Cultural History Seminar: Rosanne Baars

News in France and the Netherlands during the Wars of Religion and the Dutch Revolt

From the beginning of the Dutch Revolt onwards, the Dutch were interested in news from France. They noticed how the French experienced similar problems on issues such as religious toleration, peace negotiations and conflicts between nobles. In the vast historiography on the Wars of Religion, historians tend to focus on pamphlets and other printed sources. However, pamphlets often constituted merely an official confirmation of oral news, which almost always was the first to reach a town or village. Diaries and correspondences show the problems contemporaries experienced with interpreting and assessing oral news. Netherlandish Protestant soldiers for example refused to believe Spanish reports on the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre until it was confirmed orally by a French Reformed minister. In this paper, I will argue how the interplay between various news media illuminates contemporary questions on authority and trustworthiness in a rapidly polarizing religious climate.