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how much this division is leading to the ruin and desolation of this
poor kingdom . . . and the calamities such as those which I saw on my
journey here, of poor people immersed in poverty without hope of
ever being able to raise themselves from that state except by means of
peace . . . I am constrained to advise their Majesties to make peace.
(quoted in Holt 1995: 108)
So, even among the Catholic elites, the war took its toll.
Among the peasants, however, the war caused even greater suffering.
The poor were the victims of famines and plagues that followed the
marauding troops, so that the peasants came to regard the soldiers on both
sides as  vagabonds, thieves, and murderers men who renounced God
70 The conversion to toleration
along with the worldly debts they owed and who  took to the roads and
fields to pillage, assault, and ruin the people of the towns and villages
(Charles Haton, quoted in Salmon 1975: 207 8). In places like Vivarais
and the Dauphiné in southern France in 1579, Huguenots joined with
Catholic peasants to protest high taxes and the rape and pillage that the
soldiers wreaked on both sides. War itself, they recognized, was their real
enemy (Salmon 1979). In 1593, peasants of both faiths again joined
together into peasant armies in Burgundy and in Perigord (where they
were called Croquants) in southwest France to protest the abuses of the
nobility and the armed forces of both sides. The peasants had been impov-
erished by the increasing exactions of money, livestock, and crops from
them by every army that passed through in over 30 years of warfare
(Salmon 1975: 276 91). As more and more people saw the war itself
rather than their religious rivals as their enemy, the position of the poli-
tiques though never anything as organized as a party became
stronger.10 When a critical mass for toleration finally formed, toleration
became possible.
Nevertheless, this change in attitude could not be rationally justified by
their previous beliefs in any straightforward way; after all, their former
selves would have seen it as a betrayal of the cause, as backsliding in the
face of adversity, or as a sign of weakness in the face of earthly tempta-
tions. Indeed, as we saw in the last chapter, some in the League saw the
most extreme hardships as a catalyst for spiritual renewal. One even called
the horrific famines caused by Henri IV s siege of Paris in 1590  an Age of
Gold, when people didn t think about eating or drinking but only about
turning to God (Barbara Acarie, quoted in Diefendorf 1997: 169). In
Paris, people who were  soft on the Huguenots was regarded as heretics
themselves and were persecuted for it (Diefendorf 1997: 179 84; Holt
1995: ch. 5; Salmon 1972). So a change was neither easy nor inevitable.
Even those who came to believe that their Christianity required this new
trust only came to that understanding once they had reinterpreted their
beliefs and values. Viewed from the perspective of their previous beliefs,
the trust they showed, even taking into account the hardships of war, was
simply foolhardy. A genuine moral conversion was still required.
The many conversions
Since the conversion of a critical mass of people required many individual
changes, we should expect individual conversions to run across the entire
spectrum that I sketched on pages 56 60. Few, however, probably
occurred by revelation. The fiery enthusiasm that accompanies conversions
by revelation is absent in the sixteenth-century cases. If the conversions to
toleration had been by revelation, we would expect that the participants
could have avoided a Prisoners Dilemma, because they would have seen
toleration as the best option, as unquestionably the true path. If toleration
The conversion to toleration 71
Table 3.1 Conversions by revelation
Huguenots
T F
T 1, 1 2, 3
Catholics
F 3, 2 4, 4
Key: T Accept toleration. F Fight. Numbers
represent ordinal rankings (1 best,
2 second-best, etc.). In each box, the ranking
for Catholics is first, followed by that of the
Huguenots.
had been accepted as the best option, then everyone would have accepted
the superiority of toleration on all fronts, so they could have seen tolerat-
ing others as more important than fighting even if others continued fight-
ing. So, if revelation were the principal cause, the situation would have
been that described in Table 3.1. Had this been the structure of values on
both sides, toleration would have been easy to achieve.
Unfortunately, few, if any, of the people of the sixteenth century
thought of toleration in this way, and so the path to a truly tolerant state
was much longer and much slower. Even among those who accepted toler-
ation, it was not yet regarded as a good in its own right. Most people
accepted toleration with an air of resignation, something they would
accept if they had to do so, but not something they relished. Toleration
was a second-best option. Still, even seeing toleration as a second-best
option requires a significant shift. Before any conversions occurred, tolera-
tion was always regarded as worse than fighting. However, after the con-
versions, toleration was seen as better than fighting, if only some means
can be found to end the fighting. Most actual conversions, then, changed
the structure of values in the way illustrated in Table 3.2. The conversions
Table 3.2 The conversion to toleration
BEFORE AFTER
Huguenots Huguenots
T F T F
T 3, 3 4, 1 T 2, 2 4, 1
Catholics Catholics
F 1, 4 2, 2 F 1, 4 3, 3
Key: T Accept toleration. F Fight. Numbers represent ordinal rankings (1 best,
2 second-best, etc.). In each box, the ranking for Catholics is first, followed by that of the
Huguenots.
72 The conversion to toleration
that occurred, then, were more likely to be the result of evolution or of
discovery. Some people probably came to recognize as part of a process of
evolution that the violence of the civil wars was inconsistent with Chris-
tian humility, and they thereby began a gradual process in which they
came to accept a begrudging toleration. Even then, rationality did not
require them to think that  turning the other cheek required self-annihi-
lation. If they did choose to tolerate others outright or to tolerate others if
others would tolerate them, then we can see how such a stance is justified
within their new interpretation of Christianity. But, as we have seen, the
fact that the new beliefs were justified does not imply in any way that they
were rationally required. Undoubtedly, some of the conversions in the six-
teenth century occurred in this fashion, but probably not many. The very
fact of armed conflict, especially a long war, suggests that most people did
not, on reflection, think that humility required them to renounce violence.
The war itself made people psychologically invested in the view that the
war was justified by their religion. Something more dramatic was needed
for their conversion. So even if these conversions by evolution were ration- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]