othercases, plan- ningin advanceled to listsof targets,and waysof identifyingfriends or fellowrioters (white crosses on Catholicdoors in Macon in 1562; red bonnetsworn by the killersin theBande Cardinalein Bordeaux in 1572; passwordsand slogans- "Long live the Cross", "The

116 F. N. Taillepied, Recueildes Antiquitezet Singularitezde la Ville de Rouen (Rouen, 1587), pp. 195-7; L'Estoile, Mdmoires-journaux,iii, pp. 243-4, 247. PeterAscoli also describesthe r6le of children in theLeague procession of 1589 in "The Sixteenand theParis League, 1589-1591"(University of Californiaat BerkeleyPh.D. thesis, 1971). In a recent lecture on fifteenth-century Florence,Richard Trexler has emphasizedthe r61le of male adolescentsfirst in the processionallife of the cityand thenas zealous and activesupporters of Savonarola'swar on the vanities: "Ritual in Florence: Adolescenceand Salvationin theRenaissance", Conference on Late Medievaland Renaissance Religion,The Universityof Michigan,Ann Arbor,Apr. 20-22, 1972. 117 N. Z. Davis, "Strikesand Salvationat Lyons",Archiv ftlr Reformations- geschichte,Ivi (1965), pp. 51-2; Philippi, Mdmoires,p. 623. For youth-groups and theirr61le in sixteenth-centuryFrance, see Davis, "Reasonsof Misrule".

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Wolf", "Long live the Gospel").11s Existingorganizations could provide the basis for subsequent religiousdisturbance, such as confraternitiesand festiveyouth societies for Catholics; and forboth Protestantsand Catholics,units of the militiaand craftgroupings.119 Zeal for violent purificationalso led to new organizations. Sometimesthe model was a militaryone, as in the companiesof Catholic artisansin Autun, Auxerreand Le Mans raised by the liftingof an ensign;the "marchingbands" organizedin Beziersby both Protestantsand Catholics; and the dizaines set up by the Reformed church of Montauban in 1561.120 Sometimes the model was a youthgroup, as in thecase ofa band ofyoung unmarried lesser nobles in Champagne,who went around terrorizingCatholics.121 The creationwhich best expresses the spirit of religious riot, however, is the band of the Sieur de Flassans in Aix-en-Provence.This nobleman,First Consul of Aix, in 1562 organizeda troopof "little people", butchersamong them, and monks,to seek out Protestants in thearea, stoning their houses, shouting at them, killing, or imprison- ing them. They worerosaries and specialfeathered hats with white crosses on them; they sang special songs againstthe Huguenots; carriedan ensignwith the Pope's keysupon it; and wenteverywhere led by a Franciscanwith a greatwooden cross.122

11s For the r6le of Protestanttargets in Nemours, see Hist. eccl., i, p. 834. For the white crosses in Macon, ibid., iii, p. 518; and the red bonnets in Bordeaux, Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 729. For "Vive la Croix" in Toulouse, "Le Loup", a Catholic password in Vire in Normandy,"Vive l'Evangile" in La Rochelle, see Hist. eccl., iii, p. 33, ii, pp. 845, 989. 119 Ibid., i, pp. 355, 844; Discours des troublesadvenus en la Ville de Pamies, pp. 319-20. 120 Hist. eccl., iii, p. 487; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 287, 641; Hist. eccl., iii, pp. 158-9, i, p. 913. Also see the "company" of horsemenof the draper Cosset of Meaux, founded in 1572 right after the massacres to round-up and kill Huguenots who had escaped to nearby villages (Crespin, Martyrs, iii, p. 684), and the image-breakingband formedin 1562 in Mont-de-Marsan (Hist. eccl., ii, pp. 963-4). 121 Haton, Mimoires,p. 334. In Annonay in 1573, a young man, formerly head of the Bazoche, or festivesociety of law clerks,of Vismes, put himselfat the head of eightymen "of his type" and lived offthe countryside. This was evidentlya Protestantband of young men. Achille Gamon, Memoires,p. 615. The most interestingnew youth group formed in this period was, however, the Whistlersor Sifflarsof Poitiers,so-called froma whistlethe memberswore around theirnecks. Founded among studentsaround 1561, it initiallymocked both religions. Initiates had to swear by flesh,belly, death and "the worthy double head, stuffedwith Relics" and by all the Divinity in this pint of wine, that they would be devoted Whistlers,and that instead of going to Protestant service, mass or Vespers, they would go twice a day to a brothel, etc. The group grew to some sixty-fouryouths and became especially hostile to the Reformed Church and its services, perhaps because of Reformed hostilityto them. Its members began to go around armed. Hist. eccl., i, pp. 844-5. 122 Ibid., i, pp. 983-6; Crespin, Martyrs,iii, pp. 390-1.

