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‘ACCEPTABLE TRUTHS’ DURING THE FRENCH RELIGIOUS WARS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2020
Abstract
This paper seeks to provide some historical perspective on contemporary preoccupations with competing versions of the truth. Truth has always been contested and subject to scrutiny, particularly during troubled times. It can take many forms – judicial truth, religious truth, personal truth – and is bound up with the context of time and place. This paper sets out the multidisciplinary approaches to truth and examines its role in a specific context, that of early modern Europe and, in particular, the French religious wars of the sixteenth century. Truth was a subject of intense debate among both Renaissance and Reformation scholars, it was upheld as an absolute by judges, theologians and rulers. Yet, it also needed to be concealed by those who maintained a different truth to that of the authorities. In the case of France, in order to advance their cause, the Huguenots used subterfuge of various kinds, including the illicit carrying of messages. In this instance, truth was dependent on the integrity of its carrier, whether the messenger could be trusted and, therefore, their truth accepted. Both sides also sought to defend the truth by countering what they presented as the deceit of their opponents. Then, as now, acceptance of what is true depends on which side we are on and who we are prepared to believe.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Historical Society
Footnotes
Many thanks to all those colleagues, from a variety of disciplines, who have passed on references and indulged my ideas. All misrepresentations remain my own. This article benefited from a fellowship at the Institut d’Études Avancées de Paris, with the financial support of the French state programme ‘Investissements d'avenir’ managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11-LABX-0027-01 Labex RFIEA+).
References
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2 A phrase frequently used by John Calvin, for example in a letter to Antoine de Crussol, 31 July 1563, in Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia (59 vols., Brunswick and Berlin, 1879), xx, 112.
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21 Sommerville, ‘The “New Art of Lying”’, 160.
22 Van Houdt, ‘Word Histories and Beyond’, 11; Tutino, ‘Nothing But the Truth?’, 115–16.
23 Tutino, ‘Nothing But the Truth?’, 121.
24 Fernández-Armesto, Truth, 163–4.
25 Contexts of Conscience in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700, ed. H. E. Braun and E. Vallance (Basingstoke, 2004), x.
26 N. S. Davidson, ‘“Fuggir la libertà della coscienza”: Conscience and the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in ibid., 49–55, at 52–3, 55.
27 Tutino, ‘Nothing But the Truth?’, 136.
28 On more positive views of Nicodemites, C. Koslovsky, Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2011), 49.
29 Balserak, J., Geneva's Use of Lies, Deceit, and Simulation in Their Efforts to Reform France, 1536–1563’, Harvard Theological Review, 112 (2019), 76–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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32 Montaigne, ‘On Giving the Lie’, 756; ‘On Liars’, in The Complete Essays, 35.
33 Snyder, Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy, xvi–xvii.
34 Erasmus, Adages, i vii 17.
35 X. Le Person, “Practiques” et “practiqueurs”. La vie politique à la fin du règne de Henri III (1584–1589) (Geneva, 2002).
36 Montaigne, ‘On Giving the Lie’, 756; note his switch between ‘them’ and ‘us’.
37 T. Weigend, ‘Is the Criminal Process about Truth?: A German Perspective’, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 26 (2003) (special issue on ‘Law & Truth’), 157–73, at 157.
38 Ibid., 157, 160, 172.
39 Ibid., 160–1.
40 Montaigne, ‘On Conscience’, in The Complete Essays, 414.
41 S. Beam, ‘Rites of Torture in Reformation Geneva’, in Ritual and Violence: Natalie Zemon Davis and Early Modern France, ed. G. Murdock, P. Roberts and A. Spicer (Oxford, Past & Present Supplement, 2012), 197–219, at 201.
42 V. Krause, Witchcraft, Demonology, and Confession in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 2015): ‘The truth must be spoken – or rather, to take the standpoint of the inquisitor and then demonologist, it can only be heard.’ Krause also asserts that, during this period, hearing rather than vision was held to be the most spiritual sense.
43 Beam, ‘Rites of Torture’, 201, 210.
44 For a German example, see J. F. Harrington, ‘Tortured Truths: The Self-Expositions of a Juvenile Career Criminal in Early Modern Nuremberg’, German History, 23 (2005), 143–71, and on ‘the early modern axiom that pain always produced truth, and thus revealed the true voice of the interrogated’ (147).
45 The vital work of A. Soman, who has done so much to open our eyes to the riches of the archives of the parlement, including ‘The Parlement of Paris and the Great Witch Hunt (1565–1640)’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 9 (1978), 30–44, is focused mainly on the period from the 1580s when the sources are more abundant.
46 Some examples: Archives nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), X/2a/129, 492v, 17 March 1562, ‘savoir la verité’; X/2b/80, 31 July 1574, ‘pour scavoir et tirer par sa bouche la verité’.
47 AN, X/2b/85, 30 June 1575, ‘faulx tesmoignaige … faulcement et contre verité desposé alencontre de’.
48 I have recently discussed this trial in more detail, and from a different perspective, in P. Roberts, ‘Violence by Royal Command: A Judicial “Moment” 1574–1575’, French History, 33 (2019), 199–217.
