Philippe de Mornay

French scholar, diplomat, and military leader

• Born: November 5, 1549
• Birthplace: Buhy, Normandy, France
• Died: November 11, 1623
• Place of death: La Forět-sur-Sèvre, France

Mornay was one of the formative influences within the early Protestant Huguenot movement in France. As the author of numerous religious and political tracts, he has had a lasting impact on liberal political theory. As a military leader and diplomat, he performed invaluable service toward securing the succession to the French throne for King Henry IV.

Early Life

Philippe de Mornay (fee-leep deh mohr-neh) was born into a minor aristocratic family. He converted to Calvinist Protestantism at the age of eighteen, largely, it would appear, through the influence of his mother. He was sent abroad for his education, embarking on the study of law, jurisprudence, and German at the University of Heidelberg in Germany; he also studied Hebrew and history at the University of Padua in Italy. Prior to 1572, he had traveled extensively through Britain, western Germany, and the Netherlands, and he was fluent in six languages other than French.

Mornay began his career in letters while at Cologne, Germany, in 1571 and 1572, writing a theological tract, Dissertation sur l’église visible (thesis on the visible church) and two well-publicized remonstrances justifying and advocating further resistance to Spanish rule among Protestants in the Netherlands. The Spanish Netherlands had been a seething cauldron of conspiracy, subversion, and repression throughout the 1560’s and early 1570’s. The alienation of the nobility of the Netherlands, under the leadership of William the Silent, the outbreaks of vandalism and destroying of images and statues by Protestant mobs, and the chronic ineffectiveness of the government of the regent, Duchess Margaret of Parma , led to the replacement of Margaret with the Spanish duke of Alva in 1567. Alva soon unleashed a campaign of terror that resulted in the execution or imprisonment of some twelve thousand (mainly Protestant) dissidents. By April, 1572, the Dutch, or northern, Netherlands had erupted into open rebellion against Spain when a band of Dutch seamen dubbed “sea beggars” seized the port city of Brill.

Mornay thus came to the notice of the Huguenot leader, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. Coligny’s skillful handling of French Protestant armies during the Third French War of Religion (1568-1570) had forced the royal government to grant a cease-fire (the Edict of Pacification of St. Germain, 1570), and he had subsequently gained great influence over the young king, Charles IX . By June, 1572, Mornay had been called back to France and taken into Coligny’s entourage. At the request of the admiral, Mornay composed a memorial to the king urging France to intervene militarily against Spain in support of the Dutch Protestants. The queen mother, Catherine de Médicis , resentful of Coligny’s sway over her son and alarmed at the possible disastrous consequences of open conflict with Spain, used the occasion of a royal marriage in Paris during the month of August to eliminate the threat posed by the Huguenot Party. Mornay witnessed an abortive attempt on Coligny’s life on August 22, 1572; two days later, he narrowly escaped death during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, in which agents of the queen mother and Catholic followers of the duke of Guise killed the admiral and much of the Huguenot leadership. Mornay sought refuge in England and did not return to France until the following year.

Life’s Work

From 1572 to 1574, Mornay acted in support of another prominent Huguenot, François La Noue, at whose request he sailed from England to the port of La Rochelle in 1573. There he composed the first in a series of pamphlets denouncing both the royal Valois family and the Guise family; he returned to England for a few weeks at the end of 1573 on a diplomatic mission for La Noue. In 1574, Mornay broke with La Noue, incensed by the latter’s cooperation with the Politiques, a moderate Catholic faction sponsored by the queen mother.

He became radical in his views, entering military service in support of the Protestant king Henry of Navarre, a royal cousin whose family (the Bourbons) stood next in line to the French throne after the Valois. In 1575, he was captured by Catholic forces, but he managed to conceal his true identity, and he was quickly ransomed and released into the custody of Henry de la Tour d’Auvergne, duke of Bouillon, at Sedan. It was while he was at the duke’s household that he met Charlotte Arbaleste, whom he married the following year.

