Medieval Christianity: Henri IV

"Paris is worth a Mass." So said Henri IV on his conversion to Catholicism, according to cynics, and the motives behind the act have been the stuff of history ever since. The Conversion of Henri IV reclaims the religious significance of this momentous event in the development of the French monarchy and early modern political culture. Michael Wolfe offers an in-depth account of the political, diplomatic, and theological dimensions of the 1593 conversion of the Protestant Henri de Navarre. Where others have emphasized the ideological aspects of the conflict sparked by the conversion, Wolfe situates the controversy within contemporary ideas about confessional change and practice, as well as the historical traditions that defined what it meant to be French. Using pamphlets, sermons, letters, and memoranda, he traces the conversion crisis as it unfolded in the minds of the king's subjects and as it affected their loyalties and actions during the last religious wars. In this analysis, the public response to Henri IV's conversion reveals a great deal about contemporary notions of personal piety and the Church, political ideals and the state, as well as social identity and obligations. Joining the history of mentalite with that of political and religious behavior, Wolfe also pays close attention to the impact of military and political developments. This approach helps explain the fundamental role of Henri IV's conversion in the establishment and acceptance of Bourbon absolutism in the last two centuries of the ancien regime. While not denying the political importance of Henri IV's conversion, this book underscores the profound religious implications of the event. It puts religion back into the Wars of Religion and thereby enhances our understanding of the rise of the early modern French state.

Although much has been written about the revolution of 1399, whereby Henry of Bolingbroke supplanted his impetuous cousin, Richard II, to become the first Lancastrian King, Henry IV and his reign have been comparatively neglected by historians. Henry, at his accession, was thirty-three, a renowned warrior, and a successful leader in war and peace; a man whose physical prowess was matched by a cultured taste for learning and music. He seemed moreover to possess all those statesmanlike qualities which Richard had so conspicuously lacked, and was ambitious, like a true medieval king, to crown a successful reign by leading a victorious crusade to Jerusalem, where it was prophesied that he would die. Yet from the first his reign was harassed both by armed opposition from rebels in the field, and the more baffling opposition of loyal subjects in Parliament and council. Within ten years he had become a sick man, a victim rather than the master of events, forced to yield control of the government to his half-brothers, the Beauforts, and his son, Prince Hal, the future Henry V. As a final irony his place of death proved not to be the Holy City, but the Jerusalem Chamber in Westminster Abbey. Was it an uneasy conscience, "for all my reign hath been but as a scene acting that argument", or simply ill-health which frustrated the promise of his youth? The reign, like the king, also left many questions unanswered. Did the revolution of 1399 change the nature of kinship as well as the person of the king? How far did the rebellions of his over-mighty subjects foreshadow the Wars of the Roses, and the opposition of his Parliament the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century? It was a time for looking forward as well as backward.-Flap cover.