“Survive. A history of the wars of religion”, by Jérémie Foa, Seuil, “L’univers historique”, 344 p., €23, digital €15.
From book to book, Jérémie Foa profoundly transforms our understanding of the religious wars that ravaged France between 1562 and 1598. In 2015, in The grave of peace (Presses Universitaires de Limoges), showed the cruel paradox of the pacification edicts. These edicts recognized the freedom of conscience of Protestants but, by drastically limiting public demonstrations of their faith, allowed for convictions and imprisonment. In 2021, in All who fall (The Discovery; read the “Eyes in the pockets” column of the “World of Books” of September 6), Jérémie Foa proposed a new interpretation of the Saint-Barthélemy massacre (August 24, 1572), which insisted on the proximity between the Catholic murderers and their Protestant victims, neighbors or relatives of their executioners. For the murderers, he explained to Monde.fr (October 24, 2021), “Ultimately, there is nothing more unbearable than these “heretics” who look so much like them. (…) The massacre becomes an opportunity to end this similarity.”
In SurviveJérémie Foa takes up this interpretation of extreme violence, understood as the desire to make a situation visible. “untraceable otherness”But his book is much more than that, as its subtitle indicates, A history of the wars of religion.. This story differs from the previous ones for two reasons. The first is the method. Jérémie Foa built his demonstration from studies of situations, in the manner of the American sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982). Subject to a “dense description”These situations reveal the fundamental tension that accompanies the anxieties of the time of civil wars.
Its protagonists, in fact, are “caught between two impossible demands: on the one hand, that of showing themselves to be sincere, even enthusiastic, in their religious or political affiliations, and on the other, that of knowing how to conceal these affiliations in time”. In the book, the emphasis is on concealment tactics. They require strict control of emotions, which can betray one’s true identity, and constant vigilance, which allows one to recognize the enemy… and the danger. The exercise is difficult in the topsy-turvy world installed by civil wars: words have lost their expected meaning, everyday objects can be weapons of death, and the spaces of ordinary life have become targets, hiding places, or death chambers. Nothing is obvious in the age of false appearances.
You have 48.74% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