During the next five years, Mornay went through his most radical phase, advocating the overthrow of the Valois and rejecting compromise with both the Catholics and the Politiques. This phase culminated in his purported writing of Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579; a defense of liberty against tyrants). Some scholars call into question Mornay’s authorship, attributing Vindiciae contra tyrannos to either Hubert Languet or Johan Junius de Jonge, or to Mornay and Languet in a collaborative effort. It is certain, however, that Vindiciae contra tyrannos uncannily mirrors both Mornay’s style and what is known about his views at the time. Vindiciae contra tyrannos is widely considered the most significant and influential work of political theory arising out of the French Wars of Religion .

Building on the theories of Theodore Beza and François Hotman, Vindiciae contra tyrannos developed the idea of government as a contractual agreement between a people and their sovereign. In the event of a monarch’s violation of popular liberties under this unwritten contract, resistance to, rebellion against, and deposition of the tyrannical ruler were justified. Vindiciae contra tyrannos, however, fell short of advocating total popular revolution by reserving this power for the lower magistrates (the nobility, judges, and justices) in their representative capacities; this group could include the magistracy from foreign states. It is of significance that the leadership of the Huguenot Party consisted of the lower magistracy, as defined by the author, and that the door was left open for foreign intervention (the assistance of Queen Elizabeth I of England and the German Protestant princes was actively solicited by the Huguenot Party, and Mornay’s diplomatic missions played a crucial role in these efforts). During the 1570’s, Mornay also published Discours sur le roi Charles (1572; debate concerning King Charles), Remonstrances aux estats pour la paix (1576; on the conditions necessary to achieve peace), and Excellent discours sur la vie et la mort (1577; deep discussion on life and death).

From 1578 to 1580, Mornay was dispatched on missions to the Netherlands and England several times for Henry of Navarre. He had risen so high in the king’s confidence that, in 1581, Henry named him as his chief adviser. Mornay’s prestige within the Huguenot community as a philosopher, activist, negotiator, and propagandist had been so enhanced by this time that his opponents labeled him the Huguenot pope. In the 1580’s, Mornay seems to have moderated his political stance to the extent that he could reach agreement and work with the Politique element on Henry’s behalf.

Much of Mornay’s time was spent on diplomatic missions, preparing briefs for Henry of Navarre and speaking to various estates and parliaments on his master’s behalf. His first administrative appointment, as governor of the Huguenot stronghold of Montauban in the Languedoc, 1585-1586, ended in failure. After fifteen months of being frustrated by the independent-minded Montaubanois, who resented Mornay as a northerner, he resigned. The final break occurred after Mornay’s wife had been publicly humiliated at church when the pastor and elders refused to allow her to take Holy Communion, citing as the cause her frivolous attire and hairstyle.

The death in 1584 of the heir to the French throne, François, duke of Anjou, placed Henry of Navarre next in succession to his childless cousin, King Henry III. From 1585 to 1589, Henry III engaged in armed conflict with both Navarre and his Huguenot forces, and with those of Henry I of Lorraine, duke of Guise, leader of the ultra-Catholic League (the conflict is often referred to as the War of the Three Henrys ). Mornay directed and composed most of the pro-Navarre propaganda of the period, choosing to concentrate his attacks on the Guise faction in the hope of leaving the door open to accommodation with Henry III.

On December 23, 1588, Henry III connived at Guise’s assassination, an act that placed the king in a desperate state of political isolation. In July, 1589, in the greatest diplomatic coup of his career, Mornay negotiated an alliance between Henry III and Navarre. On August 1, 1589, Henry III was fatally stabbed by a fanatical monk, Jacques Clément; on his deathbed, he acknowledged Navarre to be his successor as King Henry IV. Mornay was awarded the governorship of Saumur, and the Huguenot University he founded there became a great seat of Calvinist scholarship.

