Civil War Violence, Prodigy Culture and Families in the French Wars of Religion

Abstract

Prodigy collections, also known as wonder books, are important but little-used sources for understanding the experience of violence in France during the Wars of Religion. Authors Pierre Boaistuau, Jean de Marconville, François de Belleforest and Simon Goulart included many stories of violence and cruelty in their wonder books, with a notable focus upon violence within families and toward children. Civil war impacted upon community and family connections, and these authors sought to generate strong emotional responses in their articulation of a brutally disordered world on a wider scale. While prodigies are often understood in terms of natural phenomena like floods, earthquakes and monstrous births in recent scholarship, this essay argues that human violence forms a crucial element of early modern prodigy culture.