Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France (review)

Henry Heller explores French xenophobia towards Italians in the sixteenth century in terms of intersecting economic and religious conflicts. Drawn to the subject by present-day ethnic violence and xenophobia, Heller focuses first on Lyon. With a largely Italian merchant elite, Lyon displayed a pattern in which Italian economic and cultural dominance provoked resistance that was enmeshed in contemporary religious conflicts. In 1562, following rising economic strife and cultural resentment towards Italians, Calvinists briefly took over Lyon and battled Catholics for the religious sympathies of Italian elites, even as both sides condemned Italian trade practices. Many of Lyon's Italians had become Protestant, so resentment over Italian economic dominance was readily associated with heresy. That Italians were 'richer, better educated, and more highly skilled than the indigenous population' provided the matrix for hostility.

Religious antagonism then pushed prejudice in several directions. Resentment towards Italians at court enabled the Huguenots to blame them to some extent for St Bartholomew's Day. Catholics and Huguenots alike resented Italian presence in the French ecclesiastical hierarchy, while suspicions of the papacy among Gallican-minded Frenchmen helped unite anti-Italian sentiment with Catholicism as a French national characteristic. Italians and heretics together were 'others' against which the French national body was constituted. Meanwhile, Protestants fed nationalist sentiment by trying to divert Catholic wrath onto the foreign other.

The association of Italians with the monarchy's financial problems and the exclusion of French nobles from financial posts deepened the xenophobic, nationalistic response. Heller initially argues that hostility at court suffused society, but later allows that the traffic in national consciousness came up from below as well. Heller's account of prejudice fusing Italians and Jews reveals a dialogic movement between popular and elite hatreds. Italian court elites like Louis Gonzaga and René de Birague excited hostility across the class spectrum. The dependence on Italian financial skills meant that the deteriorating economy was blamed on them, and on Catherine de' Medici for securing royal offices for many of them. Heller contends that Catherine's protection of Italians prevented their massacre on St Bartholomew's Day, and her withdrawal of protection from the Huguenots facilitated theirs. The counterfactual logic aside, Heller is right that Protestant polemics against Catherine had a point: her patronage power was considerable. Heller traces her role in Protestant thought, linking it to animosity towards Italians who controlled royal finances. Politically, the Estates of Blois (1576) represented the national expression of such concerns. Complaints from Lyon over monetary policy favouring Italian merchants were widely accepted by French merchants, who sought protectionist legislation. All three Estates and both confessions attacked Italians, while popular hostility to them increased. Henri III sacrificed Birague to public opinion, but the monarchy's dependence on Italians to maintain solvency made further moves impossible.

The conflict over Italian financial power entered its most extreme phase after Blois. In the 1580s, Italian bankers established syndicates to farm the customs and the salt gabelle. The resultant Cinq Grands Fermes heightened resistance to Italian influence. Attacks on Italians at court grew increasingly scurrilous. Henri Estienne and Pierre de Ronsard were prominent among those who attacked all things Italian as effeminate, and the king's favourites as Italianized, effeminate sodomites. Although Heller underplays somewhat how sexualizing Italians demonized them as part of constructing a positive French identity, he does indicate how anti-Italianism tarred Henri III.

When Henri III's power collapsed in 1588, Italian influence waned. The League targeted Italian financiers, demanding fiscal retribution. The Estates at Blois in 1588 called for the investigation of Italian financial operations. After the Guise assassinations, accusations of Machiavellianism saturated League attacks on Henri III. Masking links to Spain, League xenophobia against Italians ran wild. Henri IV formulated his French patriotism against foreign influence, and directed Barthélemy Laffemas and the duc de Sully to curb Italian economic power by protecting French manufactures and shifting the financial apparatus to French control. Italian influence did not disappear, but the Bourbon monarchy's dependence on French tax...