The

The Welcome to a history of Europe Key Battles, The Wars of the French Religion Part 2 of 4 Last week I talked about the background to the French Wars of Religion.

I touched on the state of the economy of the Kingdom of France in the late 15th and early 16th centuries,

which are generally healthy by beginning to experience some problems in the mid-16th century.

Also covered was the origins of the Reformed Protestant Church and growing popularity of thinkers such as Luther and Calvin.

The Kingdom of France was at the time perhaps the most centralised system of power in Europe,

and so the attitude of the king in matters of religion was especially crucial.

In 1516, Francis I had secured a deal, known as the Concordat of Bologna, whereby the French Crown

was granted powers over a church organisation in his realm, including the right to appoint members

of the clergy.

He was therefore disinclined to risk disturbing an arrangement with Rome that worked well

for him, nor was he motivated towards a reform church as a way of gaining independence from

Rome, as were other rulers later on such as Henry VIII of England. In addition, there was an especially close relationship between church and state.

The legitimacy of the French crown was more closely related to its connection with the church than was the case for other realms.

At their coronation, French kings were anointed with sanctified oil, and as part of the ceremony made an explicit promise to defend the Church from heresy.

Hence they referred to as the Rex Christianismus, the most Christian king.

At the same time, Francis was intellectually cursed by nature and relatively tolerant of humanism, within reason.

So at first he made little attempt to stamp out new religious ideas.

The French king made a prisoner of war of Chalice V after the Battle of Pavia of 1525.

While in captivity for the best part of the year, his mother, Louise of Savoy, took the opportunity to clamp down on any type of religious descent and banned outright the publication of vernacular

Bibles in the kingdom. When Francis returned, he adopted a more moderate policy, a decision

which may have helped Lutheranism to take root in France. This changed suddenly, following the

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