Henry IV

King of France (r. 1589-1610)

• Born: December 13, 1553
• Birthplace: Castle of Pau, Béarn, Navarre (now in France)
• Died: May 14, 1610
• Place of death: Paris, France

Henry IV brought peace and national prestige to France after protracted strife, which had included eight civil wars. He settled the long-standing Catholic-Protestant conflict by embracing Catholicism while granting broad toleration to the French Reformed church. He made religious liberty the law of the state.

Early Life

Henry IV, first of the Bourbon line, was born in the castle of Pau to Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme, and Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre and daughter of the poet and patron Marguerite de Navarre. Henry was also a direct descendant of Louis IX, one of France’s most illustrious rulers. Although he was baptized a Catholic, Henry received instruction in the Calvinist (Reformed) faith at his mother’s direction, and he eventually joined the French Protestants, then known as Huguenots.

In 1568, his mother placed Henry in the service of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the leader of the Protestant cause. As a soldier in the Huguenot army, he fought bravely and acquired a reputation as a skillful military leader. When Jeanne d’Albret died in 1572, Henry succeeded her as monarch of Navarre. That same year, he married Marguerite of Valois, sister of King Charles IX of France and a grand-niece of Marguerite de Navarre.

Life’s Work

By the time Henry joined Coligny in 1568, France had been wracked by civil war for more than eight years. The death of Henry II in 1559 initiated a power struggle in which political and religious considerations were intertwined. Francis II and Henry II had tried to crush the Protestants, but the Reformed faith had made impressive gains nevertheless, especially among the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. Calvinism gained adherents who could exert far greater influence than their numbers would seem to indicate.

Because the sons of Henry II were feeble rulers, nobles asserted their authority and rival factions competed for power. Antoine de Bourbon and Louis I de Condé, both princes of the blood, allied with Coligny to promote the Protestant cause. The family of Guise, with Duke Francis at the head, led the Catholic faction. When Francis II succeeded to the throne as a minor in 1559, the Guises obtained control of the government. After they executed some of their opponents, Protestants responded with militant resistance. Francis II died after one year on the throne, and Charles IX became king with his mother, Catherine de Médicis , as regent. She then became the pivotal figure in French politics for the next quarter century. Catherine had no deep religious convictions, so she tried to manipulate both sides and to create a moderate party loyal to the Crown. In 1562, however, the Guises seized power and forced the regent to resume persecuting the Protestants. France became the scene of all-out civil war.

The marriage of Henry of Navarre to Margaret of Valois occurred in 1572, as Catherine de Médicis tried to placate the Huguenots by marrying her daughter to one of their most popular leaders. The nuptial festivities, however, became the occasion for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in which Coligny and many other Protestants were murdered. Although the assassins may have intended to kill only a few Huguenot leaders, word of the slayings soon led to the slaughter of thousands of Protestants across France. The civil war resumed with renewed fury.

The sickly Henry III of Valois became king in 1574, and soon a militant Catholic faction, now led by Henry I of Lorraine, duke of Guise, organized the Catholic League without royal approval. The civil strife then became the War of the Three Henrys , as Henry III, Henry I, and Henry of Navarre fought for control of the kingdom. The eventual assassination of the king and the duke left the Protestant Henry of Navarre the legal heir to the throne. He declared himself king of France in 1589. Civil war continued, however, until the last remnants of the Catholic League abandoned resistance in 1596. The concurrent war with Spain did not end until 1598.

Although Henry IV had become king legally, he knew that his throne would never be secure so long as he remained a Protestant. His Huguenot supporters, only 10 percent of the population, were unable to cement their leader’s authority. Moderate Catholics urged the king to convert, but Henry delayed because he wanted his enemies to recognize his kingship first. When he became convinced that would not happen, he announced his decision to become a Catholic. An old but probably apocryphal account relates that he justified changing religions with the remark “Paris is well worth a Mass.” Henry’s embrace of Catholicism shows clearly that this king was a politique, that is, one without strong religious beliefs who follows the course of action he deems politically advantageous. He had done this before, when he had joined the Catholic Church to marry Margaret of Valois, only to return to the Reformed faith in 1576.

