Search for a command to run...
Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France" examines the changing political strategies and religious attitudes of French Protestant leaders between the Saint Bartholomew's day massacres (1572) and the Edict of Nantes (1598). The hand-picked successor of John Calvin in 1564, Theodore Beza was an influential teacher, preacher, and power-broker in Geneva, as well as a prominent exiled leader of the French Reformed churches during the next four decades. Drawing on Beza's correspondence network, city archival materials and rare Huguenot pamphlets, I reconstruct the survival tactics of French Protestants in response to Catholic advances, document the decline in Huguenot expectations after 1572, and examine how social and political factors created widening ideological fissures within the Reformed movement by century's end. In highlighting the patterns of thought of the Huguenot unknown-annual stipend, Beza became Navarre's 'public relations agent' in Germany and Switzerland, raising money and mercenaries for Huguenot armies in the years prior to Henri's accession (1589). The bonds of friendship, patriotism and patronage made Beza a dedicated supporter of the person and program of Henri IV, even after the king converted to Catholicism in 1594. Thereafter, he urged the Reformed to trust the king's peace overtures, while attempting to silence 'moderates' who advocated doctrinal compromise in return for a political settlement. Though welcoming the Edict of Nantes, Beza and other Protestant leaders recognized that prospects for reform in France had been decisively curtailed: 'the golden age has degenerated into a century of iron.' '"Les Psaumes et I'epitre d^catoire de Theodore de BuUetin 1 (1853): 99. ^ 28 April 1564, Calvin summoned the ministers of the Genevan church to his bedside and provided &ial instructions. This interview was reported in Beza's La vie de Calvin (1564): 'Que done chacun se foitifiast en sa vocation et ^ tenir bon ordre: qu'on prinst garde au peuple pour le tenir tousiours en I'ob^issance de la doctrine: qu'il y avoit des gens de bien, mais que ce n'estoit pas qu'il n'y en eust aussi de malins et rebelles. Que ce seroit pour nous rendre bien coulpables devant Dieu, si les choses estans avanc^ iusques ici, venoyent apr^ en d^sordre par nostre negligence." CO XXI, 102.