Case studies – Popular Politics
1. Popular Politics in a Patrician State: Venice and the Crisis of the League of
Cambrai (RS)
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social/political structure of the Venetian Republic by the early C16th includes
patricians (a closed caste with a monopoly on government positions), citizens, and
popolani (= c. 90%, the rest, excluded from all political power)
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ideology of patrician government: founders of Venice, devoted to the common good;
non-patricians could not understand and were not interested in politics
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Venice as model of political stability and success: people never revolted, regime
remained intact until 1797, empire spread out into Mediterranean and Italian mainland
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critiques of this narrow view of Venetian politics eg. Filippo De Vivo, Information
and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford, 2007):
“communication was politics” and the city a “great, reverberating box” of opinions
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a case study: Venice and the War of the League of Cambrai (1509-1517)
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evidence of widespread public debate during the war, involving all classes and taking
place in public spaces like the squares, streets, taverns, churches [see the diaries of
Girolamo Priuli and Marin Sanudo, letters of Luigi Da Porto]

discussion fuelled by circulation of printed news pamphlets and performance of songs
and poems about the war
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Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I had broadsheet letters circulated encouraging the
Venetian people to rise up against the government
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sensitivity of the government to the vox populi, “things being said on the public
squares”, the “murmuring of the city”
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public opinion and the threat of popular action always part of the political equation
2. Popular politics and religious war – France 1559-1594 (GG)
Historiography of popular protest/ violence: emphasises role of cultural beliefs, ideals and
preconceptions more than just economic triggers as motivating forces - George Rude’, The
Crowd in History; E.P. Thompson, ‘The moral economy of the English crowd’.
These ideas applied to French Wars of Religion: Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The rites of
violence: religious riot in sixteenth-century France’; M.P. Holt, ‘Putting religion back into the
wars of religion’.
Influence of Reformation/ Counter-Reformation – element of militant popular
mobilisation within both movements e.g. Mardi Gras carnival at Issoudun, 1562.
Background to the wars
- Religious tensions compounded by dynastic insecurity after death of Henri II (1559).
- 1559 – French Calvinists form national synod.
- March 1560 – Huguenot leaders arrested after ‘Amboise Conspiracy’.
- Wars sporadic but violent through 1560s e.g. 4,000 people massacred in Toulouse, 1562.
- Tipping point towards full civil conflict – 1572 Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day c. 2,000
Protestants killed in Paris, 10,000 in provinces: massacres in 12 major cities.
- Huguenot sermons and political pamphlets invoke popular action against the Crown and
Catholic population, cite Biblical commands towards iconoclasm.
(Deuteronomy xii, 1-3: ‘ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars and burn their
groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods...’)
- Catholic response means that violence a two-way process.
Key themes in religious riot and violence:
No clear connection to times of dearth/ food shortage – economic disorder = broad
context, but not an obvious trigger.
Largely urban context – participants mainly artisans and apprentices, but draw upon broad
social base.
Evidence of prior planning/ organisation - shared religious slogans (‘Long live the
Gospel’), shared badges of identity e.g. ribbons worn, white crosses painted on Catholic
houses at Macon, 1562; use of existing institutions e.g. confraternities, craft and trade groups.
Who/ what is targeted? Religious enemies of all social classes e.g. 141 Protestants killed in
Lyons in August 1572, 88 are artisans); religious symbols associated with other side e.g.
crucifixes, the host, bibles.
The practise of riot – blends traditional forms of folk justice/ punishment/ humiliation with
attempt to recreate fallen authority e.g. mock trials of Huguenots at Provins, 1572; Catholic
victims marched to Chatelet gaol by Huguenots in Paris.
Mentality and motivation - rid communities of moral and spiritual pollution, inspiration
from the Bible: appeal for recovery of lost unity.