Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The central problem of the French Wars of Religion was the question of whether Catholics and Protestants could coexist in peace. For the Catholic League, the French body politic could not survive being afflicted by the royal attempts at peacemaking in the Edicts of Pacification. This chapter explores the early history of toleration during the Wars of Religion and the attempts of political moderates, often called politiques, to justify it, in particular the Chancellor Michel de L’Hospital. It argues that Pierre de Belloy’s approach to religious toleration was firmly in the politique vein, to the point of it illustrating the vulnerabilities of politique thinking. For all that toleration of Protestant subjects might be possible, the toleration of a Protestant ruler was always an attempt to think the unthinkable. Using a rare copy of a speech given by Belloy shortly after receiving the news of Henri IV’s conversion to Catholicism, it argues that Belloy and the politiques failed to construct a viable alternative to the conception of France defined by its Catholicity.</jats:p>