In order to obtain papal approval for his succession, Henry had to seek absolution for his Protestant heresies, something the Vatican was in no hurry to grant. Pope Sixtus V had tried to block his path to the French throne and had declared him deposed as king of Navarre. The reigning pontiff, Clement VIII , chose to defer action on the royal request, even though French prelates had hailed the king’s return to the Church.

Henry chose Jacques Davy Duperron as his emissary to Rome. Duperron, who had once been a Huguenot and had adopted Catholicism after reading Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae (c. 1265-1273; Summa Theologica, 1911-1921), supervised the religious instruction of the royal convert. Since Duperron was a learned apologist for Catholicism, he was an effective representative to the pope. As a reward for his services, the king made Duperron a royal chaplain and a councillor of state, and, in 1596, bishop of Evreux. To convince the pope of his sincerity, Henry promised to rebuild monasteries destroyed in the civil wars, and he agreed to support the decrees of the Council of Trent (1563), the Counter-Reformation program to combat Protestantism. At minimum, this meant that the king would maintain the Catholic religion in all areas of France that had supported the Catholic League. He promised similarly to prohibit Protestant worship in Paris, Lyons, Rouen, and other cities.

Moderate Protestants accepted Henry’s conversion and his concessions to Rome as necessary for the peace and security of France. Militant Huguenots, however, protested. The king had to deal with them cautiously to prevent them from deserting him. It is a tribute to Henry’s diplomacy that he was able to pay the price demanded by the pope without alienating his Protestant supporters completely. By 1598, Henry was convinced that his rule was secure, so he took a bold step to reassure the Huguenots of his goodwill. The king proclaimed the Edict of Nantes, a landmark enactment in the history of religious freedom.

The Edict of Nantes expressed the king’s wish for the eventual reunion of all Christians, but its provisions show that Henry knew that would not occur. This law ratified concessions granted to Protestants earlier, and it recognized full freedom of belief and the right to public worship in two hundred towns and in many castles of Protestant lords. Calvinists could worship in private elsewhere, and they would be eligible for most public offices. The king also granted subsidies for a number of Protestant schools and colleges, and the edict created special sections of the parlements (royal courts) to try cases in which Protestant interests were involved. The king allowed the Huguenots to fortify about two hundred towns under their control. The policy of toleration satisfied the Protestants, and it contributed immediately to the achievement of national union. Its provisions, however, created almost a state-within-the-state, a condition that was to cause disruption at a later time, when subsequent monarchs tried to impose their authority on those towns.

Catholic reaction to the Edict of Nantes was predictably hostile. Pope Clement VIII denounced it, and some parlements tried to obstruct publication of the royal decree. Militant opponents of toleration tried to reactivate the Catholic League, and the government discovered several plots to assassinate the king. Most of the French, nevertheless, were too weary of strife to support another civil war, and news about the plots against the king caused an upsurge of support for his policy. His opponents could not find a single magnetic leader. Under royal pressure, the Parlement of Paris registered the edict, and the other courts followed suit. Extensive, though not complete, religious freedom became the policy of Western Europe’s largest state.

Whatever satisfaction Henry derived from the success of his policy toward religion, it could not obscure the serious problems that confronted him as king. Foreign and domestic wars had brought France to a state of impoverishment approaching bankruptcy. The kingdom was almost impotent in foreign affairs. Henry faced the mammoth task of rebuilding with determination. Although he was an intelligent and energetic ruler, Henry was not a skilled administrator. He entrusted that responsibility to the duke of Sully, a Protestant and a longtime friend. Under Sully’s competent direction, the government eliminated much corruption and inefficiency, reformed taxation, and gained solvency. Financial success made it possible to improve the army and to initiate public works for building canals, roads, and harbors to promote economic growth. The government sponsored the expansion of arable lands by draining swamps, and it developed new industries, including the production of silk. Henry founded the French colonial empire by sending the first French explorers and settlers to Canada.

