‘In the seventeenth century’, said Evennett in his lectures, ‘the torch [of the Counter-Reformation] was passed to France ’. Yes, more or less. As we follow our story into France, we need to bear in mind a number of things which will be likely to make it different from that of Italy. There are the French Protestants, cheek-by-jowl with Catholics from the massive desertion of the mid-sixteenth century until, and after, their intended extirpation by Louis XIV. There is the crown, which controls the French church, or at least the episcopate, from Henri IV onwards; it also has a virtual monopoly of law and government from way back. We cannot imagine the state of affairs in Raggio's Liguria obtaining as a stable condition anywhere in the kingdom of France.

It is an important difference. The moral tradition is not quite here the matter of life and death it may often seem to be in Italy. This has consequences in real life, and also in what has been written by historians. For historians of France the interesting question has not generally been about peace, but about ‘community’. These are certainly connected notions, but they are not quite the same thing. The notion ‘community’ drifts towards an ideal type of collective togetherness which takes it above the level of actual human relations: I shall do my best to break it down. One more point about the historiography. Behind nearly all the work which will be germane to the subject in France, there looms as a great shadow the Giant Dechristianisation.