ABSTRACT
In 1575 the Huguenot jurist Pierre Fabre made an impassioned appeal to ‘every good citizen and patriot’ (tout bon citoyen et patriote) to take up arms and preserve France from impending destruction. In the wake of the great massacres and the seizure of power by the Catholic League and their Spanish allies, religion ceased to be the point, confessional difference had become irrelevant; rather, the issue concerned the survival of French society:
‘Un bon patriot’ needed to take action, learning from Roman history and the examples of such activists as Ahala Servilius, Scipio Nascia Serapio, ‘et autres bons citoyenes’ who are greatly and universally praised for their virtuous resistance to tyranny. To save ‘nostre patrie’, which was dearer to us than life and in which it pleased God to have us born as citizens, was a sacred obligation.2 In the previous year the anonymous author of Discours politiques des diverses puissances establies de Dieu au monde similarly insisted:
The author also urged that his countrymen look beyond particular religious doctrines to the social ties that ultimately drew together French citizens. All human intercourse was founded in ‘l’amitié Politique’.4 Again as with Fabre, these bonds were spiritual rather than a secular alternative to religion.
