Religious Conflict and Civil War in France c. 1560-1600 (HI3T7)
This undergraduate final-year module focuses on the experience of war in sixteenth-century France from the perspective of local communities as well as the crown and the nobility and its European context. It draws on a wide variety of contemporary sources in English translation including correspondence, memoirs, legislation, petitions and prints. The aim of the module is for students to develop an understanding of the circumstances which led to and perpetuated civil war and why repeated attempts to establish peaceful confessional co-existence failed. Students will develop the critical skills to engage with current historiographical debates, and be given the opportunity to write an extended piece of assessed work using both primary and secondary sources.
Apart from the David Potter edition of documents, The French Wars of Religion: Selected Documents (1997) additional English language sources available in the library include:
- Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires (Ian Roy, ed., as The Habsburg-Valois Wars and the French Wars of Religion, 1971)
- Pierre de L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux (translated by Nancy L. Roelker as The Paris of Henri IV as seen by Pierre de L’Estoile, 1958)
Both texts are also available in French.
If you want to engage more extensively with French language primary sources, please ask me for suggestions. One of the most widely used is:
- Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France (3 vols., attributed to Théodore de Bèze; eds. Baum, Cunitz and Reuss, 1974; reprint of 1883-89 edn)
Also useful are these collections and contextualisation of contemporary images:
- The French Renaissance in Prints from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (1994-95)
- Coligny: Protestants et Catholiques en France au XVIe siècle (Direction des archives de France, 1972)
One-Term Variant for Renaissance Stream students
Spring Term
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