François Hotman

French church reformer, social reformer, and scholar

• Born: August 23, 1524
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: February 12, 1590
• Place of death: Basel, Swiss Confederation (now in Switzerland)

Hotman used his considerable knowledge and writing ability for the Protestant Huguenot cause of freedom of conscience and, in the process, developed a philosophy of limited constitutional monarchy and became one of the first modern revolutionaries.

Early Life

François Hotman (frah-swaw awt-mahn) was the son of Pierre Hotman, a successful lawyer and landowner who, in 1524, had just entered the king’s service. He was to be rewarded after twenty years for his loyalty to the Crown with an appointment as conseiller in the Parlement de Paris, which made him an important member of the feudal office-holding nobility. Little is known of François’s mother, Paule, née de Marle, or of his early childhood, except that, as the eldest son who would inherit his father’s fief and office, he grew up being prepared for a legal career.

In 1536, Hotman entered the University of Paris, where he was exposed to the new Humanistic learning and developed considerable enthusiasm for classical literature and languages. At fourteen, considered something of a prodigy, Hotman enrolled in the school of law at the University of Orléans. Although the teaching of law was dominated by the Scholastic method, Hotman was also exposed again to the new Humanist approach and learned the methodology of subjecting civil law to historical criticism. The curriculum was rigorous, but Hotman worked hard and received his license in civil law in only two years. Returning to Paris to begin his career, he soon made friends with several leading Humanist scholars, who increased his devotion to the historical school of interpreting the law. Within one year, he had published the first of his many books on law, and, in August of 1546, he assumed his first teaching position at the University of Bourges.

The Reformation , which in time would shake Western civilization to its foundations and profoundly affect Hotman, had begun in earnest only seven years before he was born. In 1536, the Reformation entered a new and more troubled phase with the publication of John Calvin’s Christianae religionis institutio (Institutes of the Christian Religion , 1561). Little is known of when Hotman first came into contact with Reformation ideas. His conversion to Calvinism seems to have begun slowly during his years at the Universities of Paris and Orléans, quickened after his return to Paris, and culminated during his first visit to Switzerland in 1547.

Hotman returned from the University of Orléans to live at home with his parents for some months, but his father’s work on a special tribunal of the Parlement de Paris, which was hearing the cases of Lutheran and Calvinist “heretics,” apparently became more than he could tolerate. He fled in the spring of 1548, constantly afraid of pursuit by his father. He ended up in Geneva, where, for a short time, he was secretary to John Calvin, whom he now considered his spiritual father. Hotman’s break with his home and parents was complete and painful. His father disinherited him, and the French government and French Catholic Church began to consider him dangerous because of his writings in support of the Protestant Huguenot cause. Hotman was never again either financially secure or able to return to France and Paris for any length of time. Geneva had become and remained the spiritual, intellectual, and often physical focus of Hotman’s life.

Hotman was moderately attractive, with no outstanding or remarkable physical characteristics. His portrait shows penetrating, wide-set eyes and a high forehead and receding hairline that left him mostly bald by middle age. In the fashion of most Huguenots, he wore a beard and mustache but kept them relatively short, unlike many of his long-bearded colleagues. Within a year of arriving in Geneva, he married Claude Aubelin, the daughter of Sieur de la Rivière, formerly of Orléans, but who now was a fellow exile in Geneva for the Huguenot faith. Eleven children were born to them, eight of whom reached adulthood. Despite the frequent moves of the household, the uncertainty, and, occasionally, the fear of French reprisals, the marriage seems to have been a happy one.

Life’s Work

Calvin took a deep interest in his followers. Now that Hotman was married, he needed a position with a larger income. Calvin found it for him at the Academy of Lausanne, where Hotman was to teach dialectic and Greek and Latin literature. The Lausanne Academy was the oldest Reformed (non-Catholic) school in a French-speaking area, and Hotman’s salary was adequate. During these early years, he published a series of translations and commentaries on great Greek and Latin classical works. He also produced books and tracts on law, but only one of these won for him any particular recognition. In 1551, Hotman published his De statu primitivae ecclesiae (1553; state of the primitive church), a Calvinist tract that attacked the Catholic Church for its deviations from original Christianity. His particular achievement with this work was to take standard Calvinist doctrine and support it with a wide selection of legal and historical authorities and precedents, a style he would perfect in the years to come.

