The Willingness of Henry IV to Embrace Religious Toleration Henry IV of France, born Henry de Bourbon, was the son of Jeanne d’Albret the King of Navarre. Although baptized as a Roman Catholic, young Henry was raised as a Protestant. During the French Wars of Religion, he joined the Huguenot forces and became one of the leading Huguenots after the deaths of both Conde and Coligny. He was crowned King Henry III of Navarre after the death of his mother in June of 1572. After the third and bloodiest of the religious wars, which ended after the signing of the Peace of Saint-Germain-En-Laye, Catherine de Medici, who was Queen of France at the time, arranged to have her daughter, Margaret, marry Henry III of Navarre, in an attempt to cement the peace. The marriage was unpopular with many prominent Catholics, especially Pope Gregory XIII and King Philip II of Spain. Soon after the marriage, the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day broke out, over 20000 Protestants were killed in four days throughout France. The King of France at the time, Henry the III, attempted to guide the nation by steering a course between the vengeful Huguenots, and the Catholic League which was a large organization of zealous and dedicated Catholics. Henry granted the Huguenots almost complete religious and civil freedom with the Peace of Beaulieu in 1576, but he was forced to revoke it the next year because of Catholic League pressure. In the mid 1580’s, the Catholic League became dominant in France. After he failed to defeat the Catholic League, Henry III was forced to ally himself with Henry of Navarre. Soon after, however, Henry III was assassinated by a Dominican monk, and Henry of Navarre, because of his marriage and distant royal heritage, became the first Protestant King of France. He soon converted to Catholicism in order to unify France, and he granted many freedoms to the Huguenots in his Edict of Nantes. Henry of Navarre’s limits on accepting religious toleration were that politics and nation came before religion; and his views were shaped by the religious conflicts leading up to the Edict of Nantes. Henry III of Navarre is remembered for unifying France after many wars and conflicts between religious denominations. Henry’s mother, Jeanne d’Albret, who had converted to Calvinism, raised Henry as a Protestant or more accurately, as a Huguenot. However Henry was a politique, or a person who sets aside their personal religious beliefs for the greater good. As King Henry IV of France, he was the monarch of a nation that was comprised of 90% Catholics and had just emerged from a series of bloody conflicts and massacres between religious denominations, and was resting upon an uneasy peace. Partly because of the threat of direct Spanish intervention, and partly because he wanted to unify France, King Henry IV “publicly abandoned the Protestant faith and embraced the traditional and majority religion of his country,” (KOT 357) and was reported to have said “Paris is well worth a mass.” This showed that Henry was long weary of religious strife and was fully prepared to place a simple political peace above absolute religious unity in France. He believed a royal policy of tolerant Catholicism would be the best way to achieve such a peace. (KOT 357) The choice to convert to Catholicism was a wise one, as it turned out. King Henry was very popular among his people. Informal in both dress and manner, he quickly gained the loyalty of his people despite his Protestantism. A factor of this acceptance could have possibly been his heredity which clearly linked him to past monarchs and guaranteed his eligibility to the throne despite what many saw as his heretical beliefs. (KOT 356) With the Edict of Nantes, he proclaimed a formal religious settlement, one designed to pacify all the parties that had previously been at each other’s necks in bloody conflict, so that France, and the French people, would never have to endure the looming specter of a religious war again. To do this, he assured the Huguenots religious freedom and rights, and allowed them to go to university and hold public office, usually, though, within their territory. (KOT 357-358) Henry IV was willing to endure as much religious toleration as was necessary to reconstruct France from the ashes of a religious war, and to ensure that the safety, stability, and security of the state came before the personal beliefs of any group, large or small. Henry IV’s ideas on society and religion were influenced by the events of the decades before his rise to power. The Edict of Nantes was formed as a result of the long years of war as well as other religious conflict, and their effect on Henry of Navarre. Henry would later in his life see the years of bloody conflict between the religious groups as a reason enough to pursue tolerance between religions. Henry realized that neither group, be it the Huguenots or the radical Catholics, were going to be entirely eliminated from France, so religious toleration and compromise would allow France to rise from the neo-civil war that had engulfed and weakened it considerably. He turned his back on the total religious unity that was so characteristic of early medieval Europe was no longer possible. Henry decided that France should move on and recover as well they could from the wars and not make the same devastating mistake twice. His near death experience during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day reinforced his stance as a politique. He was convinced that as a ruler, he had to strike a balance between the total Catholicism wanted by the Pope and Philip II of Spain, and the complete religious freedom wished for by the Huguenots. To this end, in his Edict of Nantes, he granted to the Huguenots almost every right they had been pushing, fighting, and dying for as well as reaffirming that France was an officially Catholic nation, and all citizens, whether they were Catholic or Protestant, had to pay the tithe and follow Catholic holidays. (The Edict of Nantes)
In conclusion, King Henry IV’s willingness to accept religious toleration was a manifestation of the belief that the nation as a whole must be placed above individual religious beliefs of any person or groups views. His were shaped by the decades of religious conflict and the realization that a total religious hegemony was no longer possible in post-reformation Europe. Though he was faced with daunting challenges from outside forces such as the ardently catholic Spain and a hostile papacy, as well as having the burden to reform and reunite a nation torn apart by a lasting religious conflict, Henry’s grand vision and decisive actions in steering France toward religious peace and harmony, would make him remembered as one of France’s most popular kings who had the support of the people and succeeded in creating a much more powerful France.

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[ 1 ]. http://www.french-at-a-touch.com/French_History/edict_of_nantes_%5B1589%5D.htm