page_title: French Wars of Religion
section_title: The Renaissance in France
hierarchical_section_title: French Wars of Religion / Background / Introduction of Reformation ideas / The Renaissance in France
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Le théologien et réformateur français Jean Calvin (1509-1564). École flamande. Portrait de Jean Calvin jeune (Portrait of Young John Calvin).
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: Humanism, which began much earlier in Italy, arrived in France in the early sixteenth century, coinciding with the beginning of the French Protestant Reformation. The Italian revival of art and classical learning interested Francis I, who established royal professorships in Paris, equipping more people with the knowledge necessary to understand ancient literature. Francis I, however, had no quarrel with the established religious order and did not support reformation. Indeed, Pope Leo X, through the Concordat of Bologna increased the king's control over the French church, granting him the power of nominating the clergy and levying taxes on church property. In France, unlike in Germany, the nobles also supported the policies and the status quo of their time.
  The emphasis of Renaissance Humanism on ad fontes, the return to the sources, had inevitably spread from the study and reconstruction of secular Greek and Latin texts, with a view to artistic and linguistic renewal, to the reading, study, and translation of the Church Fathers and finally the New Testament itself, with a view to religious renewal and reform. Humanist scholars, who approached theology from a new critical and comparative perspective, argued that exegesis of Scripture must be based on an accurate understanding of the language(s) and grammar(s) used in writing the Greek scriptures (New Testament) and also, later, the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), rather than relying exclusively on the Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Bible, as in the Medieval period.
  In 1495 the Venetian Aldus Manutius began using the newly invented printing press to produce small, inexpensive, pocket editions of Greek, Latin, and vernacular literature, making knowledge in all disciplines available for the first time to a wide public.
  Printing in mass editions (including cheap pamphlets and broadsides) allowed theological and religious ideas to be disseminated at an unprecedented pace. In 1519 John Froben, a humanist printer, published a collection of Luther's works. In one correspondence, he reported that 600 copies of such works were being shipped to France and Spain and were sold in Paris.
  The Meaux Circle was formed by a group of humanists including Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Guillaume Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, in the effort to reform preaching and religious life. The Meaux circle was joined by Vatable, a Hebraist, and Guillaume Budé, the classicist and librarian to the king. Lefèvre's works such as the Fivefold Psalter and his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans were humanist in approach. They put emphasis on the literal interpretation of Scripture and highlighted Christ. Lefèvre's approach to the Scriptures influenced Luther's methodology on biblical interpretation. Luther would later use his works in developing his lectures that contained ideas that would spark the greater part of the Reformation known as Lutheranism. William Farel also became part of the Meaux circle. He was the leading minister of Geneva who invited John Calvin to serve there. They were later exiled out of Geneva because they opposed governmental intrusion upon church administration. But their eventual return to Switzerland was followed by major developments in the Reformation that would later grow into Calvinism. Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, the sister of King Francis I and mother of Jeanne d'Albret, also became part of the circle.
caption: John Calvin
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