Historians today1 remain puzzled, as did the Parisians who underwent traumatic, violent, collective/individual experiences during the years when the Holy League was wielding supreme power in the French capital. Words such as “fanatical,” “hysterical,” “wrenching,” “bloody,” and “violent” can be found in all the works about the League; and quite frequently the sermons and the intense political activity of Jean Boucher are mentioned.2
In the pages that follow, I wish to propose a particular interpretation and apology for Jean Boucher’s writings and career, down to 1590. This interpretation is grounded on a sympathetic regard for intense activism in the face of an immense and catastrophic crisis that Parisians confronted in the years between the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 and the halting restoration of increased political and social stability by Henry IV, circa 1595.
As we explore Boucher’s invective (not a neutral term), the portrait of this intensely engaged, brilliantly effective person emerges and goes far beyond what might be considered normative political-spiritual engagement. He wanted the Duke of Guise to defeat the Huguenot armies, and he energetically opposed the Crown’s every effort to compromise. An active founding member of the newly recreated League institutions, he does not seem to have used his influence to halt the more radical, almost individual initiatives, such as Bussy-Leclerc’s arrest of parlementaires. In the end, it would be Boucher’s writings about King Henry III, along with the authority conferred by his membership in League assemblies and at the Sorbonne, and his position as a parish priest, that sets him heroically above the typical learned League radicals.
Throughout the Ancien Régime, relations between preachers and kings were not infrequently tense and confrontational.3 It is difficult to shed some light on these clashes, but in many instances it was the bold moral and religious content of a sermon that unleashed royal tongues.4 Jean Boucher (1551–1646) not only preached before the new king who had just returned from Poland, he was also present at Henry’s rapidly organized coronation, which became a confrontation. Known for his very stirring sermons, Boucher became what amounted to a founding member of the Seize, the “Sixteen,” the most important governing body that the League would establish. He would also be a member of its General Assembly, as well a member of the city militia, and a member of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris, that is, the Sorbonne. In addition, he became the curate of the parish of Saint-Benoit, which not only was situated in the center of the capital but which also lay in the residential district that was the heartland of the League. This member of an elite judicial family would risk exile (if not death) in the name of his principal cause: eliminating heresy from France.5
Had it not been for the intense religious and political divisions and the violence of civil war, Boucher might simply have spent his life doing the work of a curate and occasionally preaching beyond his parish. The need to reach more people in Paris and beyond would transform him into a writer for the rest of his life.6
While not proposing a complete Gallican reform manifesto, Boucher did seek to change what he viewed as too much authority and too much power having been taken from the church and given to the state. The ordering of the citations7 in his more learned works is that of a political theologian: biblical and early-church sources come first. His role in drafting appeals to the pope, in an attempt to convince him to excommunicate King Henry III, is submerged in the collective drafting done by the Faculty of Theology of Paris, an aim consistent with Boucher’s own aims down to 1590.8 In January 1589, the Sorbonne decreed that Frenchmen’s oath of fidelity to the king was abrogated.9
Boucher accepts papal plenitude of power on the issue of whether popes have the power to excommunicate kings; but otherwise he accepts Tradition and canon law. Yet the arguments drafted regarding excommunication would not really be acceptable to the theologians of the Curia.10
In this deeply questioning and exhilarating moment for fervent Leaguers, Boucher and his fellow masters in theology produced several hundred pages of learned prose, grounded on a plethora of sources. Irrespective of the speed at which a researcher worked in the sixteenth century, no one researcher could have produced such thoughtful scholarship in the space of a few months. It is also possible that Boucher and his colleagues were heavy borrowers from some yet-to-be-identified books.
How to sway opinions in Rome? How to sway opinions in France?11 How to find an authority that was both religious and historical, and that could justly depose a king on the grounds of tyranny? This was not a mere exercise in learning; it was a search for convincing legal-political and spiritual answers to the crisis in which France found itself.
