Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris.

When Francois I wanted to express his horror of heresy in 1535, he told officials at a banquet that "if one of the arms of my body was infected with this corruption, I would cut it off." He was probably echoing Christ's advice in the Sermon on the Mount, "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee," (Matthew 5:30) but the king's fervor exhibits the rhetoric of fanaticism. Barbara Diefendorf's brilliant book is about the growth of religious rhetoric and violence in sixteenth-century Paris. At all levels of French society, from the king down to the lowest militiaman, there was a willingness to use violence to settle religious differences, culminating in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572.

Diefendorf shifts historical attention away from personalities and high politics toward the core of religious violence. The religious culture of Catholics and Protestants led them to increasingly confrontational positions. Public demonstrations of faith included dramatic worship services, processions, propaganda, iconoclasm, and executions of heretics. During the Wars of Religion that began in 1562, moderation had little chance against religious militancy, inflammatory preaching, and fear aggravated by subsistence crises. Peace was fleeting at best: uneasy truces allowed begrudged parties to regroup and refuel their hatreds. Protestants could not keep quiet about their faith or their rights. Their very existence offended Catholics, who were taught by preachers that it was their duty to cut heretics off from the body politic.

Diefendorf explains how the mood was set for the paroxysm of 1572. She identifies victims and aggressors in incidents well before St. Bartholomew's Day, when some believed the king said "it was permitted" to kill their opponents. All accounts of the killings are partial and must be used with caution, but she offers a "most plausible" version. The first attack on Admiral Coligny may have been a personal vendetta. Subsequent massacres of Huguenot leaders were ordered by Charles IX, "without thinking through the political consequences" (96). These included the fury of an uncontrollable militia and a minority of Catholic fanatics. Good bourgeois had organized the militia to control violence, but their attempt failed. Protestants, another minority linked by ideology, kinship, and finances, were unable or unwilling to resist their martyrdom. "The unimaginable was first put into words and then acted out" (105).

The Renaissance French monarchy of Catherine de Medici and her sons repeatedly failed to keep order. This was not just a religious problem, but a structural political one. Medieval French kings struggled to establish their authority over the English, Armagnacs and Bourguignons; their seventeenth-century successors faced provincial revolts and the Fronde. To that extent, traditional political historiography of the Wars of Religion still carries weight. Yet Diefendorf and Denis Crouzet in Les Guerriers de Dieu (Paris, 1990) rightly stress the unique religious attitudes of the sixteenth century. Diefendorf grounds her argument in specific Parisian cases -- preachers, officials, merchants, and even a radical faction of the militia.

This is microhistory at its finest, filled with noteworthy archival discoveries bearing on larger conclusions. Diefendorf's "underground community" of Huguenots recalls other persecuted groups --Roman Catholics in England, the Jansenist society of Port-Royal, and the Jews. A contemporary print shows Huguenots "semonstrant comme Juyf ennemy du Seigneur" (147), and they were similarly accused of ritual murder of children.

Diefendorf has assimilated vast amounts of material and presents her arguments clearly. She gives detailed references to legal and notarial documents, sermons, memoirs, and historical literature. While the author has done her job well, the publisher has been lamentably careless. The illustrations are too small to be useful, and a map of Paris is confusingly printed back wards (10). Fortunately, there is a paperback edition for classroom use. In our own age of renewed religious strife, this history is well worth reading.

UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA