The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson and Protestant Resistance to Louis X1V, 1647-1698

The Bellicose Dove is the first English biography of the Huguenot lawyer, preacher, diplomat and martyr Claude Brousson for 150 years. It examines his life (1647-98), letters, sermons, books, and the role he played in resisting Louis XIV's persecution of the Huguenots until his death on the scaffold in 1698. As a critical, scholarly biography, Bellicose Dove revises the apologetic picture painted by 19th-century writers of Brousson as a pious pacifist. It explores his flirtation with treason in the 1683 Toulouse Project and his invitation to the duc de Schomberg to invade France and end the Revocation in 1690-91, as well as his and Francois Vivent's use of violence inside France. Unique features of the book include a detailed examination of biographical details in his letters, analysis of the symbolism in his sermons and books (especially his anti-Catholic rhetoric), the importance of his three missionary journeys into France, and the effectiveness of his international diplomatic efforts in England, Holland, and Prussia. From fresh archival research conducted in Geneva, Paris and London, new details are revealed concerning his life in exile, his relationship with his wife and children, his preaching style, and his torture, and execution in Montpellier in November 1698.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; The Dove is Born (1647-1683); The Dove Turns Bellicose (1683-1684); The Dove Flies Abroad (1683-1688); The Dove Returns to France (1689-1693); The Lion and the Dove; The Hawk and the Dove; The International Dove (1693-1696); The Mystical Dove; The Sacrificial Dove (1697-1698); Epilogue: Reconsidering the Revocation; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Walter C Utt was was professor (1951-85) and then chair of the History Department at Pacific Union College in Angwin, California. Brian Strayer is Professor of History at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

Review :
"Utt and Strayer retain the merit of having distanced themselves from a Protestant hagiography that treated Brousson as but a holy martyr above reproach, as one who died heroically for his reformed beliefs. They convincingly reveal a human Brousson more complex than a faultless saint. This book is well worth the attention of serious scholars of seventeenth-century France." -- Seventeenth-Century News. "...we are indebted to Walter Utt and ultimately to Professor Strayer for skilfully illuminating another misunderstood and unfamiliar aspect of Louis the XIV's later reign." -- Mark Bryant, French History, Vol 21, no 4, December 2007.