You have full access to this open access chapter. This chapter investigates a series of recorded private conversations between noblemen at the time of the French wars of religion, suggesting how people talked to each other about religion during a war over religion. You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF. Footnote 1. We know about this conversation because Gilles de Gouberville recorded it in his journal which is well known to historians thanks to nineteenth-century editions and now a splendid new edition.
How did people talk with family, neighbours, and acquaintances about matters that were not only sensitive but potentially dangerous? It is but one private conversation that took place in a corner of the French kingdom on an August morning a few months into the first civil war between Catholics and Protestantsβwars that were to last nearly forty years, from to But it suggests how neighbours and acquaintances talked their way into and out of divisions over religion.
Circling around that enigmatic conversation, I consider everyday talk as an engine of both bonding and discord. I begin with Gouberville, his social networks, and his journal in order to locate the conversation.
I then explore the conversations that Gouberville recorded in his journal, including the August conversation. I conclude with comments about religion and talk. The Cotentin was a region of extensive bocage, a mixture of woods, pastureland, rivers, and streams where hunting and fishing paid rich rewards.
The Cotentin also boasted the port city of Cherbourg and a number of large towns such as Valognes. Lower Normandyβthe larger region of which the Cotentin was a partβwas primarily agricultural, but with cities like Bayeux, Coutances, and Caen where markets were held, law courts met, and administrative business was conducted.