The De Defectione12 (“Failure,” or “Defect”) remained in manuscript until 2016. The opening words are: “That he is a tyrant”; and the first theme is how a king becomes a tyrant.13 The king’s name is not mentioned at this point: he is described as being someone who “refers in all matters to the devil with cruelty, injustice, impotency, wickedness, and hate.”14
There is prosecutorial questioning throughout the text: “Is it allowed to expel a tyrant” is followed by a comment about a “raving individual” who takes a sword to the tyrant. Is an innocent stopped from killing himself? The insane individual who murders unjustly? Exceptional, indeed abhorrent, contrary actions are presented as the context for the argument that tyrannicide can be rational.
The corresponding theme is whether the people can deprive a tyrant of his dignities and his life. After the exceptional and non-legal comes the central question being posed. It is followed by historical examples and commentary that range from Cicero, Plato, Aquinas, John of Salisbury, and on to Thomas More’s translation of Lucian.15
And in morals to say that any tyrant can and most deservedly be killed by any vassal or subject and by whatever kind of plots, despite any oath or confederation sworn and made with him, without waiting for a sentence, or the declaration of the judge. We do in fact embrace that verdict of the Council, as we say that it is a sacrilege to kill a man no matter how impious he might be by way of perjury. On what concerns the sentence not to be waited for, more will be said here below. But we explain that passage [i.e., the decree of the Council] here in this moment like this: a sentence has to be waited for, as long as there is a superior present who oversees all wisely. But if there is no such superior and if the situation is urgent on all levels, then one must provide for the welfare of the republic in all possible ways, so that following him and war then be justly waged. And it has to be stated that he has to be killed, if possible, in a public way, and if that is not possible and if the danger is urgent manifestly and openly, this has to be done in any way, except the [forbidden] means of perjury. Now we must see to what degree Henry descended to the point that he has to be called a tyrant.
Henry is a tyrant. [. . . ]16
The authors of the Defect do not list the actions of Henry III that they consider tyrannical. Boucher will do this, and do it at great length in the next text that will be presented here: The Vie et Notables faits de Henry de Valois . The third and final part of the Defect adds more argument and more examples to what has been presented in the second part. The reader of Part III is prepared to learn just what Henry has done as a tyrant, but instead the question is posed: Is some (legal) judgment necessary before a tyrant can be killed, should deposition prove impossible? Here again one finds further arguments and citations that favor the possibility of murdering Henry III.17
The major clerk and scribe for the faculty has had the “treatise” examined and has found “the taking of arms against [Henry] to be just.” Then, curiously, he adds: “Otherwise they have found nothing to be deviant from doctrine.”18
La vie et Notables faits de Henry de Valois
The authorship of this virulent tirade19 is uncertain, but it seems to be part of Boucher’s logical evolution in genres between Gaveston and Justa abdicatione. Boucher’s Defectione ends with a list of the reasons for deposing or murdering Henry III. Boucher’s Gaveston discusses a person, a favorite who is loathed by the League: Épernon, the king’s most occasionally effective advisor.
The Justa abdicatione quickly descends into ad hominem attacks. There are strong similarities between the lists of crimes in the Vie et Notables faits and the lists in the Justa abdicatione. The Vie et Notables faits was destined for French readers; the Justa abdicatione for learned readers who knew Latin.
There are similar underlying themes in the Vie and the Juste abdication. First, Henry III’s attitudes and his policies toward heretics have impeded, if not stopped, their suppression (and military defeat). Second, Henry himself is a heretic and an atheist inclined to the new religion. In addition, Henry is a dissimulator. The Sorbonne’s decree had released the French from their fidelity to Henry. Consequently he no longer was a king. There is also a general argument or assertion that spiritual power is stronger than secular or profane power; that the pope has the power to excommunicate Henry; and that the French people have the power to depose or murder him.
The Lorraine [princes and cardinals] have preserved his crown for him.
He is a coward who seeks to destroy the Catholic Church.
He has lewd affections.
He is surrounded by flatterers and mignons.
Voluptuousness.
Malversations.
Ransoms.
Sacrileges.
Abductions.
The rape of sacred virgins.
Underhanded help given by the king to heretics.
Treason.
Cruelties.
Murders.
Assassinations [usually committed by Henry’s forty-five elite guards].
He divulged the king’s [Charles IX’s] secret about the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
He supported the Huguenots of La Rochelle during the siege [of 1572].
