From Defense to Resistance: Justification of Violence During the French Wars of Religion.

This slim monograph emphasizes the use of law in French pamphlets on the topic of resistance to authority printed during the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion. Parrow states that previous works in this field "generally lack the understanding of the legal basis, distinct from the political, religious, or social basis, which was an essential element" (1) of resistance theories. This assertion is surprising in view of the scholarly labors of Ralph Giesey, Sarah Hanley, J.H.M. Salmon, Donald R. Kelley and Robert M. Kingdon. Indeed Parrow takes some pains to discuss recent scholarship: over half of the text is an extended review essay. Most of her points have been made before. Roman law and French law allowed the use of violence to defend property or persons. Parrow mentions medieval and Renaissance authors, but even when she treats sources in her chosen period there is little news to report. Among the familiarities: attacks on property increased religious hatred and the victims' desire for revenge. Pamphlets on the rights of Christians to carry arms or do violence "followed the same pattern as medieval ones" (43), allowing moderate use of violence to resist attack. The weakness of the French monarchy was readily apparent in the repeated issue of ineffective edicts, and the struggles between Protestant and Catholic armies. Politiques sought a middle route, and pamphleteers on all sides claimed to defend the true faith, king and country. Certainly one can see the late 1580s and 1590s as a struggle over the royal inheritance, which Henry IV won on the battlefield and through his conversion to Catholicism. The use of legal arguments is but one more aspect of this familiar story.

MAARTEN ULTEE University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa