HST 3034: Theatre of Cruelties: Violence in the French Wars of Religion

Taught
Level 3: semester 1

email : Professor Mark Greengrass, Module Leader

Pre-requisites

A pass in at least two history modules from HST200 - HST299.

Taught
Level 3: semester 1

Module Summary

France was a huge and rich country in sixteenth-century Europe, its diversity held together by its monarchy and attendant institutions. But, in the second half of the sixteenth century, it was in danger of collapse from cumulative internal weaknesses and the sectarian tensions provoked by the protestant reformation there. Sectarian conflict, especially in France's urban environments, created bitterness and violence of a kind that appalled and perplexed contemporaries and still shocks us today. We shall examine the testimony for that violence in a variety of regional and national contexts. We shall consider its various manifestations, including its targets and chronology. We shall look at attempts, especially by notables in local communities, to mediate and prevent violence occurring in their own community. We shall not ignore the social and political context in which such violence took place. We shall look to the experience of the Netherlands in the second half of the sixteenth century to provide us with relevant comparisons with appropriate. Our primary sources will work outwards from a recently-published collection of documents and include a number of freshly-translated pieces that will be available from the department web-site. No prior knowledge of French or of the period of the reformation is presumed in the structure of the course, although both would be an advantage.

Teaching

The course will be taught be lecture presentations on background (11) and seminars in which students present documentary material in a collaborative framework (11).

Selected Reading

* David Potter (ed. and trans.), The French Wars of Religion: selected documents, (Houndmills, Macmillan, 1997)

R.J. Knecht, The French Wars of Religion,(London, Longman, 1989 and 1996)

Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion,(Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1995)

J.H.M. Salmon, Society in Crisis. France I in the Sixteenth Century, (London: Ernest Benn, 1975 and reprints)

Penny Roberts, A city in conflict: Troyes during the French wars of religion, (Manchester, Manchester U.P., 1996)

Philip Benedict, Rouen during the wars of religion, (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1981)

Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross. Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris, (New York and Oxford, Oxford U.P., 1991)

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students completing this module will have developed:

• A sophisticated understanding of significant issues in a important period of French history, basing their judgements on significant historiographical issues views on primary materials developed.
  
• The ability to present material in seminars, exchanging views with both the tutor and other students.
  
• The ability to study and write about a primary source extract in detail and be able to place it in its context as well as identify and elucidate the significant historical issues to which it relates.
  
• The ability to research particular historical issues and debates in a more detailed form for essay writing, coming to independent conclusions of the basis of the literature.
  
• The ability to synthesise different interpretations and argue effectively from the evidence developed a familiarity for working with primary documents (albeit documentation in translation) relating to a European region outside the British Isles and a period of history that requires a substantial depth of imaginative grasp developed.
  
• The ability to write informed and cogent essays, and commentaries on documents, under pressure of time.