The 2008 François Guizot Prize

The eighth Prix Guizot of the Calvados General Council was awarded to Arlette Jouanna, emeritus professor at the University of Montpellier and a specialist in sixteenth-century French history and the Wars of Religion, for her book:

La Saint-Barthélemy. Les mystères d’un crime d’État [The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: The Mysteries of a Crime of State]

On 18 August 1572, Paris lavishly celebrated the marriage of Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre, an event meant to seal the reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants. Six days later, the Huguenot leaders were executed on the orders of the King’s Council. Then Catholic mobs massacred “those of the religion” by the thousands – men, women, the elderly, infants…
[…] This tragedy, experienced as an unprecedented rupture, gave rise to wide-ranging reflection on the foundations of power, the limits of authority and the legitimacy of disobedience, and also on the danger that religious divisions posed to the traditions of the kingdom. But this effort at political restoration came up against the excessive sacralisation of the king, which paved the way for Bourbon absolutism.

Speech by Anne d’Ornano, President of the Calvados General Council.

Speech by Jean-Claude Casanova, president of the jury

Speech by Arlette Jouanna, winner of the Prix Guizot-Calvados.

Speech by Catherine Coste, President of the François Guizot association.

Speech by Nicolas Boissonnas, President of the société civile du Val-Richer.

Watch the video of the 2008 prix Guizot