The Non-Decorators: May-June 1562

May 28

Written By Anna .

There are a number of good manuscript sources concerning the Protestant non-decorators. In early May 1562, a coup by order of the French Catholic king replaced the Huguenot mayor of Amiens with a tried and true Catholic. The inhabitants living along the route of the Ascension Day Procession May 7 were ordered to decorate the fronts of their houses with colored cloths or tapestries as was traditional to honor the Virgin and the relics of Saint Firmin carried ceremonially through the streets of the city in company of contingents of the clergy, the trades, and other groups. Several dozen Protestants disobeyed this order and explained in sometimes ringing terms that decorating for such processions was to their minds "idolatry" and "against their conscience" and that they "would rather have their homes demolished (as one said) than to decorate for the processions." These exchanges between Catholic authorities and Protestant dissenters are related in absorbing detail by the clerk of the Amiens town council in the Register of Deliberations. On Corpus Christi Day at the end of May there was another general procession and also parish processions and this time 260 Protestants disobeyed the order to decorate. 105 of them were fined various amounts recorded in the account books of the city; Meanwhile the account books also noted that certain wives of woolcombers ("houppiers") from the parish of St. Remy were imprisoned for working their wheels (spinning thread ) on the holiday. Although these stirring moments are, as noted, recorded in excellent sources, I have a bit of fondness for a fragment of a loose document I came across while perusing some of the Library's uncatalogued material. In one of the uncatalogued 16th century registers I found the fragment shown below which was being used as a bookmark or in any case was inserted between two pages of the register. I immediately recognized the names as those of some of the non-decorators from the Ascension Day protest. It appears that a city sergeant had possessed a list of the protesters and a message to convey to them and that he went around from house to house noting that he had "spoken to the named individual in person." I have some hypotheses as to what this notification or summons could have been about, but just the fact that by dint of my research I felt like one of the only people on earth able to recognize the significance of the names tickled me. Although the Amiens archives are magnificent, there must have been much other loose drafts like this "bookmark" that were lost along the way.