Henry of Navarre: To Convert to Catholicism

On August 18, 1572, Henry of Navarre, a Protestant, married Margaret (Marguerite) de Valois, a sister of King Charles IX of France.
Henry's marriage was part of a plan to help quell the French Wars of Religion.
He was forced to convert to Roman Catholicism on February 5, 1576.
Why was Henry not forced much earlier to become Catholic?
 
I thought 1576 was when he renounced his conversion to Catholicism, after having escaped from court. Wasn't he forced to convert very soon after the St. Bartholomew massacre?
 
Why was Henry not forced much earlier to become Catholic?

Henry of Navarre switched religion so often that he was a spiritual revolving door.

Basically :
-1554. Catholic baptism : during all his childhood and adolescence, his parents would teach him Catholic beliefs (his father) and Calvinists (his mother)
-1563. His father dies, and his mother officially converted to Calvinism earlier raised his son in her faith.
- 1572. After the St Barthelemy, he have to convert to be safe.
- 1576. After having pariticpated to Malcontents policies, he flee the court and convert back to clavinism, assuming the role of one of the leaders of Protestants, while a moderate one.
- In the 1580's, he seems to hesitate between Calvinism and Catholicism, only to choose the later when Ligue becames cleraly hegemonic politically.
- 1593. Eventually, after a long war against the Ligue and its supporters, he converts back to Catholicism one last time to allow himself to take the crown without too much bloodshed.

He's not nicknamed "The Six Conversions" king for nothing, after all. Of course, all of that made him badly seen by non-moderates on both Catholic and Protestant sides.

Eventually, we have a prince and a king that while sincerely religious (as pointed by his actual catholic devotion after 1593), wasn't really about dogmas which was a real issue when two of the three sides of Wars of Religion were pretty much about it.
 
Hell, his father Antoine was a complicated man who moved between what's best seen as a sort of Reformed Catholicism to Calvinism fairly regularly...

And refused Last Communion when he died.

Fighting Huguenots.

The Wars of Religion.

They were a weird time.
 
Eventually, we have a prince and a king that while sincerely religious (as pointed by his actual catholic devotion after 1593), wasn't really about dogmas which was a real issue when two of the three sides of Wars of Religion were pretty much about it.
It seems to me that he was basicly a Calvinist who was willing to pretend to be Catholic.
 
It seems to me that he was basicly a Calvinist who was willing to pretend to be Catholic.

There's nothing to really proove that, and actual studies tends to point out that his conversions, while opportunists, weren't really devoid of sincerity.
It's just that he couldn't be bothered with dogmas : Condé's Protestantism and obviously Ligue's Catholicism simply didn't interested him.
His personal religiosity, even before his last conversion, seems at odds with the main Calvinist teachings of his era, for instance.

Of course, that owed him a lot of animosity of both sides (not unlike Henri III's policies, that tended to be even more "temporary picking a side for political convenience")
 
And refused Last Communion when he died.


This is not true.

1. If you refer to the death of Henry IV:

On 14 May 1610, the king left the Louvre to visit his friend Sully, who is ill, in his residence at the Arsenal, east of Paris.
Early in the afternoon, he finally left again in carriage, with some companions by his side and the Duke of Epernon. It was not considered necessary that the horse guard escort. But the carriage is locked in rue de la Ferronnerie, between the Halles and the Cimetière des Saints-Innocents, from a hay wagon that blocks the street. The servants, who stand on the footboards of the carriage, leave it to move the wagon.

At four o'clock in the afternoon,just right outside the hotel «Au cœur couronné percé d’une flèche», Ravaillac, just waiting for this, hoist himself over a radius of the wheel. Passing the arm over the Duke of Epernon, he hits the king to the chest with multiple stab wounds.