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That such splendourand ordershould be put to violentuses is a disturbingfact. Disturbing,too, is the wholesubject of religious violence. How does an historiantalk about a massacreof the magni- tude of St. Bartholomew'sDay? One approachis to view extreme religiousviolence as an extraordinaryevent, the product of frenzy, of thefrustrated and paranoicprimitive mind of the people. As Estebe has said, "The proceduresused by thekillers of SaintBartholomew's Day cameback from the dawn of time; the collective unconscious had buried them withinitself, they sprangup again in the monthof August 1572".123 Though thereare clearlyresemblances between the purificationrites of primitivetribes and thoseused in sixteenth- centuryreligious riots, this paper has suggestedthat one does not need to look so far as the "collectiveunconscious" to explainthis fact,nor does one need to regardthe 1572 massacresas an isolated phenomenon. A secondapproach sees suchviolence as a moreusual partof social behaviour,but explainsit as a somewhatpathological product of certainkinds of child-rearing,economic deprivation or statusloss. This paper has assumed that conflictis perennialin social life, thoughthe formsand strengthof the accompanyingviolence vary; and thatreligious violence is intensebecause it connectsintimately with the fundamentalvalues and self-definitionof a community. The violenceis explainednot in termsof how crazy,hungry or sexuallyfrustrated the violentpeople are (thoughthey may some- timeshave such characteristics),but in termsof the goals of their actionsand in termsof the r6les and patternsof behaviour allowed by theirculture. Religiousviolence is relatedhere less to thepathologi- cal thanto the normal. Thus, in sixteenth-centuryFrance, we have seen crowdstaking on the r61eof priest,pastor or magistrateto defenddoctrine or purify the religiouscommunity, either to maintainits Catholicboundaries and structure,or to re-formrelations within it. We have seen that popular religiousviolence could receivelegitimation from different featuresof political and religiouslife, as wellas fromthe group identity of the people in the crowds. The targetsand characterof crowd violence differedsomewhat between Catholics and Protestants, dependingon theirperception of the sourceof dangerand on their religioussensibility. But in both cases, religiousviolence had a connectionin time,place and formwith the lifeof worship,and the violentactions themselves were drawnfrom a storeof punitiveor purificatorytraditions current in sixteenth-centuryFrance. 123 Esttbe, Tocsin,pp. 194, 197.

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In thiscontext, the crueltyof crowdaction in the 1572 massacres was not an exceptionaloccurrence. St. Bartholomewwas certainly a biggeraffair than, say, the SaintMedard's riot, it had moreexplicit sanction from political authority,it had elaborate networksof communicationat thetop level throughout France, and it tooka more terribletoll in deaths. Perhapsits mostunusual feature was thatthe Protestantsdid not fightback.124 But on the whole,it stillfits into a wholepattern of sixteenth-centuryreligious disturbance. This inquiryalso pointsto a moregeneral conclusion. Even in the extremecase of religiousviolence, crowds do not act in a mindless way. They willto somedegree have a sensethat what they are doing is legitimate,the occasions will relate somehow to thedefence of their cause, and theirviolent behaviour will have some structureto it - heredramatic and ritual. But the ritesof violenceare notthe rights of violencein anyabsolute sense. They simplyremind us thatif we tryto increasesafety and trustwithin a community;guarantee that theviolence it generateswill take less destructiveand less cruelforms, thenwe mustthink less about pacifying"deviants" and moreabout changingthe centralvalues. Universityof California,Berkeley Natalie ZemonDavis

124 The non-resistanceof the Protestants is an extraordinaryfact, which emerges fromall accounts of the 1572 massacres, and which is in contrastwith the militanthigh morale of the Protestantswhen they were attacked in, say, 1561-2. The Protestantmartyrs described in Crespin in 1572 eithertry to run away - the males sometimes dressed in their wives' clothes (Martyrs, iii, p. 698) - or die bravely in their faith. When an individual does try to resist (such as Maistre Mamert, a school-teacherand swordmasterin Orleans), it is the occasion of some notice by Crespin: Martyrs,iii, p. 697.

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