Religious Politics and Violence

Abstract

This chapter explores women’s participation in religious politics, particularly in the second half of the sixteenth century, when religious differences were transformed into violent conflict in many parts of France. In recent years, historians have increasingly looked to understand women’s involvement in political action by terms that take into account the context of female opportunities for power. Research by Sharon Kettering, for example, has questioned the extent of noblewomen’s powerlessness in the light of their involvement in domestic patronage and household service and politics.¹ Robert J. Kalas’s case study of the career of Jeanne de Gontault noted how her ceremonial role at court serving the Valois queens gave her the opportunity to voice opinions to the queens in a ‘female world … where some degree of political power was possible for the wealthy, landed elite’.² Kristen Neuschel’s study of noblewomen in times of war argues that they participated in warfare in important material and symbolic ways.³ This chapter expands such arguments to examine how women of diverse social levels found means to contribute to political actions or military manoeuvres, and to demonstrate their allegiances to the political factions. It contends that women at all levels experienced the devastation to property and lives wrought by the religious violence and sought to express responses with the means at their disposal.