11 Language and conflict in the French Wars of Religion
-
Mark Greengrass
Abstract
The history of sectarian conflict in the French wars of religion has focused more on the targets of violence, animate and inanimate, than on its vocal manifestations. In 1987, Peter Burke and Roy Porter urged that it was 'high time for a social history of language, a social history of speech, a social history of communication'. This chapter explores the possibilities and problems of writing such an account for these complex events. Accounts like the Histoire ecclésiastique were designed to turn the ephemeral contingency of the spoken into a historicised, albeit constructed, speech-event representing the fears of the past in a way that the present and the future could comprehend. French Protestants en route to their execution, and in their last dying speeches, proclaimed their beliefs rather than obey the conventional behaviour of the convicted, penitent criminal.
Abstract
The history of sectarian conflict in the French wars of religion has focused more on the targets of violence, animate and inanimate, than on its vocal manifestations. In 1987, Peter Burke and Roy Porter urged that it was 'high time for a social history of language, a social history of speech, a social history of communication'. This chapter explores the possibilities and problems of writing such an account for these complex events. Accounts like the Histoire ecclésiastique were designed to turn the ephemeral contingency of the spoken into a historicised, albeit constructed, speech-event representing the fears of the past in a way that the present and the future could comprehend. French Protestants en route to their execution, and in their last dying speeches, proclaimed their beliefs rather than obey the conventional behaviour of the convicted, penitent criminal.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- List of contributors xi
- Series editors’ preface xv
- Acknowledgements xvii
- 1 Introduction – 1641 1
- 2 Early modern violence from memory to history 17
- 3 The ‘1641 massacres’ 37
- 4 1641 in a colonial context 52
- 5 Towards a cultural geography of the 1641 rising/rebellion 71
- 6 Out of the blue 95
- 7 News from Ireland 115
- 8 Performative violence and the politics of violence in the 1641 depositions 134
- 9 Atrocities in the Thirty Years War 153
- 10 Why remember terror? 176
- 11 Language and conflict in the French Wars of Religion 197
- 12 How to make a successful plantation 219
- 13 An Irish Black Legend 236
- 14 Afterword 254
- Index 274
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- List of contributors xi
- Series editors’ preface xv
- Acknowledgements xvii
- 1 Introduction – 1641 1
- 2 Early modern violence from memory to history 17
- 3 The ‘1641 massacres’ 37
- 4 1641 in a colonial context 52
- 5 Towards a cultural geography of the 1641 rising/rebellion 71
- 6 Out of the blue 95
- 7 News from Ireland 115
- 8 Performative violence and the politics of violence in the 1641 depositions 134
- 9 Atrocities in the Thirty Years War 153
- 10 Why remember terror? 176
- 11 Language and conflict in the French Wars of Religion 197
- 12 How to make a successful plantation 219
- 13 An Irish Black Legend 236
- 14 Afterword 254
- Index 274
