ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that in 1570s the French Alps witnessed two major plague greasing conspiracies, first during an outbreak of plague in Geneva in 1572, and then during the Lyonnais outbreak of 1576. Plague provided the opportunity for a polemicist like Claude de Rubys to blur the lines between public health and religious persecution, plague text and confessional propaganda. Lyon had a history of confessional tension which ripened into the openly hostile rhetoric and violence of the 1560s and 1570s. Relatively rare in Francophone Europe, plague greasing was generally confined to the mountains of south eastern France and Switzerland. The White Penitents were, in part, responding to the radicalization of religious politics in France following the establishment of the Catholic League in 1576. Moreover, Genevan strategies to cope with the outbreak and the possibility of foul play seemed to lack much of the religious motivation evident in the Lyonnais response.
