Martyrdom inspires but pragmatism builds nations

Thomas More chose martyrdom, Henri of Navarre chose pragmatism. Only one left a lasting legacy of peace

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History often asks us to weigh principle against pragmatism. Thomas More chose to die for his beliefs, while Henri of Navarre compromised to bring peace and tolerance to France. For all the reverence given to More’s martyrdom, it was Henri’s pragmatism that truly served his people, and it is the better example to follow.

When I was growing up in Catholic Ireland, More was presented as a martyr, a man prepared to lay down his life on a matter of sacred principle. Canonized in 1935, he was a saintly figure, someone to be admired and emulated.

More had a distinguished intellectual career before going to work in 1529 as Henry VIII’s lord chancellor, but soon ran afoul of Henry’s determination to have his first marriage voided by the Vatican. When the Vatican refused and Henry responded by having himself declared head of the English Church, More was in a pickle, which he tried to manage by keeping his head down.

He was prepared to accept Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, as the duly anointed queen and acknowledge the implications for royal succession, but he drew the line at formally taking the oath recognizing Henry as the legitimate head of the English Church. For this, he was beheaded and died bravely. In his own words on the scaffold, he was dying “in the faith and for the faith of the Catholic Church, the king’s good servant and God’s first.”

Religious conflict in 16th-century France pitted the Catholic majority against the Huguenot (Calvinist) minority. Concentrated in the south and west of the country, the Huguenot share of the population probably peaked around 10 per cent. And Henri of Navarre, who was in the legitimate line of royal succession through his father, was a Huguenot.

Although the French Wars of Religion had started in 1562, an accommodation seemed to be at hand in 1570, only to be aborted by the August 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, where thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered by Catholic royal forces. Eventually, through process of elimination, Henri became heir presumptive to the French throne in 1589, but faced opposition from the Catholic Holy League and the Vatican, both of whom were unwilling to accept a non-Catholic king.

So as the war dragged on, Henri made the symbolic gesture of converting to Catholicism, reputedly observing that “Paris is well worth a mass!” With that, the war soon ended, and Henri was crowned king of France at Chartres Cathedral in February 1594.

His reign as Henri IV is generally well regarded by historians for bringing peace and prosperity back to France. He also took steps towards giving Paris some of its most famous landmarks. What later became the great gallery of the Louvre was built under his auspices, as was the Pont Neuf, the bridge connecting the left and right banks of the Seine.

Most impressive of all, though, was his attempt to introduce religious tolerance. The 1598 Edict of Nantes set out to produce a workable settlement that recognized the majority status of Catholicism while simultaneously protecting the civil rights of Huguenots to the maximum feasible extent. Freedom of conscience would be protected as would the right to engage in public worship in much of the country, Paris being a notable exception. In return, Catholicism would be recognized as the state religion and further extension of Huguenot worship would be legally curtailed. However, this didn’t satisfy everyone and Henri was assassinated by a Catholic zealot in 1610.

Later on, Henri’s religious settlement fell apart and the Edict of Nantes was formally revoked in 1685, leading to the flight of some 400,000 Huguenots to England, Protestant Ireland, Prussia, the Netherlands and America. In the process, France lost some of its most economically productive citizens in a manner similar to what happened with Germany’s Jews in the 1930s and Uganda’s Asians in the 1970s.

So, who was more admirable, the principled Thomas More or the pragmatic Henri of Navarre?

In thinking about this, it’s important to be clear about what More bravely died for. He wasn’t taking a general stand for freedom of conscience or religious tolerance. Far from it. He was dying for his personal vision of the truth. More, in fact, was in favour of burning Protestant “heretics.”

For me, it isn’t a tough call. I’ll take Henri any day.

Troy Media columnist Pat Murphy casts a history buff’s eye at the goings-on in our world. Never cynical – well, perhaps a little bit.