Huguenot Resistance Theory in Sixteenth-Century France (continued)

The notion of a constitutional right of resistance first emerges from the French Religious Wars (1562-1598) but most notably after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 when perhaps 10,000 Protestants were chopped to pieces by Catholic mobs in as many as a dozen cities across France.[1]  The pope gave Mass in honour of the Catholic achievement, and France’s wily regent Catherine de’ Medici forever sealed her reputation. French Protestants (known as Huguenots) were forced to develop theories of resistance which can also be found in John Locke, a century later, leading some to think of his Two Treatises of Government as the “classic text” in this radical Calvinist tradition.[2]

Selected below are excerpts from two texts: François Hotman’s Francogallia (1573) and Theodore Beza’s Right of Magistrates (1574).  Looking to Francogallia we see the clear influence of Cicero (long the detractor of Julius Caesar) and of St. Augustine, with an appeal to moderation – and representative intermediaries – hidden in the concept of the Trinity: “three marks of tyranny”, “Assembly of the Three Estates”, “three simple types …”, “a third component”, “mixture of three elements”.  Resistance is not about popular revolution; rather it is guided by representative institutions, where a “triple form of commonwealth” is shared in the interest of “balance and fairness”.[3]

    

Looking to Beza’s Right of Magistrates, we see the emergence of a “political theory of revolution”[4] that recognizes popular sovereignty, only as guided by lower magistrates or legislators, while restricting any individual person or  the people considered as a whole from taking initiative.[5]   These notions are carried forward in Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos (1579), (see my blog).   Huguenot resistance theory is also significant to today’s readers because it carves out notions of a “public space”, something which the Genevan tradition in Calvinism (which one finds in the Conservative Party of Canada) has great trouble recognizing (again, see my blog).  Needless to say, Huguenot resistance theory - and its historic context - has great relevance to the bloodbaths in today's Syria.

François Hotman, Francogallia (1573)

Chapter X: The form in which the kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.

Now that these matters have been briefly taken up, we should next explain the form in which the kingdom of Francogallia was constituted.  We have already shown that the people reserved to itself supreme power not only to make but also to remove a king.  This is clearly the form of rule that our Gauls had before they were subjected to the power of the Romans, since the people, as Caesar says, had no less dominion and power over the king than the king had over the people.  But it is likely that our Franks derived this form of constitution not from the Gauls but from their fellow Germans, of whom Tacitus, in his book on the customs of the Germans, writes: “The power of their kings was not unlimited and free.” …[6]

The constitution of this kingdom then is the one which the ancient philosophers – including Plato and Aristotle, whom Polybius followed – declared to be the best and most excellent, a constitution, namely, which is a blend and mixture of all three simple types: the royal, the aristocratic, and the popular; which is the form of commonwealth that that Cicero rated above all the others in his On the Commonwealth. For since royal and popular dominion are antithetical by nature, a third component should be introduced which is between them and common to them both, and this is the nobility, or leading men, who approach royal dignity by the antiquity and splendour of their race and yet, because of their vassalage or, more colloquially, subjection, are not too distant from the commoners.  For, together with the commoners, they acknowledge one and the same person as magistrate of the entire people.  This noble moderation in a commonwealth has been praised by Cicero in a striking passage based on Plato’s Republic, and because of its unusual elegance we shall repeat it here: “With lutes and pipes and with singing and voices a certain adjustment of distinct sounds is needed which, if altered or discordant, is unbearable to trained ears; and this attunement, achieved by moderation of very dissimilar voices, creates harmony and congruence.  Similarly, the highest, lowest and intermediate orders of a commonwealth join, like sounds, in a consensus of highly dissimilar elements, when the principle of moderation is applied.  And what musicians call harmony in singing is called concord in a commonwealth, and it is the best and strongest bond of safety, which, without justice, cannot possibly exist.” (On the Commonwealth, II, xlii, 69). …[7]

In view of all of this, and since this, I say, has always been the practice of all peoples and nations that have known royal and not tyrannical power, it is completely evident that this splendid liberty of holding public councils is part of the common law of peoples, and that kings who scheme to suppress this sacred liberty are violators of the law of peoples and enemies of human society, and are to be regarded not as kings but tyrants.[8]  ….

Appendix to the Third Edition of Francogallia, 1586

Chapter XXV: The king of France does not have unlimited dominion in his kingdom but is circumscribed by settled and specific law.

It has been sufficiently demonstrated, we believe, that the kings of France have not been granted unmeasured and unlimited power by their countrymen and cannot be considered absolute.  It has been shown, rather, that they our bound by definite laws and compacts, the first and most important of which is that they must hold the authority of the public council sacred and inviolate and call it into solemn session in their presence as often as the public interest demands.  But since the laws to which the king is bound are very numerous, we shall expound only those which none will question unless he has lost his reason or has become an enemy to his country, parents, and children.[9] …

Theodore Beza, Right of Magistrates (1574)

Chapter VII.  What remedies are available if a tyrant prevents the states from meeting?

This is my opinion, then, on the rights of subjects of various degrees against a sovereign who has become a notorious tyrant.  But there is still another question of no slight difficulty.  What is to be done if tyranny has become so entrenched that action by the Estates is difficult to obtain owing to the connivance, fear, or wickedness of the majority of the leaders? To private persons, who have not been authorized either by the lesser magistrates or by the more sober part of the Estates (about which I shall speak directly), my answer is that they have no other remedy but penitence and patience joined with prayers, which God will not disdain and without which any other remedy, no matter how lawful it may be, involves the danger of God’s curse.  But this does not prevent private persons from going to the lesser magistrates and asking them to do their duty.  And when the lesser magistrates, or the more sober part of them, enlist the aid of private persons, the duty of the latter to God and to their country is clear from what has gone before.  As for the lesser magistrates, it is for them to join together and press for a convocation of the Estates, while defending themselves against flagrant tyranny insofar as they can and to the extent they should.  Finally, it is the duty of each estate to seek a common and lawful assembly – one in which the wicked will not obstruct the good, nor the cowardly hold back the zealous, nor the majority restrain the men of better judgement.  Moreover, I say that, in an emergency like this, it is the obligation of private citizens to follow the lesser magistrates, which is the duty of the subject, and that it is even permissible for the more sober part of them to seek aid from foreigners, if need be, especially from friends and allies of the kingdom.[10]

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[1] Robert M. Kingdon “Calvinism and resistance theory” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700, ed. J.H. Burns with Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 207.

[2] Quentin Skinner, The Foundations  of Modern Political Thought, Vol. II: The Age of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 239.  See John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke. An Historical Account of the Argument of the Two Treatises of Government’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

[3] Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the Laws.  Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. James E.G. Zetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 46.

[4] Skinner, Foundations, p. 338.

[5] Ibid., pp. 338,339.  Emphasis in the original.

[6] Julian H. Franklin, ed. and tr. Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beta,& Mornay (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 65.

[7] Ibid., pp. 66,67.

[8] Ibid., p.  70.

[9] Ibid., p. 90.

[10] Ibid., pp. 129,130.