The French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) were a series of eight conflicts between Protestant and Catholic factions in France lasting 36 years, The fighting ended in 1598 when Henry of Navarre, who had converted to Catholicism in 1593, was proclaimed Henry IV of France and issued the Edict of Nantes, which granted substantial rights and freedoms to the Huguenots. However, Catholics continued to have a hostile opinion of Protestants in general and of Henry, and his assassination in 1610 triggered a fresh round of Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s.
Tensions had been rising between Protestants and Catholics since 1534 but the religious and political situation worsened after Henry II (r. 1547-1559) died from an injury. His son, Francois II (Francis II, r. 1559-1560), crowned king at the age of 15, had been married to Mary, Queen of Scots (l. 1542-1587) who was the niece of Francis, Duke of Guise (l. 1519-1563) and his brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine (l. 1524-1574). Although Francis II was of age to rule on his own, his mother, Catherine de ‘Medici (l. 1519-1589) encouraged the Guise brothers to assume control as Francis II was inexperienced and sickly.
The House of Guise, devoutly Catholic, then exercised the power behind the throne and were hostile to the efforts of the Huguenots (French Protestants) who were advancing their vision in France. In March 1560, a group of Huguenots tried to kidnap Francis II to remove him from the influence of the Guise brothers. The plot, known as the Amboise Conspiracy, was discovered and anyone thought to be involved, as well as over 1,000 other Huguenots, were executed. In retaliation, Huguenots began vandalizing Catholic churches and rising tensions led to the Massacre of Vassy in March of 1562, in which Catholics killed more Protestants, starting the first war.
Conflict continued, with periods of armed peace between hostilities, until 1598 when King Henry IV, recognizing that France would never accept a Protestant king, converted to Catholicism (allegedly, with the famous line, “Paris is well worth a Mass”). His Edict of Nantes (1598), granting rights to Protestants in France while maintaining Catholic sovereignty, ended the French Wars of Religion (which had cost approximately 4 million lives) but did not address the underlying tensions which continued to erupt throughout the next century.
French Wars of Religion - World History Encyclopedia :france-cool:
French Wars of Religion - Comprehensive Documentary - Pike & Shot Channel :macron:
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I dont think enough people truly realize just how mind numbing and incomprehensibly evil the idea of eternal punishment is. Being born into a culture or religion that supports such an idea sort of numbs us to really trying to wrap our minds around it.
Humans cannot even truly comprehend eternity outside abstractions. Any attempt to contextualize it within our finite frame of reference will fall infinitely short of just how long eternity is. The life span of a billion universes and a single picosecond are both equally infinitely less than eternity. We cant even think about a thing without an end, because eventually you have to stop thinking about it.
And a large number if not majority of religions believe in the concept of eternal punishment. Its insane.
yeah ive always said that hell is a deeply sadistic concept, literally no crime fits that punishment not even the most evil IRL people who ever existed did a fraction of what an eternity of torment entails (and that assumes that punitive justice even has value which IMO it mostly doesn’t). ive heard it thrown around by religious comrades as a good thing when someone evil dies that they’re gonna burn in hell, while im definitely neutral-to-pro dancing on the graves of evil dead ppl as soon as hell comes up i get kinda uncomfortable. i was raised atheist so its also kind of a silly/implausible seeming concept to me, or it would be if i didnt feel like it had a social role in normalizing and reifying punitive justice/inflictions of pain as justice.
imo it was all invented by a bunch of powerless monks or whoever coping that their oppressive king would surely face justice somehow because they could do nothing about him killing and robbing their compatriots. It’s understandable, but it’s the same simple fantasy that we post here about Biden getting a brain aneurysm or trump dying of covid or whatever. There is no heavenly salvation for the blessed nor eternal punishment for the greedy parasites, unless we make it happen ourselves.
Okay, but have you heard of a guy called Henry Kissinger?
I know we like to joke about evil people going to hell but there is literally nothing you could possibly do as a human that could even begin to compare to the evil of torturing something for eternity.
Buddhist cultures don’t usually have eternal punishment, there may be suffering after death in some sort of realm but it’s still just temporary like all things are. I grew up in the US but I am so thankful for my atheistic and Buddhist influenced upbringing.
I comfort myself with the fact that eternal torture is impossible because the number of distinct quantum states your brain can have, given that it can only occupy a finite volume is, while very large, technically finite. Eventually the torture will just loop around to the beginning so it’s not really an eternity. The devil could try to just continually expand your brain so that you can experience more intricate types of pain but eventually your head will grow so large that it collapses into a black hole. They could try to make it very long and thin rather than roughly spherical to avoid this, but eventually the expansion of the universe will causally disconnect one half from the other.