Henry IV of France's Succession - Legitimization

Legitimization

Henry's abjuration of the Protestant faith on 25 July 1593 at the abbey of Saint-Denis proved decisive in winning over many of his opponents. His legitimization proceeded in stages. The archbishop of Bourges raised his excommunication, though without papal authority, during the abjuration ceremony. The following year, Henry had himself anointed and crowned at Chartres cathedral. After the ceremony, he demonstrated his sacred powers by touching people for scrofula, the king's evil. Finally, on 12 July 1595, Pope Clement VIII agreed to lift Henry's excommunication; and he pronounced the absolution on 17 September. For the first time, he gave Henry the title of "most Christian King of France and Navarre".

When Pope Clement VIII absolved Henry he, like Henry, was motivated by political pragmatism. The papacy lived in fear of further national churches breaking away from Rome to be governed instead by princes. The Gallican church already showed independent tendencies, and some of Henry's advisers advocated that he declare himself the spiritual head of the French church. At the same time, Clement feared that, in the words of historian J. H. Elliott, "a Spanish victory in France could mean the end of papal independence". Clement VIII's grant of absolution therefore contains an element of damage limitation. For two years, Henry had been recognised by many in the French church, and French theologians at the Sorbonne had confirmed the Archbishop of Bourges's lifting of Henry's excommunication. In order to reassert papal jurisdiction, Clement made a point of declaring the absolution granted at St Denis in 1593 to be void: but in substituting his own absolution, he ruled all Henry's acts since that date as legitimate in retrospect. By this means, the pope papered over the technical anomaly of the archbishop's abrogation of papal powers. Clement's absolution was contingent on a set of demanding conditions. Among other promises, Henry swore to establish a single religion in France, to recompense all Catholic clergy who had lost land or property to the Huguenots, and to apply the decrees of the Council of Trent in France.

After 1594, Henry's new-found recognition doomed further armed opposition to his rule within France. One by one the leaders of the Catholic League made peace with him. Mayenne surrendered in 1596 after the Peace of Follembray, and in 1598 the surrender of the last League commander, Philippe Emmanuel, Duke of Mercœur, who had hoped to restore Brittany to independence under his own rule, was followed by the Edict of Nantes in the same year. Even so, many of Henry's Catholic subjects were sceptical about his recantation. It was argued that until Henry fulfilled the daunting terms of his absolution, his conversion could not be considered sincere. Those who continued to believe that Henry was a heretic regarded him as a tyrant who had usurped the throne of France under false pretenses. One of the reasons François Ravaillac gave for assassinating Henry IV in 1610 was the king's "refusal to exercise his power to compel the so-called reformed Church Calvinist Protestants to the apostolic Catholic and Roman Church".