The Privilege to Be Free: Religious Liberty and Absolute Sovereignty in the French Civil Wars

• In Event: Trading Freedom for Liberty: Redefining Rights, Sovereignty, and Identity in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

The sixteenth-century is associated with nascent religious freedoms, with the case of religious liberty in the Edict of Nantes during the French civil wars holding a place of prime importance. Far from granting religious rights, however, the monarchy’s policy of toleration enshrined in the Edict of Nantes served to limit religious liberty by circumscribing freedom of conscience into a nominal private sphere explicitly separate from provisions for public worship, a move that was both unwelcome to and resisted by Protestants. This paper examines the contested development and use of freedom of conscience during the war period, arguing that the monarchy used this concept in order to extend privileges to Protestants instead of declaring them heretics, while revealing the vital role that freedom of conscience played in the deployment and further development of French absolute sovereignty

Author

• Elisa Jones, University of Chicago