In time, Hotman grew restless in Lausanne. In 1554, he returned to Geneva, which had granted him citizenship, and was soon involved in promoting the Huguenot cause. He did not stay long, however, moving to Strasbourg in October of 1555, where he remained eight years teaching at the academy there. Although not the oldest, it was the most famous and successful of all the Protestant schools and an important adjunct to the Calvinist church in Geneva. The new position had special significance for Hotman because he was taking the place of a rival legal scholar who had fallen out with Calvin, partly because of Hotman. In Strasbourg, Hotman was able to concentrate on teaching and studying civil law, especially the examination of Roman law from a historical point of view. His study of fifth century Roman Emperor Justinian’s Corpus juris civilis led to a number of publications over the next five years and laid the foundations of his fame as a distinguished legal scholar of the Humanist school. These works also earned for him the doctoral degree from the University of Basel in 1558.

During this time, Hotman’s vital interests in Calvinism and in legal scholarship combined, as his consciousness of politics awakened, into a career as a revolutionary propagandist. His central theme became the need to limit constitutionally the power of the French government, especially in religious matters. To this end, he built a case, based on legal and historical precedent, that it was legitimate to resist the exercise of unjustified authority by the French monarchy. Hotman discussed these matters with anyone who was interested and acquired a network of contacts with Protestant leaders all over Europe. He exchanged a large volume of letters with them over the years. He particularly admired the English and regarded Elizabeth I as one of the great hopes of the Protestant cause. He sent Jean, his eldest son, to study at the University of Oxford.

His first major propaganda pamphlet was published in 1560. It was a vigorous denunciation of the noble house of Guise, especially Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, who led the ultra-Catholic party in France. The cardinal and the Guise family had pressured King Henry II and his successors to increase the repression of Protestantism in France to counteract the increasing popularity of Calvinism, particularly among the French nobility and burgher classes. Following Hotman’s lead, and in some cases undoubtedly with additional contributions written but not publicly acknowledged by him, a large number of Huguenot propaganda pamphlets were published attacking the cardinal of Lorraine and his faction, and presenting the Huguenot case. The Guises countered with claims that the Huguenots had attempted to murder the Catholic party’s leaders and the king, and were also guilty of heresy and sedition. These were the opening salvos of what became a series of eight religious civil wars in France. Hotman had become the leading ideologist of the Huguenot cause for liberty of conscience, one of the trusted diplomatic agents and advisers of the Huguenot leadership, and a revolutionary.

By August of 1572, Hotman’s reputation as a scholar and his list of texts and essays on legal subjects had grown considerably. His work for the Huguenots had brought him many friends and admirers among the Protestant leadership. His connections with important French nobles had made possible a return to France and a position at the University of Bourges. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, however, caused him to leave again. In Paris on August 23, 1572, Hotman’s forty-eighth birthday, the ultra-Catholics began slaughtering Huguenots. The king and the queen mother were parties to this butchery, which spread from Paris throughout France wherever there were concentrations of Huguenots. Suspicious of what could happen, Hotman walked out of town in disguise and without any of his possessions the instant he learned of the events in Paris. He and his family lost everything, although Hotman was later able to recover a few of his more important manuscripts. Once again, in mid-life, he sought asylum in Geneva, where after a few months he accepted a faculty position at the Geneva Academy.

The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre resulted in the fourth of the French religious civil wars and in making Hotman an overtly declared revolutionary. In the propaganda tracts that were pouring from his pen, he no longer blamed the political tyranny and persecution of the Huguenots on the ultra-Catholic party but took aim directly at the king. Hotman spent much of the rest of his life developing his ideas on limited constitutional monarchy and freedom of religion and conscience.

