The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France by Joseph Bergin (review)

Perhaps no one but Joseph Bergin could have written this book, as it is probably the crowning work of his long career studying the Catholic Church in France during the seventeenth century. It could be seen as the second volume of a comprehensive history of the French Catholic Church that he began with his Church, Society, and Religious Change in France, 1580–1730 (New Haven, 2009), with this volume dealing with the relationship between church and state.

Bergin begins his work in 1560, when the monarchy suddenly found itself confronting a powerful Protestant movement that challenged the traditional understanding of the monarchy and the Church. The crown found it necessary to grant limited freedom of conscience to the Huguenots, albeit not to other Protestants, as it lacked the power to crush them militarily. He emphasizes the impossibility of the monarchy ever becoming Protestant, which Henry of Navarre was forced to recognize in his decision to become Catholic to gain the throne; the author points out that this reversed cujus regio, ejus religio. The subsequent negotiations with the papacy to secure the lifting of Henry’s excommunication allow Bergin to introduce a major theme: the contentious relationship between pope and king over who really did control the French Church, which continued unabated until 1715.

The next three chapters deal with the era from 1595 to 1624. They stress the themes of reconciliation after the religious wars, examining the difficult negotiations creating the Edict of Nantes and its strengths and weaknesses for both churches; Gallicanism, demonstrating that a still potent ideology of an independent Gallican church allowed the assembly of clergy to become the most powerful of the three estates; and the rise of the dévots, tracing how the rise of a zealous Catholic religiosity impacted royal politics. Then comes a chapter examining Richelieu largely as the leader of the clergy.

The following three chapters cover major topics over much of the seventeenth century: the monarchy’s efforts to draw on the vast financial resources of the Catholic Church, the challenges faced by the Huguenots in dealing with renewed civil war and the opposition of revived Catholicism, and Jansenism. In respect to the last, Bergin empathizes it was not an organized movement of opposition to the monarchy; yet the royal efforts to crush it only attracted more to its ranks. The final chapters deal, of course, with Louis XIV’s reign. They treat the renewed Gallicanism that led to the crisis with the papacy over the régale and the Four Gallican Articles, the status of the Huguenots prior to 1685 and the process leading to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the role of the monarchy in securing papal condemnation of Jansenism in 1705. In a succinct conclusion the author makes two major points: First, both Richelieu and Mazarin managed to keep religious dissenters, whether Protestant or Catholic, from becoming a major issue for the monarchy, but Louis XIV with his more personalized rule allowed them to become problems; second, the French Catholic Church had both clerical assemblies and a cadre of effective bishops that gave it a more autonomous voice, which it directed largely to implementing the medieval vision of un roi, une loi, une foi.

Bergin’s Church, Society, and Religious Change and this book together could be considered the definitive work on the seventeenth-century French Catholic Church except for the absence of an in-depth examination of life at the parish level in either one. The book at hand draws heavily from his many earlier books, but it is also a synthesis of a vast number of works by other historians. The bibliography alone would make this an important work. Well written and persuasive, it will likely be a long time before it is superseded.