Recent years have witnessed growing interest in the life and works of Sébastien Castellio (or Chatelillon), best remembered for his writings on religious tolerance and his vicious quarrel with John Calvin and Theodore Beza. While the emphasis continues to remain with his Concerning Heretics, printed in 1554, this outstanding volume treats a later and, in many ways, much more complex work, published anonymously on the eve of the French Wars of Religion. Likely printed in Basel in 1562, Castellio's Conseil à la France désolée was a passionate account of the medicine required by the ailing French kingdom. Florence Alazard, Stéphan Geonget, Laurent Gerbier, Paul-Alexis Mellet, and Romain Menini, together with the publisher Droz, are to be heartily congratulated for their outstanding contribution to our understanding not only of Castellio but also of Renaissance humanism in the second half of the sixteenth century more generally. The volume offers a critical edition with notes and bibliography, together with an extensive introduction that provides a full literary, theological, and textual treatment of the work.
Writing in the wake of the conspiracy of Amboise, the January edict, and the massacre of Vassy, Castellio addressed religious persecution by offering a scene of France as flowing with rivers of blood. At the heart of his diagnosis lay the conscience, whose coercion was the root of the malady. His target was not merely the Catholics but the evils perpetuated by French Protestants, once persecuted but who had now taken up arms to coerce Christians through religious violence. Castellio's damning critique of the Reformation focused on the manner in which it had produced yet another persecuting church. Unsurprisingly, his work was fiercely denounced in Geneva, where Castellio's reputation as a betrayer of the true faith was loudly proclaimed.
Once more the theme of tolerance appears prominently but in a different key. In seven sections Castellio discussed the conditions that had to be met in order for peace to be restored in the kingdom. War was certainly not the answer, but rather a pragmatic approach was to be sought directed not toward religious unity but a culture without constraint of faith and conscience. Only then could France be preserved. The editors point to the crucial contexts in which the work was prepared, as well as to significant influences. Not least were the speeches by Chancellor Michel de L'Hôpital, which opened the door for discussions of religious pluralism. Similarly, Castellio seems to have known the Exhortation aux Princes et Seigneurs du conseil privé du Roy (1561) by the Catholic jurist Etienne Pasquier. The latter offered a robust defense of a pragmatic, political tolerance.
It is not possible to do justice to the extraordinarily rich introduction offered by the editors, who provide a wealth of background information, textual analysis, and intellectual context. Readers will be grateful for the treatment of the origins of the Conseil, including the close working relationship with the Basel printer Oporinus. More significantly, the editors discuss Castellio's nuanced arguments and multiple intentions. Under the name of “France,” the text addresses a range of interlocutors and draws on the disciplines, genres, and vocabulary of law and medicine. We are informed by the medieval background and deft implementation of humanist rhetorical forms as Castellio adopts different authorial voices, such as counselor, judge, orator, and prophet. The editors demonstrate Castellio's brilliance as a writer who was able to manipulate genres and rhetorical forms, playing with the porosity between authorial forms. Likewise, the discussion of audience is highly illuminating, for despite the appeal to France as a nation, Castellio was primarily speaking to the educators and preachers of the kingdom. The text is not a work of doctrine, despite its closeness to scripture, but educates its readers in the correct posture of ethics.
Crucial to understanding Castellio's complex text is his treatment of the conscience written on the heart by God but which is much more than a law. For Castellio the conscience speaks and responds; it is what enables humans to confess and acknowledge the law of God, to speak against all that is evil and wrong. But the conscience is more than just a voice—it warns of the impending judgment of God, thus returning men and women to the example of Christ and the teaching of the Bible. This edition and commentary are essential reading for students of early modern religion.
