Cardinal Jacques Davy Du Perron: Conversion, schism, and politics in early modern France

In the aftermath of the French Wars of Religion (1562--1598), Henri IV's new dynastic regime attempted to prevent renewed civil violence and religious division. Cardinal Jacques Davy Du Perron (1556--1618), France's pre-eminent religious controversialist for over three decades, simultaneously sought to refute Protestantism, to deflect schismatic threats in France and abroad, and to strengthen royal authority. Despite his defense of crown policy, Du Perron has been inaccurately and anachronistically labelled an ultramontanist. This dissertation re-examines Du Perron's works and diplomacy, challenges and modifies the traditional framework of Gallican historiography, and illuminates the broader history of early modern France.; The first two chapters of the dissertation chart Du Perron's rapid and controversial rise from provincial obscurity to royal favor. An ambitious Norman poet and rhetorician at the court of French king Henri III, Du Perron converted to Roman Catholicism and gained renown and notoriety for his efforts to convert others. After the king's assassination in 1589, Du Perron participated in dynastic conspiracies before he rallied to the new Protestant monarch, Henri IV. An architect of the king's own conversion to Roman Catholicism and subsequent papal absolution in 1595, Du Perron became the first of Henri IV's episcopal nominations to receive papal confirmation.; The final three chapters examine Du Perron's polemical and diplomatic efforts against three different religious opponents: French Huguenots; French and Venetian "Gallican" Catholics; and the Anglican church. Each decade of Du Perron's episcopal career brought an immersion in increasingly earlier periods of ecclesiastical history. During the 1590s, Du Perron argued with French Calvinists largely on the basis of questions contemporary to the sixteenth century. In the 1600s, Du Perron fought fellow Roman Catholics in Venice and France on their interpretations of the fourteenth and fifteenth-century scholastic conciliarists. After 1610, the cardinal's prestige sheltered France's weak regency government during the conflicts between Gallicans and Jesuits. In his final and most significant writings, Du Perron turned to the first millennium of Christian history in order to attack the general development of schism, England's king James I (r. 1603--1625), and the schismatic foundations of England's national church.