MO3011 Society and Religious Change in Sixteenth-Century France
   
Lecturer Dr Malcolm Walsby (St John’s House, room 12)
   
Credits 30
   
Availability 2012-13, Semester 1
   
Class Hour view timetable
   
Description This course offers a detailed examination of the development and near disintegration of the new French nation state in the sixteenth century. It examines how France faced the two major challenges of the age: the trend towards more centralised state-building, stimulated in part by the changing nature of warfare in the sixteenth century and the urge on the part of European monarchies to create a new monarchy; and the challenge posed by the divisions of European Christendom resulting from the Protestant Reformation. A central question to be answered is why France succeeded in meeting the first challenge so successfully, as epitomised by the "Renaissance" monarchy of Francis I, but then collapsed so weakly in the face of the growth of Calvinism in the second half of the century.
   
Basic Reading J. Garrisson, A History of Sixteenth-Century France (1995)
M. Holt, The French Wars of Religion (1995)
   

Course Structure
  1. Introduction: A New Nation State
  2. Francis I
  3. Heresy and Humanism
  4. The Placards and Beyond: The Reign of Henry II
  5. The Crisis of the French Monarchy
  6. Calvinism and France
  7. Huguenot Culture
  8. The Revival of French Catholicism
  9. French Society in Crisis
  10. War and Settlement
  11. Henry IV and the Erosion of the Protestant State
   
Assessment

100% Coursework
   

Learning Outcomes
  • Progression to management of a complex and multi-layered literature, especially monographs and articles in scholarly journals
  • Awareness of French historiographical tradition
  • Awareness of geography and its impact on government
  • Skill in analysis of competing and often conflicting historical interpretations of controversial events
 
   
Restrictions Antirequisite: MO4902