In foreign affairs, Henry sought to protect France from the encircling power of the Habsburgs of Austria and Spain. Because he knew that France was vulnerable to Habsburg attack, he allied with Protestant states in Germany and with the Netherlands. Just when he was ready to strike at his enemies, however, an assassin struck him. He died on May 14, 1610, at the hand of François Ravaillac. The assailant seems to have acted on his own to slay a Catholic monarch who had decided to war against the Catholic Habsburgs, which would have aided the Protestant cause internationally. Although his enemies rejoiced at the death of Henry, the French people mourned the passing of a great, humane king.

Significance

Henry IV was a popular ruler because he truly cared for the welfare of his subjects. Most of the French people accepted his absolutism as the only alternative to the anarchy that had prevailed for so long. His pragmatic policies brought peace and prosperity with order.

Although Henry was a hero to the Huguenots, despite his defection to Catholicism, his private life must have offended their stern Calvinist moral sensibilities. In 1599, he obtained papal dissolution of his marriage to Margaret of Valois and quickly took Marie de’ Medici as his next wife. He was not faithful to either wife and had several mistresses and illegitimate children. He was not above practicing ecclesiastical corruption, as when he made one of his bastard children bishop of Metz at age six. Henry often coerced parlements and subjected provincial and local officials to forceful supervision. He controlled the nobles effectively and left his son Louis XIII a kingdom at peace, one where royal authority was supreme and prosperity was in progress.

Bibliography

Baumgartner, Frederic. “The Catholic Opposition to the Edict of Nantes.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 40 (1970): 525-537. This valuable study relates how Henry shrewdly overcame the criticisms of his opponents. A work of thorough research with a convincing argument. The notes are rich in research data.

Dickerman, Edmund H. “The Conversion of Henry IV.” Catholic Historical Review 68 (1977): 1-13. While others have concluded on the basis of appearances and superficial research that the king was a politique, Dickerman has made a penetrating examination of the sources to show how and why Henry regarded religion pragmatically.

Finley-Croswhite, S. Annette. Henry IV and the Towns: The Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, 1589-1610. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Study of Henry’s labors to win support from his subjects, focusing on his courtship of the urban population and the consolidation of his claims to legitimate sovereignty. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Gray, Janet Glenn. The French Huguenots: The Anatomy of Courage. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981. This decidedly partisan survey of the religious and political climate in France is vivid in descriptions and contains many perceptive interpretations. Places Henry’s career in the context of the French and European struggles for religious liberty.

Leathes, Stanley. “Henry IV of France.” In The Cambridge Modern History, edited by A. W. Ward et al. Vol. 3. Reprint. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1969. This substantial essay, despite its age, is indispensable to any serious study of the subject. An excellent introductory source.

Love, Ronald S. Blood and Religion: The Conscience of Henri IV, 1553-1593. Ithaca, N.Y.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. An assessment of Henry’s reign against the background of civil war and religious strife. Concludes with a discussion of Henry’s perception of the conflicting requirements of his crown and his soul, and his 1593 conversion to Catholicism. Includes photographic plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Russell, Lord of Liverpool. Henry of Navarre. New York: Praeger, 1970. For the general reader, this is probably the most enjoyable biography of the subject. Portrays the king as a humane ruler, licentious in life and a politique in religion.

Sutherland, N. M. Henry IV of France and the Politics of Religion, 1572-1596. 2 vols. Bristol, Avon, England: Elm Bank, 2002. Extremely detailed account of the role of religion in France’s monarchy and political sphere during the late sixteenth century. Each chapter discusses a specific political event or issue from the point of view of the conflict between Protestants and Catholics. Includes illustrations, map, bibliographic references, and index.

Sutherland, N. M. The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980. This thorough study of the Huguenot movement and the issues it raised for church and state in France is a model of research and writing by a truly erudite scholar. Best for those with some knowledge of the movement.