He is responsible for changes in the [royal] finances.
He borrowed money and used the relics of the Sainte Chapelle as collateral.
He fails to proceed against Protestants.
He is full of pride and scornful of the nobility.
He has had railings installed around his throne in the Turkish manner.
The holy Ampulla [with its oil] was absent at his coronation.
He does not touch [to cure sickness].
He makes improper gestures.
On the pretext that the crown hurts him, it fell off [his head] twice.
He is in secret intelligence with heretics.
He raises revenues on the pretext of necessity and the people are impoverished.
He wants two religions in his realm.
The edict on the coinage [benefits the Crown].
The mignons are insupportable spendthrifts who duel with one another.
Quelus [Caylus] is killed in a duel and Henry commissions a very large, expensive monument to him. Maugiron is jealous. [The first reference to Henry as a tyrant occurs here].
He ought to have completed his father’s funeral monument.
The Polish Estates-General declared Henry a traitor, a perjurer, incapable, indigene; his coats of arms are attached to a horse wearing the Polish crown as it progresses through the muddy streets of Cracow. He is not helping to reform the church.
Nogaret de La Valette has become a mignon who scorns princes.
Sacrileges, prodigalities, avarice, thefts, assassinations, lewdness, sexual encounters, abductions, rapes of sacred girls, perfidiousness, treasons, blasphemies, scorn for divine ordonnances, magic, atheism [have appeared at his court].
He is like Caligula, Heliogabalus, and Nero.
He excludes the Guises [from his court] and has mignons and naked women.
He visits convents where he seduces virgins.
His Forty-five [guards] are cruel and bloody.
There are naked bodies in the rivers.
The Lyonnais sent their wives from the city for security when he came to visit.
He coerces the Parlement to create more and more offices.
The first president of the Parlement, Christophle de Thou, suffered a royal reproach and died of déplaisir.
He had poor relations with his brothers [Charles IX and Anjou], who died as a result.
Épernon, the favorite – Séjanus.
Guise pays attention to the Huguenots [to maintain the upper hand for the king].
He raises troops in Germany.
Elizabeth of England could not have put Mary, Queen of Scots, to death without the connivance of Henry of Valois.
He feigns to accept changes that strengthen the Guises.
The king uses treason against the Guises.
He makes a dissimulating speech to Guise.
He is an atheist.
He is a coward.
The king seeks to introduce atheism tainted by the new religion.
In the Sainte Chapelle Henry begins to laugh before the relics and says that Jesus must have had a very big head, because the crown of thorns is so big.21
After describing Épernon’s anti-Guise activities, and noting the Guises’ intense popularity, the subject shifts to Henry’s dissimulation toward the Guises during the Estates-General at Blois.22
According to Boucher, Guise had sold land for 120,000 écus to prepare and supply an army that would defeat the Huguenots. He defeated them at Auneau in 1587. He had received only 12,000 écus from the Crown. Although dominated by the League, the Estates had not put up funds for a major campaign.23 For the Leaguers, the divine presence in Guise’s actions was manifest in his trust in the royal word. For Boucher, the assassinations of the Duke of Guise and his brother the Cardinal confirmed that Henry de Valois had not only lost his status as a king, but he also was a diabolical presence. He asks: “What makes tyrants so murderous? Is it their obsession with their own security, which they always mistrust? And their cowardly heart does not supply any other means of reassurance than exterminating those who could offend them.” Thus, when Boucher seeks to comprehend Henry’s tyrannical conduct, he remains first and foremost within the frame of human-political experience. Henry de Valois did not seem to him to be possessed.
However, the final paragraph consists of another list. It begins: “treasonous [acts], perfidious [acts], larcenous [acts], sacrilegious [acts], extorsions, and shameful [acts] by which he put the entire French people in despair; but helped by God’s spirit, they are taking courage and hope that by his Holy Grace they will shake off the yoke of tyranny.”24
The Justa abdicatione
If the people elect the king, they can also depose him.25 The Justa abdicatione has some of the characteristics of a legal brief or a factum; but instead of being addressed to a court of law, it speaks to the people to whom it is effectively addressed.
