From D’Avaux to Dévot: Politics and Religion in the Thirty Years War

Abstract

This article attempts to reformulate the classic question of whether the Thirty Years War was political or religious by examining the career of the Count d’Avaux, one of Cardinal Richelieu’s principal agents in Germany and, in the time of Mazarin, one of France’s plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Westphalia. All three men made a distinction between a political and religious war, but where they differed, and where D’Avaux was closer to Richelieu than to Mazarin, was in the relative weight each gave to considerations of legality, necessity, and conscience.

¿Una guerra de religión o una religión para la guerra? El elemento confesional en la Guerra de los Treinta Años

“…Sobre las complejas relaciones entre legalidad, necesidad y conciencia en el ámbito del gobierno francés durante la guerra, cfr. Sonnino, 2002. La importancia del elemento religioso, sin que esto anule el carácter de guerra político-dinástica, se plasma en las conclusiones a los trabajos reunidos en Forclaz y Martin, 2015, en especial p. 330.…”