Remembering the Wars of Religion: Conflict and Coexistence in Early Modern France

In the aftermath of civil war, often the most daunting task is to reconcile former opponents who continue to demand justice--or even vengeance--for wartime suffering. Remembering the Wars of Religion offers a historical perspective on the painful legacy of civil war by focusing on memories of violence and victimhood after the French Wars of Religion. Officially, these wars ended in 1598, when the Edict of Nantes proclaimed peaceful coexistence between Catholics and Protestants, and ordered them to bury the memory of the troubles that had begun in 1562. Below the surface, however, the conflict would simmer for generations, as neither side was able to forgive and forget the violence they had suffered. Moving away from the corridors of state power in Paris to the cities of Lyon, Montpellier, and La Rochelle, Remembering the Wars of Religion examines the local memory wars between Catholics and Protestants as they resurfaced throughout the seventeenth century. David van der Linden shows that the Wars of Religion left behind a kingdom divided by memory: Catholics and Protestants developed sectarian narratives of the troubles, victimizing their own community while assigning blame to the other. The massacres, looting, material losses, and forced displacement that had punctuated the wars proved impossible to forget, let alone forgive, as vindictive memories were continuously reconstructed by later generations. This constant weaponizing of the past undermined the state-led process of peacebuilding and the practice of toleration in France's biconfessional communities. Ultimately, these memories of victimhood fed a new cycle of violence during the reign of Louis XIV, who in 1685 revoked the Edict of Nantes and forced his Protestant subjects to convert to Catholicism. Remembering the Wars of Religion thus offers a fresh perspective on the challenge of religious coexistence and reconciliation, both past and present. It shows that besides state policies of intolerance and ideological differences rooted in the Reformation, it was the manipulation of wartime memories by subsequent generations that fuelled long-term animosity. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF dwnld from OUP and selected open access locations.

About the Author

David van der Linden is Assistant Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Groningen and editor of the journal Early Modern Low Countries . He holds a PhD from Utrecht University and previously taught at the universities of Cambridge and Nijmegen. His research focuses on religious conflict, peacebuilding, and transnational connections, and has been awarded the Nancy Lyman Roelker Prize and the Harold J. Grimm Prize by the Sixteenth Century Society. His current research project 'Building Peace: Transitional Justice in Early Modern France' (2021-2026) is supported by a VIDI grant from the Dutch Research Council.