The re-formation of Catholic identity: Florimond de Raemond (ca. 1540--1601) and the origins of the French Counter Reformation

The life and writings of Florimond de Raemond (ca. 1540--1601) exemplify a major strain of militant Catholicism in late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century France. Raemond was born into a family of the lower nobility in Guyenne. Educated in Bordeaux and Paris, he subsequently attended the University of Toulouse, where he trained for a career in law. In 1570 he bought a seat in the Bordeaux parlement from Michel de Montaigne and remained a judge in that court till his death.; In tandem with his legal interests, Raemond evinced a lasting fascination with religious belief and practice. Attracted as a student to the Reformed religion, he reverted to Catholicism in 1566 and became a fervent defender of his church and faith, writing, translating, or editing a variety of polemical works. In his oeuvre, he sought above all to extol the legitimacy and primacy of papal authority---and by extension the truth of the Catholic religion---against Protestant claims to the contrary.; Raemond was decisively shaped by the Wars of Religion. He ardently believed that religious unity was necessary for the restoration and preservation of political and social order. Nonetheless, he uneasily recognized that limited toleration of Protestantism was a necessary, though in his view deplorable, price to pay for peace. The tension in these conflictive positions is evident both in his views on legitimate political authority and his judicial activities, where he vacillated between fanatical rigor and pragmatism. Moreover, despite his firm royalism, his zeal for the extirpation of heresy led him to adopt opinions that were decidedly anomalous in the parlementaire milieu, such as his high regard for the Society of Jesus and, indeed, for the papacy itself.; Ultimately, Raemond was unable to reconcile his Catholicism with the changed political landscape in France after the Edict of Nantes. While his frequent assertions of impartiality indicate his awareness of the intellectual bind in which he found himself---when constituted authority decreed the toleration of heresy, how to be true to one's orthodox convictions and not betray one's conscience?---his worldview remained reflexively Catholic.