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This dissertation studies the content of Catholic polemic printed in the city of Lyon from 1560 to 1594, a period ranging from the first hints of wider Protestant unrest to the submission of the city to Henry IV and the resumption of royal control. The time frame corresponds to an era of zealous Catholic activity in which combating Protestantism, or heresy as they usually labeled it, was a primary focus of the Lyonnaise Catholic Church and the presses which supported it. By studying the thematic content of these cheap print sources, I will provide a glimpse into the types of issues that appear most prominently in this particular type of print medium and trace how such issues change, or remain static, over time. Most important of these themes are the importance of concord or unity and the willingness of God to punish his followers for their sins and, frequently, mankind's unwillingness to reunify the church and create concord through force. This dissertation has grown into a commentary on this dynamic more than any other single issue and readers will detect tangential comments concerning the importance of unity and God's punishment throughout earlier chapters. Time and again, polemicists make clear that the only means to a lasting "peace" is to achieve religious unity by any means necessary. Only this purity within the faithful will ease God's hand and cure France of its ills. Sources were drawn from the principal libraries in Lyon and the Rhone valley, in addition to occasional pieces scattered in Paris and other libraries throughout France.

In recent decades historians have documented the nature and impact of religious violence within French Catholicism during the French Wars of Religion (1562-1629). My dissertation introduces the question of religious nonviolence within French Catholicism in this era by examining the religiosity practiced and promoted by Francois de Sales (1567-1622). By interpreting the words, actions, and impact of this clergyman across three different contexts - the mission field of the Chablais, in lay spiritual counseling, and in the Order of the Visitation- this research presents a fresh perspective on the nature of Catholicism in early modern France and an important historical case study of the possibilities and limits of moderation in a society reeling from religious extremism.

Le théâtre ne choisit pas nécessairement le détour pour représenter le temps présent des spectateurs. Souvent négligée voire méprisée par la critique, la mise en scène directe de l’actualité propose pourtant un terrain d’étude fécond du regard que les individus d’une époque portent sur leur existence dans le temps. Vecteur privilégié de la polémique orchestrée par les catholiques et les protestants à l’époque des conflits religieux, le théâtre d’actualité mêle toutes les formes et tous les héritages pour proposer à son public une vision à la fois divertissante et tranchée du présent, propre à conforter la communauté spectatrice dans ses positions. Les formes et les fonctions de ce théâtre évoluent cependant à mesure que l’opposition religieuse se déplace du terrain théologique au terrain politique, et à mesure que l’espoir d’une conciliation laisse place au conflit armé. À la vision eschatologique du théâtre d’actualité protestant qui voit dans le présent une annonce de l’imminente fin du monde et à la tentative désespérée du théâtre d’actualité valois de maintenir la fiction d’un présent doré de concorde succède le constat d’un présent de fer, qui fait de la scène le reflet sanglant d’une actualité particulièrement violente, convoquant son public à l’action. La paix de compromis établie par l’édit de Nantes et le devoir d’oubli qu’elle impose substitue à cet horizon pragmatique un horizon mémoriel : la représentation du présent sur la scène devient un enjeu de « souvenance », alors que se met en marche la légendarisation de l’action pacificatrice de la monarchie bourbonienne. / Displaying contemporaneous events on the theatre stage does not necessarily need to involve mythological or historical transposition. Often neglected or even despised by theatre critics, the representation of contemporaneousness, however, offers a particularly fertile field of study when it comes to analysing how individuals reflect on their own existence in Time.During times of religious conflict in Europe, both Catholics and Protestants alike used the stage as a powerful vehicle to stir controversy; situated at the crossroads between multiple forms and influences, theatre can provide its public with a re-presentation of present time both entertaining and critical, designed to strengthen a community’s actual and intellectual unity. What is more, forms and functions of “topicality” on stage evolve and develop further as religious conflict shifts from the theological to the political battleground and hope for reconciliation is overshadowed by escalating armed conflicts.Whilst Protestant topical theatre finds numerous concurrent signs of the imminent end of the world, the topical theatre created and represented at the Catholic Valois court tries desperately to maintain the illusion of a Golden Age of concord; soon thereafter, however, an Age of Iron is acknowledged, in which theatre reflects the violence and bloodthirstiness of its time and calls on the audiences to take action. When the compromise of the edict of Nantes imposes peace and amnesty, this pragmatism is substituted by a drive towards memorialisation: performing the present on stage becomes a matter of remembrance, at a time when the Bourbon monarchy tries to turn the recent past into a legend.

