Les élites calvinistes et la course anti-catholique à La Rochelle : attitudes, justifications et contestations dans les années 1570

Abstract

It was in 1559, during the first national French Synod, that there were, at least officially, the first debates on the legal aspect of privateering carried on by the Protestants. The minister of the Marennes harbour-where sailors and ship-owners had already attacked Spanish vessels-seems to have opened the discussion, when he asks whether Pirates & other people who have used their talents and responsibilities to the prejudice must be admitted to the Supper. From then onwards many are those who bring in arguments pro & contra on the right or injustice of the war that was waged on the sea. If some justify attacks against heretic Roman Catholics in the name of the Protestant cause, others will put forward conscience and moral problems, or even simple economic stakes. In fact the question will long divide the world of Calvinist elites, chiefly in peace time: a source of unease, it will provoke tensions between those in favour of, and against, the war at sea, so much so that the La Rochelle Consistory in 1577 bans the Prince of Conde from the Supper.