Hotman’s masterwork on these themes was Franco-Gallia (pb. 1573; English translation, 1711). Although he had been working on this project for at least six years, its publication was especially timely. Hotman’s fundamental proposition, supported with a wide variety of evidence, was that the ancient and medieval Gauls and Franks had a constitution that limited the monarch’s authority by requiring that the making of law be shared with a national council called the estates-general. This council also elected the king. In Hotman’s description, the powers of the estates-general were remarkably similar to those of a modern-day legislature and not a medieval assembly. Hotman argued that the king did not rule by hereditary right but by the authority of the people as expressed in the estates-general. After equating royal absolutism with tyranny, Hotman suggested that the people have the right to depose a tyrant king. That was probably his most radical proposition. In an obvious reference to the Guise family of Lorraine, which was not considered an integral part of France at the time, Hotman also included the use of foreign mercenaries as typical of tyrants.

In Franco-Gallia, Hotman was clearly attempting to prove that ancient and medieval France had known a considerable degree of political and religious freedom that earlier national leaders, specifically the queen mother Catherine, her sons, and the Guise family, had distorted and corrupted for their own personal gain and at the people’s expense. It was an enormously popular work among Protestants infamous among the ultra-Catholics and was translated into several other languages and went through several editions in Hotman’s lifetime. It was a propaganda work and not entirely accurate historically but so impressive in its demonstrated learning and so brilliantly done that the Calvinist king, Henry of Navarre, who in time would end the French religious civil wars and become King Henry IV of France, enlisted Hotman’s aid on numerous occasions. On the other hand, the Catholic party felt obliged to put their best talent to work in trying to refute Hotman.

Hotman’s remaining years were not spent in comfort. When a temporary peace came in the French religious wars in 1576 and various offers came to return to France, Hotman was too fearful of another massacre of Huguenots and rejected all offers. His financial situation in Geneva was grim, and his health was deteriorating. To make matters worse, Geneva, which had been threatened by the duchy of Savoy periodically for years, entered a prolonged period of heightened anxiety over the possibility of being attacked and invaded. When the constant state of fear became more than he could bear, Hotman once again moved his family in August of 1578.

He had had numerous offers but decided to accept a teaching position at the University of Basel, where he thought he could live and work in peace. While that proved to be true, his financial condition did not significantly improve and he found that his faith was tolerated but increasingly unpopular. Hotman’s physical retreat to Basel, however, was only a semiretirement, not a full retreat from the Huguenot cause. He continued to be actively involved in the plots and schemes of his party, and in writing tracts and pamphlets. As something of a celebrity whose list of frequent correspondents contained the greatest minds of Protestant Europe, he also had many visitors, including the famous essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne.

Basel was not immune to the ravages of the plague, which, in February of 1583, swept through the region. Hotman’s wife, who had always taken extraordinary measures to get herself and her family away whenever the plague broke out, caught the disease this time and died soon afterward. Hotman was even more deeply disturbed when Daniel, one of his sons, converted to Catholicism. As he had done so often before when distressed, he moved, this time back to Geneva, in late September, 1584, where he knew that a position at the academy was still available to him.

Besides the troubles in his personal life, the urging of his coreligionist Henry of Navarre to write in support of his claim to the French throne may also have influenced Hotman to return to Geneva. After Charles IX died in 1574, his brother became King Henry III. Henry III’s only heir, however, had died in 1584, and the succession was between Henry of Navarre, now the most legitimate heir, and his uncle, the cardinal of Bourbon, who had the support of the ultra-Catholics. Hotman wrote and published several works on the question, basing the case for Henry of Navarre on fundamental constitutional law. The Guises were sufficiently disturbed by Hotman’s work to set several of their best writers to work answering him. Henry of Navarre was sufficiently impressed and made Hotman a councillor and member of his Privy Council in 1585, a position Hotman held until his death.

In that same year, the ultra-Catholics virtually forced Henry III to provoke a war with Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. This was the War of the Three Henrys , the eighth and final religious civil war in France. Apparently, the Guises hoped that the war would eliminate Henry of Navarre as a possible heir to the throne. The war, although not decisive, went more in favor of the Catholics than the Huguenots until 1589. In that year, Henry I of Lorraine, duke of Guise, seemed to be positioning himself to seize the throne and Henry III had him assassinated. The ultra-Catholics rose in rebellion, and Henry III was forced to flee. On his way to Henry of Navarre for sanctuary, he was murdered by a Catholic monk. Meanwhile, the situation in Geneva was bleak. Savoy was once again threatening, and the city was in a virtual state of siege. In September of 1589, Hotman and his remaining three unmarried daughters escaped Geneva by water on Lake Lausanne to Basel. His health had been declining for some time and severe edema was added to his other health problems. On February 12, 1590, he died. In his will, he disinherited his son Daniel. To the end, his cause was the most important aspect of his life.