A tremendous sense of urgency had already developed in the League’s effort to get rid of (depose) Henry III. It became still more intense after the assassination of the Guise brothers (“execution,” was the word used by the radical absolutists) on December 23–24, 1588. The Justa abdicatione seems to have been almost complete when Valois was killed by Jacques Clément on August 1, 1589. Boucher took this action into account before publication, because tyranny might well become a threat if the French people shifted their support to Henry of Navarre after what could only be a short reign of Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, who was sometimes styled as Charles X.26
Just how legal-civil or legal-canonical Boucher meant to be in the different parts of the De Justa abdicatione is a question that does not concern us; but there was a procedure called a “dénonciation” which emanates from an ecclesiastic who is, by virtue of his office, entrusted with calling attention to criminal facts: the [royal] judge is then obliged to begin prosecution.27 The historical examples come from the Bible, the early church, and Roman history. There is little providentialism.
Should one translate abdicatione as “renunciation” or as “deposition”?28 The subject is Henry de Valois, and abdication connotes an action on his part. Deposition connotes action done to the accused by another person or entity. In Boucher’s title, the subject is still referred to as Henry III, despite the Sorbonne’s decision of December 16 stipulating that a bad king can be deposed. Would a deposition by the League have rendered useless the attempt to convince the pope to excommunicate Henry; and it would have been not a little offensive toward papal authority?
After a first volley of assertions and arguments about the “powers of the intelligent people,” and about how the king holds his power from the people, Boucher gives numerous examples of elected kings drawn from sacred history. There are examples of deposed kings, including some from profane history. Is deposition to be done by the church, or by majestas, that is, the state? The authority of the church is higher, greater.
Henry III’s crimes fill more pages than the arguments about authority fill. The lists are reminiscent of those given by Erasmus in his Education of the Christian Prince, although there was no specific prince in mind. This is not to suggest that Boucher was inspired by Erasmus’s lists of crimes.
In Book II there are ten reasons that give the church power to depose a king: perjury, assassination, parricide, murder, promotion of heresy, schism, simony, sacrilege, magic, impiety. They all justify ecclesiastical anathema. For a king, they bring the equivalent of excommunication.29
While Boucher gives still more details about Henry’s crimes in Book III, he finally turns to narrating such recent events as Henry’s assassination by Jacques Clément, and the way the world universally deems this act to be a tyrannicide.30
Beneath the principal crimes lie other crimes dispersed throughout the historical examples. Boucher does not accept the decrees of the Council of Trent. Machiavelli is mentioned (123, 185), for example, in the context of Henry’s study of Julian the Apostate (215). Henry is described as being ungrateful, inhuman, arrogant (superbia), dull, and impious toward the dead (208). He also creates factions (236), does not honor the nobility, and shows no solicitude for the people. He prepares for a defensive war when he should be preparing for an offensive one (236). He is on favorable terms with the heretic king of Navarre (285).
Boucher comes upon the famous Roman-law tag: Quod principi placuit . . . ,31 which he characterizes as tyrannical. He understands that the power of majestas is incarnate (my word) in the estates and assemblies, not in the office of king.32
Boucher then arrives at the question of whether a king can be murdered. It is not quite an afterthought, but his principal effort is to collect historical examples from both sacred and profane sources. He mentions that Cicero gives several examples, then notes that Coligny (who is not a king) and William of Orange (who is not a king) were killed or ordered killed by Charles IX and Philip II of Spain. The tyrant who is legitimate cannot be killed by one individual unless that individual is carrying out a public judgment to that effect. For Boucher, then, a public judgment is not necessary for killing a usurper. He is treated, as if he were a mere thief who breaks into a house and can be killed by anyone (176).
For his murder of the king, Clément claimed divine authority. The League would consider him a martyr and saint. When Chastel attempted to murder Henry IV, Boucher wrote a public apology for the action.
Exiled to Brussels along with several other League activists, Boucher accepted financial support from the king of Spain and would continue to spew forth fulminations until his death in 1646 at the age of ninety-five. Accusations of tyranny and apostacy would continue,33 as would attempts on the king’s life. Ravaillac succeeded in May 1610.