He was immediately overpowered and dragged into a nearby hotel and then to the prison of the Conciergerie. Too late.
Henri IV died a few moments later, while the carriage turns back to the Louvre.
The horror and consternation of the personages around the king was indescribable. The duke of Epernon raised the king in his arms: the blood rushed in a torrent from Henry's mouth and side, he clasped his hands, made one effort to speak, and fell back in the coach with a rattle, and expired.
The silence in a few seconds ensued.
At last the duke of Montbazon exclaimed: «The king is dead!».

It was therefore a little difficult administer the last rites to a man who died in a few minutes in his carriage, and not in his bed
However, Henry IV had already received the Holy Eucharist that morning at the Mass in the chapel of the Feuillantine Convent.




2. If instead you're referring to the death of Antonio de Bourbon:

On Christmas Day 1560, Jeanne Queen of Navarre and wife of Antoine de Bourbon, publicly broke with Catholicism and converted to Calvinism. In 1561, Jeanne outlawed Catholicism in her domains and established Calvinism as the state religion. However her husband had changed his religion a few times but was now back in the Catholic camp, and at the court of Catherine de Medici and her son. This caused major strain in the once happy marriage; as Antoine, under orders from Queen Catherine, threatened to repudiate Jeanne if she did not abjure the Protestant faith. Catherine de Médici had also recently forbidden the celebration of Protestant services at the French Royal Court, but Jeanne openly ignored this command and continued to hold services in her private apartments.
Fearing both Catherine de Medici and Antoine de Bourbon, Jeanne left the Paris in March 1562 just as the First War of Religion erupted. In May 1562, on her journey to Navarre, Jeanne and her 400-strong armed escort stopped off at her husband’s Chateau de Vendôme, where she did nothing to stop her troops pillaging the Catholic churches in the town, and worse, she allowed them desecrate the Ducal Chapel de Vendôme which housed the remains of Antoine’s ancestors [Always very "well behaved" these Calvinists! ;o)].
When word reached Antoine of the desecration, he ordered the Seigneur de Montluc to capture his wife and imprison her in a convent. Jeanne managed to escape and arrived at Béarn, her capital in Navarre.

During the second Siege of Rouen began the first week of October 1562, an assault at the Fort St. Catharine led by Duke François of Guise, Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, one of the most important Catholic leaders, was hit in the joint of his shoulder by an arquebus shot, dying of the wound on 17 November.

Antoine de Bourbon had the habit of exposing himself boldly on the front line as a simple soldier. October 16, 1562, he visited the trenches, exposed to the full force of fire of the defenders of the city. Early in the afternoon, while he came to the protective embankments to satisfy a natural need, is under fire a musket. Shot in the left shoulder, he is thrown on the ground under the shock. The injury does not seem too serious. But it fails to extract the bullet that is stuck in the head of the humerus. While most surgeons are optimistic, the famous Antoine Paré is more reserved. For him, «all wounds made at the large joints and most of contusions are deadly». Four days later, in the presence of the king and the queen mother, he confirmed his diagnosis, which goes against the advice of all his colleagues.
On 26 October, the Catholic army triumphs the resistance of Rouen.
Also Antoine de Bourbon wants to celebrate this victory. After being demolished the wall of his room and pulled out of his bed, he has the satisfaction of making a city tour, at the sound of drums. But the conditions of the wounded, worsen: the infection wins. Forgetting their discord, the King of Navarre calls his wife; a dispatch was envoy to Jeanne d'Albret, who was banished from the court and had returned to Béarn, But she is slow in coming...
On November 15, the injured embarked on a galley up the Seine. Gangrene has made lightning progress and two days later, at the height of Andelys, the King of Navarre breathed his last.
For the fever and delirium of agony, his intimates believed of perceive that Antoine de Bourbon had returned to Protestantism.
Verily, before embarking, he confessed and received communion from a priest.
It is said that then, delirious, he then expressed the wish to live in the religion of Augsburg (the Lutheranism).
But in reality, he had anyway received the last sacraments Catholics.





 
Top