(Visiting Fellow at the Max Weber Programme, European University Institute, Florence)
News on the French Wars of Religion in Papal Rome (research prospects)
This talk deals with the dissemination of news about the French wars of Religion (1562-1598) in Rome. The impact of these disruptive conflicts on the European level can be historically apprehended if we consider not only events, but also flows of information. Thus, the repercussions and uses of these wars should be analyzed in relation to the acceleration and densification of news in the second half of the sixteenth century. More specifically, this paper suggest to look at the dissemination of this news in papal Rome to unveil how the French troubles were transformed into a matter of preoccupation for all Catholics, that is, the cultural construction of a major battlefield of the post-Tridentine Church.
Suggested reading:
Gianvittorio Signorotto, “Milano nella guerra dei Trent’anni. Informazione politica, mobilitazione, conflitti”, Rivista Storica Italiana, CXXX (2018), fasc. III, pp. 895-917.
Dr Lana Martysheva specialises in Early Modern European History, with a particular interest on cultural, political and religious history. She is currently working on transnational circulation of Information in the second half of the sixteenth century. She is a visiting fellow at the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute, and last year, she was a Max Weber fellow. She has taught history at the Sorbonne, Aix-Marseille University and Sciences Po. She holds a PhD in Early Modern History from the Sorbonne University (2018). In her doctoral research on the French wars of Religion, she argued that to understand how Henri of Navarre, a “Heretic” in a historically Catholic kingdom, gained power and became the Most Christian King of France, we must look at actors left in his shadow. She thus focused on a little-known, but politically crucial group of prelates and unveiled the mechanisms of their work of legitimation of the first Bourbon. This study offers a model of analysis of a group political action in the sixteenth century. Her book is forthcoming from the Champ Vallon (coll. “Époques”), with preface by Prof. Denis Crouzet.