Michel De L'Hopital: The Vision of a Reformist Chancellor During the French Religious Wars (Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, V. 36)

This is the first critical political biography in more than one hundred years of Michel de LHopital, who served as chancellor of France from 1560 to 1568 during the Wars of Religion under the reigns of Francis II and Charles IX and the regency of Catherine de Medicis. He pursued a policy of coexistence for Catholics and Protestants, not so much as a philosophic advocate of religious toleration, but rather as a pragmatic statesman who sought to separate political and religious concerns and insisted on dealing with the troubles of the time in political terms.