This study of the term politique during the French Wars of Religion (c. 1562-98) argues that it is a keyword in the sense that it is is active and actively used in French explorations of the political, in the forming and undermining of collective identities in a period of civil crisis, and in the self-fashioning gestures of a shifting political class. I sample and analyse a range of texts - from treatises that form part of the canon of early modern French political writing (such as Bodin's Six livres de la Republique [1576] and the Satyre ménippée [c. 1593]) to anonymous polemical pamphlets - all of which feature prominent uses of the term politique. Certain of these sources gave rise to a longstanding historiographical impression that politique referred, in the period, to a coherent third party in the religious wars as well as to a related kind of expertise and its practitioner. This thesis builds on and extends recent work showing that there was no such party and no one in the period who directly identified as politique. Rather than seeking to identify the 'real' politiques or to establish a corrected definition of the term as used in sixteenth-century French, I argue that the term is strikingly and increasingly mobile across the period, coming at times to refer to mobility itself in conceptions of politics and political action. Dialogue emerges in the thesis as a key conceptual arena and discursive mode for writers attempting to work out what they and others mean by the term politique. I use philological and word-historical methods to examine writers of the period who seek to determine what makes a good or bad politique, to present themselves as politique, or to condemn politiques as morally bankrupt, and - in some cases - to do all of the above in the same text. Almost every text I analyse in the thesis offers its own definition of politique, and attempts to be definitive, but I show that all these attempts to make the reader recognise the 'true' meaning of politique are extending the drama rather than concluding it.

Pendant plus de vingt ans (1543-1565), Jean de Bretagne, duc d’Étampes est à la tête de la Bretagne en tant que gouverneur de la province. Héritier des comtes de Penthièvre, eux mêmes issus des ducs de Bretagne, il devient un fidèle serviteur des Valois à qui il doit tous ses honneurs. Des sources renouvelées, tant épistolaires qu’administratives, permettent de cerner les contours du métier de gouverneur, dans une province en voie d’intégration au royaume de France, entre le règne de François Ier et les premières guerres de Religion. Si le rôle de défense armée en zone frontalière, est central, il est loin d’être le seul. Au quotidien, le gouverneur de Bretagne est impliqué dans des domaines très variés. Surtout, il est facteur d’union entre la province et le souverain-suzerain. Relais mais aussi intercesseur, le gouverneur est assurément un acteur politique de premier ordre dans une province dont il est le premier gentilhomme. Analyser ses réseaux, cerner son influence, mesurer son pouvoir permet de mieux appréhender le rôle d’un type de serviteur du roi souvent mal compris, voire mal jugé, par l’historiographie. / For more than twenty years (1543-1565), Jean de Bretagne, duke of Étampes, governs Brittany as King’s governor and lieutenant. Heir of the Counts of Penthièvre, he became a faithful servant of the Valois to whom he owed each one of his honors. Some renewed sources, both epistolary and administrative, make it possible to seize the profession ofprovincial governor in the process of integration to the kingdom of France, between the reign of Francis I and the first wars of Religion. If the armed defense role of a reputed border province is central, the governor deals with many other problems on a daily basis. Above all else, he is supposed to be the link between the province and the king. Broker but also intercessor, the governor is undoubtedly a preeminent political actor in the province. First gentleman of the province, all his networks, influences and powers must be analyzed as a whole to better understand the daily life of a type of royal servant often misjudged and misunderstood by historiography.

How does the body manifest religious belief? What happens when that belief shatters? These questions were critical in sixteenth-century France when religious conflict rattled many individuals’ faith. A startling—and related—motif in the literature of the period features one part of the body overwhelming the world. These texts, this dissertation argues, manifest religious belief through this motif. While several scholars have examined the role of fragmentation in Renaissance culture, particularly how this fragmentation intersects with cartography and anatomy, the religious dimension of this phenomenon has not been emphasized enough. Through a method of close textual and visual analysis, this study argues that in an era when openly stating one’s personal religious beliefs could have fatal consequences, the digestive tract, heart, and other parts of the body sometimes took on the work of expressing religious belief. This process resembles synecdoche but differs in that, instead of the part representing the whole, the part swallows it. The word “swallows” is indeed appropriate: the mouth appears in several of these texts as the part that consumes, contains, or incorporates the entirety. In Chapter One, the Dutch cartographer Abraham Ortelius’s 1564 map of the world reveals the cartographer’s spiritual inclinations by portraying the world as a heart, or rather, a lung. In Chapter Two, the Huguenot Jean de Léry’s traumatic experiences during the Wars of Religion combine with his time spent among cannibal tribes to force a redefinition of humanness in his memoire, Histoire d’un voyage faicte en la terre de Bresil (1578). In Chapter Three, God’s sensing, digesting body in the Protestant poet Guillaume du Bartas’s hexameron, La Sepmaine (1578), functions as a declaration of Calvinist faith. In Chapter Four, Alcofrybas’s journey into Pantagruel’s mouth in Rabelais’s Pantagruel (1532) veils a distinctly Christian humanist message. In Chapter Five, the monster Quaresmeprenant in Rabelais’s Quart Livre (1552) translates a refusal, or perhaps failure, to reconcile religious differences with a refusal to reconcile the parts of Quaresmeprenant’s body.

