MORE RECENT WARS OF RELIGION
The general name Wars of Religion has been given to a series of wars that took place throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries following the onset of the Protestant Reformation.  The countries involved were widespread and included  Switzerland, Sweden, France, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark.  A brief discussion of a few of these wars will be considered insofar as they relate to the historical medals shown below.

French Wars of Religion   
For the purpose of this discussion, the  French Wars of Religion may be divided into those taking place in the 16th century (1562 to 1598) and those related to The Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  Both involved two branches of Christianity, which came into conflict as a result of the Protestant Reformation: French Catholics and French Calvinist Protestants, also called the Huguenots.  These confrontations, which were both civil and military in nature, largely involved a struggle between the House of Bourbon, at the time mainly Protestant, and the powerful House of Guise (Lorraine) allied with the Catholic League. These wars may also be considered a war by proxy between the Catholic King Philip II of Spain and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England. (See Figure 5, below, for a medal and brief biography of one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin).


A well-know historic anecdote of this period, which provides a vivid example of the extreme consequences of religious intolerance, became known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.  Henry IV, King of France, the first of the Bourbon dynasty, had a Protestant upbringing and was a  recognized leader of the Huguenots.  In 1572, as a peace offering between the Catholics and Huguenots,  Henry married Margaret of Valois, the daughter of  Catherine de' Médici, the influential mother of King Charles IX of France.  (Henry later married Marie de' Médici, who bore him six children, including the future Louis XIII.  For a medal of this union, see Figure 6).  During the wedding, where many of the Huguenots had gathered, a number of Catholics attacked the Protestant guests and massacred them. This slaughter, in which  thousands of Huguenots were killed, extended to several parts of Paris and the outlying countryside.  Henry saved his own life by converting to Catholicism, but later repudiated his conversion, resumed his leadership of the Huguenots and continued the French wars of religion.



As the description of the medal indicates, the French wars of religion officially concluded with  the Edict of Nantes.  This edict, while establishing Catholicism as the official state religion, otherwise assured the Huguenots equal rights with the Catholics. This compromise, at least on paper, ended the religious wars in France as it granted a degree of religious toleration to Protestants.  Unfortunately, as we will soon see in the medal Massacre of the Huguenots by Giovanni Hamerani (see below), this rapprochement was short lived.

The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), while highly complex, having  both military and political aspects, was in essence a series of religious wars.  Even a cursory summary of these conflicts is far beyond the scope of this discourse.  Suffice it to say that the conflict began between Protestants (mainly Lutherans and Calvinists) and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, but gradually developed into a general, political war involving most of Europe.  The war was fought mainly in Germany but ultimately involved most of the European powers. The Thirty Years' War was ended with the Treaty of Münster, a part of the wider Peace of Westphalia.

The Thirty Years’ War is often divided into four major phases: The Bohemian Revolt, the Danish Intervention, the Swedish Intervention, and the French Intervention, each phase having its own distinctive origin and history.  The opponents in almost all phases of this series of wars could be divided into Catholics and Protestants, although at one point,  Catholic France, being threatened by two surrounding Habsburg states (Spain and the Holy Roman Empire) and eager to exert its power against the weaker German states, led to  France's participation on the otherwise Protestant side of the war (see below).

For the purpose of this discourse we will say a few more words about the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years’ War as some wonderful medallic works were struck commemorating Sweden’s involvement in the war.  The dominant personality here was the Protestant King Gustaf II Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus) of Sweden.  Among his major achievements was his  successful  invasion of the Holy Roman Empire, turning the tables on the Catholics. His important military victories included the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631 (Figure 7) where Gustavus Adolphus's forces defeated the Catholic League led by General Tilly.  

The inscription on the reverse of this medal clearly expresses the religious justification of the war and the preference Christ has for one Christian denomination over another, as it unambiguously implies that Christ is on the side of the Protestant Swedes and is guiding the massacre of the tyrants, trampling the rebellious heretics and waging war on the "admirers of the pope".

The death of Gustavus Adolphus in the Battle of Lützen in 1632 occasioned the striking of one of the most magnificent medals of this or any other period, The Apotheosis of Gustavus Adophus by the great German medallist Sebastian Dadler (Figure 8).  The historic and lasting importance of the role Gustavus Adolphus played in the Thirty Years’ War is attested to by the fact that these victories made Sweden the continental leader of Protestantism until the Swedish Empire collapsed in 1721.


As Gustavus Adolphus was credited for having ensured the principle of religious freedom after a near-century of religious conflicts, a monument to him was erected two centuries later on that battle site.  Although an individual's freedom of belief in the Germanies had to wait for changes induced by Napoleon, at least the first steps leading to peace and some stability of religion across the region were established by the battle's outcome and that of its successors. Under the statue of Gustavus the Great, the monument's inscription, which stresses the religious nature of the conflict, reads:

The victory confirmed the Swedish king as a great tactical leader and induced many Protestant German states to ally themselves with Sweden against the German Catholic League led by Maximilian of Bavaria, and the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II of Austria.