Significance

Hotman was an uncompromising idealist and would have had mixed reactions to the immediate outcome of his cause. He would have been overjoyed when Henry of Navarre finally prevailed in the field of battle over the ultra-Catholics and became King Henry IV of France in 1589. He also would have applauded Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes in 1598, which gave the Huguenots political and religious rights. He would have been appalled, however, by the high cost: the conversion of Henry IV to Catholicism. He would also have been disturbed by the failure of the estates-general to develop into an institution capable of limiting and controlling royal authority.

In the next century, Catholicism regained much of the ground lost to the Huguenots, sometimes by force, as in Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In 1789, during the reign of Louis XVI, the estates-general would emerge as a limiting force, but with such suddenness and violence as to create a great revolution.

Hotman, who wanted to restore religion and law to an idealized primitive perfection and thereby establish popular sovereignty and liberty of conscience, did not succeed in his own time. He did succeed, however, in raising issues and laying foundations on which later theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would build a new vision of the state, which included not only concepts of popular sovereignty and religious freedom but also of social contract, individual freedom, and the rule of law.

Bibliography

Bainton, Roland H. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 1952. For those interested in the religious issues of Hotman’s era, this older but still quite useful work explains the development of Protestant thought and doctrine with sympathy and precision.

Conner, Philip. Huguenot Heartland: Montauban and Southern French Calvinism During the Wars of Religion. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. Study of the Wars of Religion, especially of the differences between the experiences of southern and northern France during the wars. Focuses on the southern town of Montauban as a case study of the larger religious, cultural, and political upheaval during Hotman’s time. Includes maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Dunn, Richard S. The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1715. 2d ed. New York: Norton, 1979. An excellent, readable, yet scholarly general history of Europe which includes the era of the wars between Protestants and Catholics that began in the latter half of the sixteenth century and lasted until the mid-seventeenth century. The Catholic-Huguenot wars of France and how they fit into the overall pattern of European history are well presented.

Kelly, Donald R. François Hotman: A Revolutionary’s Ordeal. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972. The only full-length biography of Hotman in English. A sympathetic treatment of Hotman’s life, but it does not ignore his faults. Sometimes omits background that increases understanding of the significance of Hotman’s work.

Major, J. Russell. From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, and Estates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Study of the development and relative power of the French monarchy beginning in the Renaissance and ending with Louis XIV. Includes illustrations, map, bibliographic references, index.

Myers, A. R. Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. A good general discussion of the origins and evolution of representative political assemblies and legislatures in Europe from their medieval origins to the French Revolution. Mentions Hotman in the discussion of the French estates-general and the impact of the religious wars.

Neale, J. E. The Age of Catherine de Medici, and Essays in Elizabethan History. London: Jonathan Cape, 1971. The title work is an excellent history of France during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Concentrates on political and legal issues, the collapse of the Valois Dynasty, and assumption of the French throne by Henry of Navarre.

Racaut, Luc. Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity During the French Wars of Religion. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. Study of those writing against Hotman and other Protestant propagandists. Analyzes the strategies, production, and impact of pro-Catholic propaganda of the period. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Reynolds, Beatrice. Proponents of Limited Monarchy in Sixteenth Century France: François Hotman and Jean Bodin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1968. An older but still-interesting, in-depth treatment of Hotman’s ideas of constitutional monarchy. Not as clear as it could be on the relationship of Hotman’s political ideas to his religious beliefs.

Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. 2 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Perhaps the best scholarly study of the political philosophy of the Renaissance and Reformation. Volume 2 has numerous references to Hotman and the Huguenot cause. Particularly valuable in explaining the connections between religious doctrine and political philosophy.