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In 1655 and again in 1686-1689, the Waldensians of Piedmont were massacred by the Duke of Savoy after he issued edicts forbidding the practice of their religion. The Waldensians were later followers of the medieval religious movement of the Poor of Lyons, declared heretical in 1215. The Waldensians associated with the Reformation in 1532, and thus formed a link with diverse groups of Protestants across Europe. In the periods immediately surrounding both massacres, an outpouring of publications dedicated to their plight, their history, and their religious identity appeared, a large number of which emerged in London. On both occasions, the propaganda gave rise to international sympathy and encouraged international intervention, eventually provoking the Duke to rescind the edicts that had instigated the massacres. While most contemporary scholars consider the Waldensians to have been fully absorbed into Protestantism after 1532, it is clear from the writings of both the Waldensians and their sympathizers that they considered themselves a separate entity: the inheritors of a long tradition of dissent from the Catholic Church based on their own belief in the purity of the Gospel. The Waldensian identity was based on a history of exclusion and persecution, and also on a belief that they had transmitted the true embodiment of Christianity through the centuries. The documents that were published surrounding the massacres address the legitimacy of the Waldensian identity based on centuries of practice. English and continental Protestants identified with the Waldensians, who provided ancient ties and legitimacy to their ‘new’ religion, and the Waldensians adopted that identity proudly, all the while claiming continuity. Protestants also used the Waldensians in propagandist documents, most often to justify political or religious actions and ideologies. The continuity of Waldensianism through the Reformation became crucially important for the wider umbrella of Protestantism as a legitimizing factor for the movement. This thesis investigates the claims of continuity and finds that while the Waldensians underwent a dramatic change in religious doctrine to conform to the Reformation, their belief in the continuity of their religious identity can be validated by examining religion from a socio-cultural perspective that takes aspects other than theology into consideration.

In 1655 and again in 1686-1689, the Waldensians of Piedmont were massacred by the Duke of Savoy after he issued edicts forbidding the practice of their religion. The Waldensians were later followers of the medieval religious movement of the Poor of Lyons, declared heretical in 1215. The Waldensians associated with the Reformation in 1532, and thus formed a link with diverse groups of Protestants across Europe. In the periods immediately surrounding both massacres, an outpouring of publications dedicated to their plight, their history, and their religious identity appeared, a large number of which emerged in London. On both occasions, the propaganda gave rise to international sympathy and encouraged international intervention, eventually provoking the Duke to rescind the edicts that had instigated the massacres. While most contemporary scholars consider the Waldensians to have been fully absorbed into Protestantism after 1532, it is clear from the writings of both the Waldensians and their sympathizers that they considered themselves a separate entity: the inheritors of a long tradition of dissent from the Catholic Church based on their own belief in the purity of the Gospel. The Waldensian identity was based on a history of exclusion and persecution, and also on a belief that they had transmitted the true embodiment of Christianity through the centuries. The documents that were published surrounding the massacres address the legitimacy of the Waldensian identity based on centuries of practice. English and continental Protestants identified with the Waldensians, who provided ancient ties and legitimacy to their ‘new’ religion, and the Waldensians adopted that identity proudly, all the while claiming continuity. Protestants also used the Waldensians in propagandist documents, most often to justify political or religious actions and ideologies. The continuity of Waldensianism through the Reformation became crucially important for the wider umbrella of Protestantism as a legitimizing factor for the movement. This thesis investigates the claims of continuity and finds that while the Waldensians underwent a dramatic change in religious doctrine to conform to the Reformation, their belief in the continuity of their religious identity can be validated by examining religion from a socio-cultural perspective that takes aspects other than theology into consideration.