The Catholic League's Political Origins
As Protestantism expanded through parts of Europe, leaders of Catholic nations, in particular Philip II of Spain, and the Pope, felt threatened. In an effort to counter the growing power of Lutherans, Calvinists, and members of the Reformed Church of France, they formed a league to stop the spread of these Protestant factions. The Protestant Calvinists at that time dominated much of the French nobility, leading to active persecution of Catholics in some regions.
The League was spearheaded by Henry, the Duke of Guise, who used it not only to defend the Catholic cause, but also as a political tool in an attempt to usurp the French throne.
The Catholic League of France aimed to preempt any seizure of power by the Huguenots and to protect French Catholics' right to worship. The Catholic League's cause was fueled by the doctrine Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. Catholic Leaguers saw their fight against Calvinism (the primary branch of Protestantism in France) as a Crusade against heresy. The League's pamphleteers also blamed any natural disaster that occurred in France at the time as God's way of punishing France for tolerating the existence of the Calvinist heresy.
What is the final judgement on the Catholic League? It would be a mistake to treat it, as so many historians have, as nothing more than a body motivated purely by partisan politics or social tensions. While political and social pressures were doubtless present, and even significant in the case of the Sixteen in Paris, to focus on these factors exclusively overlooks a very different face of the League. For all its political and internecine wrangling, the League was still very much a Holy Union. Its religious role was significant, as the League was the conduit between the Tridentine spirituality of the Catholic Reformation and the seventeenth century devots. Often overlooked is the emphasis the League placed on the internal and spiritual renewal of the earthly city. Moving beyond the communal religion of the later Middle Ages, the League focused on internalizing faith as a cleansing and purifying agent. New religious orders and confraternities were founded in League towns, and the gulf separating laity and clergy was often bridged as clerics joined aldermen in the Hotel de Ville where both became the epitome of goodly magistrates. To overlook the religious side of the League is to overlook the one bond that did keep the Holy Union holy as well as united.
After a series of bloody clashes, the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598), between Catholics and Protestants, the Catholic League formed in an attempt to break the power of the Calvinist gentry once and for all. The Catholic League saw the French throne under Henry III as too conciliatory towards the Huguenots. The League, similar to hardline Calvinists, disapproved of Henry III's attempts to mediate any coexistence between the Huguenots and Catholics. The Catholic League also saw moderate French Catholics, known as Politiques, as a serious threat. The Politiques were tired of the many tit for tat killings and were willing to negotiate peaceful coexistence rather than escalating the war.
Read more about this topic: Catholic League (French)
Famous quotes containing the words catholic, league, political and/or origins:
“That is the great end of empires before God, to be Catholic and draw nations into their Catholicism. But our empire is less and less Christian as it grows.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money—provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don’t need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)
“To be revolutionary is to be original, to know where we came from, to validate what is ours and help it to flourish, the best of what is ours, of our beginnings, our principles, and to leave behind what no longer serves us.”
—Ines Hernandez, U.S. Chicana political activist. As quoted in What Is Found There, ch. 28, by Adrienne Rich (1993)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)