page_title: French Wars of Religion
section_title: Massacre of Mérindol
hierarchical_section_title: French Wars of Religion / Background / Growth of Calvinism / Massacre of Mérindol
caption_attribution_description: English: Massacre_of_the_Vaudois_of_Merindol
context_page_description: The French Wars of Religion were a prolonged period of war and popular unrest between Catholics and Huguenots in the Kingdom of France between 1562 and 1598. It is estimated that three million people perished in this period from violence, famine, or disease in what is considered the second deadliest religious war in European history.
  Much of the conflict took place during the long regency of Queen Catherine de' Medici, widow of Henry II of France, for her minor sons. It also involved a dynastic power struggle between powerful noble families in the line for succession to the French throne: the wealthy, ambitious, and fervently Catholic ducal House of Guise and their ally Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France versus the less wealthy House of Condé, princes of the blood in the line of succession to the throne who were sympathetic to Calvinism. Foreign allies provided financing and other assistance to both sides, with Habsburg Spain and the Duchy of Savoy supporting the Guises, and England supporting the Protestant side led by the Condés and by the Protestant Jeanne d'Albret, wife of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre, and her son, Henry of Navarre.
context_section_description: The Massacre of Mérindol took place in 1545 when Francis I of France ordered the punishment of the Waldensians of the village of Mérindol. The Waldensians had recently affiliated with the Reformed tradition of Protestantism, participating in "dissident religious activities". Historians estimate that Provençal troops killed hundreds to thousands of residents there and in the 22 to 28 nearby villages they destroyed. They captured hundreds of men and sent them to labor in the French galleys.
  Francis I died on 31 March 1547 and was succeeded to the throne by his son Henry II, who continued the harsh religious policy that his father had followed during the last years of his reign. Indeed, Henry II was even more severe against the Protestants than Francis I had been. Henry II sincerely believed that the Protestants were heretics. On 27 June 1551, Henry II issued the Edict of Châteaubriant, which sharply curtailed Protestant rights to worship, assemble, or even to discuss religion at work, in the fields, or over a meal.
  In the 1550s, the establishment of the Geneva church provided leadership to the disorganized French Calvinist (Huguenot) church. The French intensified the fight against heresy in the 1540s forcing Protestants to gather secretly to worship. But by the middle of the century, the adherents to Protestantism in France had increased markedly in number and power, as the nobility in particular converted to Calvinism. Historians estimate that in the 1560s more than half of the nobility were Calvinist (or Huguenot), and 1,200–1,250 Calvinist churches had been established; by the outbreak of war in 1562, there were perhaps two million Calvinists in France. The conversion of the nobility constituted a substantial threat to the monarchy. Calvinism proved attractive to people from across the social hierarchy and occupational divides, and it was highly regionalized, with no coherent pattern of geographical spread.
caption: Massacre of Mérindol in 1545 as imagined by Gustave Doré (1832–1883)
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