49 S. Goulart, Mémoires de l'estat de France sous Charles Neufiesme, iii (1577), 208–81.
50 Quoted in M. P. Holt, The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge, 1986), 41.
51 Goulart, Mémoires, iii, 208–10: ‘dit qu'il n'en sait rien’. Declarations of knowing nothing were contrary to the guidance on mental reservation.
52 Ibid., 219, 220, 224: ‘en parole de prince que ce que dessus est la vérité’; ‘la meschanceté de ceux qui peuvent avoir menty de moy’.
53 For instance, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris) (hereafter BNF), MS Dupuy 755, ‘Mélange des divers titres et mémoires’, 143, dispute between Lieutenant-Governor Blaise de Monluc and Marshal Montmorency-Damville, February 1570.
54 For examples, see Goulart, Mémoires, iii, 235–6, 240–1, 260–1.
55 Ibid., 248: ‘prince véritable’.
56 Ibid., 256: ‘il ne sauroit faire service plus agréable au Roy que de dire vérité’.
57 Ibid., 256–7: ‘Que voulez-vous que je vous die? Je vous promets que je n'en say que ce que j'en ay dit’; ‘Que me serviroit-il de le nier, puisque vous m'avez condamnez à la mort?’.
58 Ibid., 259, 262.
59 Ibid., 267–9: ‘n'entrera jamais en paradis s'il ne descharge sa conscience’; ‘ne demande autre chose que d'estre enfermé en un couvent, pour prier Dieu le reste de ma vie’; ‘m'ayant obligé cent mille fois, me commanda sur ma vie et sur ce que j'avois le plus cher en ce monde que je ne disse rien’.
60 Ibid., 270, 272–3, 279: ‘son cœur au monde et aux service des grands seigneurs, et a oublié Dieu’; ‘damne son ame s'il en sait aucunes’; ‘je ne say autre chose sur la damnation de mon ame’, ‘Vray Dieu éternel’.
61 BNF, MS Dupuy 590, ‘Recueil des pièces’, 24 and 26, letters from Catherine and the sieur de Lanssac to Jean de La Guesle, 26 and 29 April 1574, regarding the need to ‘scavoir la verité’ and to check ‘la verité du mal du roi’.
62 Montaigne, ‘On Conscience’, in The Complete Essays, 410.
63 Foa, ‘Who Goes There?’.
64 BNF, MS Cinq Cents Colbert 24, fo. 363: ‘bien souvent luy taizent les plus véritables et dequoy nous serions les plus resjouiz’. More broadly on this issue, see Pettegree, The Invention of News.
65 Calendar of State Papers Foreign (hereafter CSPF), 70/107, 52–3, May 1569.
66 British Museum, Harleian Manuscripts 0/6991, fo. 11 (undated), Mather to the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burghley.
67 BNF, MS français 15551, fos. 272–7 (10 May 1570); I am currently writing a full-length study centred on this incident.
68 A. L. E. Verheyden, ‘Une correspondance inédite adressée par des familles protestantes des Pays-Bas à leurs coreligionnaires d'Angleterre (11 novembre 1569–25 février 1570)’, Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire, 120 (1955), 95–257.
69 AN, X/2b/1174, ‘Chambre criminelle ou de la Tournelle’; Archives historiques de la Préfecture de Police (Paris) (hereafter AHPP), Conciergerie, AB 3, 102v (31 October 1569), judgement (18 February 1570).
70 AHPP, Conciergerie, AB 5, fo. 10r (19 July 1575), judgement (13 August).
71 Roberts, ‘Violence by Royal Command’, esp. 210.
72 Groebner, V., Who Are You? Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe, trans. Kyburz, M. and Peck, J. (New York, 2007), 166Google Scholar.
73 BnF, MS fr 15548, fo. 10r (3 September 1568), president of the parlement at Rouen to the king: ‘les desguisemens, variations et menteries avec un tremblement’.
74 CSPF, 70/101, 30 (6 September 1568), English ambassador in Paris, Henry Norris, to Cecil.
75 Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, ed. H de La Ferrière, iii (Paris, 1887), 261 (9 July 1569), Catherine to the French ambassador to England, Bertrand de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénélon, ‘beaux advis … selon sa coutume … sy faulx, malicieux et controuvez … entierement faulx’.
76 CSPF, 70/105, fo. 48 (10 January 1569), Navarre to Cecil, ‘vous ayez véritablement entendu l'estat de noz armes … sans vous desguiser aucune chose comme voluntiers font noz ennemys qui chassent la vérité en toutes sortes’.
77 CSPF, 70/106, fo. 43 (18 March 1569), Navarre to Cecil, ‘noz ennemys publient ainsi que bon leur semble … n'en desguisera ne dissimulera chose quelconque’.
78 CSPF, 70/106, fo. 50 (21 March 1569), Jeanne d'Albret to Cecil, and fo. 110 (13 April 1569), to Queen Elizabeth; ‘digne de foy’.
79 Correspondance Diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénélon, ambassadeur de France en Angleterre de 1568 à 1575, i (Paris and London, 1838), 302–5, 308–9 (12 & 17 April 1569).
80 In the case of Jarnac, both the sieurs de Téligny and Montgomery were falsely reported dead. Téligny was killed during the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, but Montgomery survived until his execution in 1574.