Noble Culture, Aristocratic Masculinity, and Violence during the Wars of Religion

By drawing upon Michel de Montaigne's insights and examining the nobility's violent practices during the Massacre of Vassy and the Day of the Barricades, this thesis challenges Elias Norbert's model of the civilizing process. Norbert posits the nobility's violent inclination as intrinsic and that noble violence in sixteenth-century France arose from weakened social controls. Contrary to this view, this thesis argues that the propensity for violence among sixteenth-century French warrior nobility was deeply rooted in the aristocratic culture of the time. The Wars of Religion served as sites of social performance, where French warrior nobility sought to defend their manhood and consolidate their nobility through performances of courage and manipulations of violence, which were culturally sanctioned and expected. This analysis prompts a re-evaluation of noble culture by demonstrating violence as a fundamental aspect of warrior nobles' conception of their noble and masculine identities in late sixteenth-century France. This thesis explores, how, in these two violent episodes, the warrior nobility's strategic interactions with the royal authority, either in acts of defiance or efforts to gain recognition and favor, served to reinforce their status and authority rather than merely resist or react to the royal policy. This examination reveals a mutually influential relationship between the nobility and the monarchy, which supports revisionist historians' view and challenges the traditional model of conflict. In this way, this thesis also sheds light on the impact of noble culture on the noble-monarchy interactions, which contributed to a deeper understanding of the dynamics that influenced the development of the royal state of France during the early modern period.