Henry IV’s conversion to Catholicism in 1593 deeply mortified Mornay, who three times refused his sovereign’s request to come to Paris and remained at Saumur, though his loyalty was never in question. The estrangement became complete after the publication of Mornay’s 1598 work De l’institution, usage, et doctrine du saint sacrament de l’Eucharistie (on the founding, practice, and doctrine of the holy sacrament of the Eucharist). Mornay intended to prove that the Protestant Eucharist more closely resembled the original Eucharist, as instituted by Jesus Christ and perpetuated within the early Christian church, than did the version practiced by the Catholic Church. When challenged, he rashly accepted to debate a skilled theologian, Jacques Davy Du Perron, bishop of Evreux. The debate, approved by the king, took place from May 2 to May 4, 1600, at Fontainebleau. The event proved a disaster for Mornay, who lost on every point; as a result, he blamed the king for engineering his entrapment.

After Henry IV’s assassination in 1610 and the succession of his son Louis XIII , the political situation of the Huguenots deteriorated. Mornay had to fight to maintain his influence within the Huguenot community against the young, militantly antiroyalist Henry, duke of Rohan. Though successful in fending off Rohan’s attempts to precipitate a crisis at the Assembly of Saumur in 1612, Mornay was unable to prevent his rival from launching the Huguenot War against the government in 1621. Reaffirming his loyalty to the crown, he welcomed Louis XIII into Saumur. The mistrustful Louis, however, relieved him of the governorship, and Mornay retired to his estate at La Forět-sur-Sèvre, where he died on November 11, 1623.

Significance

Mornay held the Huguenot Party together and molded it during a pivotal stage in its history, mapping out most of its major initiatives during the 1580’s. His assistance to Navarre in facilitating his ascension to the throne was perhaps indispensable, and he certainly participated in the formulation of the Edict of Nantes in 1598, although the extent of his role is the subject of conjecture. It is certain that his polemical skills and command of the written and spoken word publicized and placed in context the issues of obedience and resistance to authority in the name of freedom, and he thus merits recognition as a significant figure in the development of Western political thought.

Mornay, however, failed to gain a firm political base. His censorious moralizing tended to isolate him, and his public berating of Henry IV over the king’s sexual promiscuity contributed to their ultimate alienation. Had Mornay shown greater tact in the matters of faith and morals, he might not have been supplanted by the duke of Sully.

Bibliography

Buisseret, David. Henry IV. London: Allen & Unwin, 1984. Uses the life of the king to shed light on the times and the interaction of personalities, including Mornay. Provides the most complete account of the Mornay-Du Perron debate.

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 Mornay’s time. Includes maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Greengrass, Mark. France in the Age of Henry IV: The Struggle for Stability. New York: Longman, 1984. Scholarly background treatment that tries to explain Henry’s achievement as the restorer of equilibrium as a personal phenomenon, and thus tends to downplay or obscure the role of nonregal participants.

Heller, Henry. Iron and Blood: Civil Wars in Sixteenth Century France. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991. Provides interesting insights on Calvinist/Huguenot constitutional theory and acknowledges Mornay’s crucial behind-the-scenes contributions as confidant, ghostwriter, and go-between to the eventual eclipse of the Catholic League.

Koenigsberger, H. G., George L. Mosse, and G. Q. Bowker. Europe in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Longman, 1989. Detailed overview that includes maps, genealogical tables, chronology, bibliography, an excellent treatment of Vindiciae contra tyrannos, and a creditable attempt to place the entire French Calvinist movement in its Continental perspective.

Mentzer, Raymond A., and Andrew Spicer, eds. Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Anthology of essays investigating various aspects of Mornay’s culture, from the role of religious polemics in the Huguenots’ self-perceptions to Huguenot academic institutions to the Edict of Nantes. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Racaut, Luc. Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity During the French Wars of Religion. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. Study of the pamphlets and propaganda distributed by Catholics during the Wars of Religion. Analyzes the strategies, production, and impact of pro-Catholic propaganda of the period. Includes bibliographic references and index.

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.

Thompson, Jack Westfall. The Wars of Religion in France, 1559-1576: The Huguenots, Catherine de Medici, and Philip II. Reprint. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957. Discusses events from the death of Henry II to the end of the fifth civil war. Cites significant details on Mornay’s early career and associations with Coligny and La Noue.