Staff Profiles

Publications

Academia.edu profile

Podcasts

The Influence of European Wars of Religion on English National Identity

The body in pain and tales of redemption and damnation during the wars of religion

Interview for the European University of Britanny web radio on 'the world inside out'

Qualifications

B.A., History Single Honours, May 1992, University of Sheffield
M.Phil., History, May 1995, University of Sheffield
Ph.D., History, May 1999, University of St Andrews

Previous Positions

Lecturer in History, Crichton Campus of the University of Glasgow, 2000-03

Memberships

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Society for the Study of French History
European Reformation Research Group

Languages

French

Research Interests

Luc Racaut has published extensively in the field of the history of printing and religious reform during the French Wars of Religion. His most recent publications outline how Catholic reform was pursued in print in general and the role that printers played in particular. Demand for vitriolic material discouraged printers from producing works devoted to more progressive aims such as the instruction of the literate laity. In this respect the burgeoning market for printed books served as a brake on the Catholic Reformation in France that was otherwise served by prolific and successful authors.

Current Work

The body in pain, in late medieval representations of the passion and public executions, served a didactic function and followed a code that was well understood. Wounds were liminal places not simply between the inside and the outside, but between the corporeal and the spiritual. The stigmata received by St Francis was a visible sign of his imitation of Christ, an outward sign of his inner election. In an inversion of this ‘sacred woundedness’, the perpetrators of violence on the bodies of heretics during the wars of religion were looking for visible signs of damnation or corruption inside their bodies - literally - worlds inside out. By the end of the sixteenth century the namelessness of the victims of massacres, and the shapelessness of their bodies, could no longer be reconciled with tales of individual martyrs that had featured in Protestant martyrologies to that point.

Future Research

It remains to be established how early modern perceptions of the body fit in the wider context of the development of personhood and individualism which seem to characterize contemporary identity. This question flows into a much wider debate in the historiography about the role of material culture in shaping identity and one's sense of self.

Funding

In 2009 Luc Racaut was the recipient of a British Academy small research grant which allowed for a research assistant to be employed full time for 6 months to work on the 'World Inside Out' project. This project was further funded by the British Academy and the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine in 2010-11.

Undergraduate Teaching

HIS1027 European History
HIS2084 Europe's Reformations
HIS3228 Imagined Futures
HIS3000 Reading History
HIS3020 Writing History

Postgraduate Teaching

HIS8061 The Practice of History
HIS8053 Conflict in European History: Case Studies
HIS8128 Disease in History

History PhD

• Articles

  • Racaut L. "La boutique de malédiction": Jean Boucher et l'hypocrisie. Œuvres et Critiques 2013, 38(2), 83-94.
  • Racaut L. The Sacrifice of the Mass and the Redefinition of Catholic Orthodoxy during the French Wars of Religion. French History 2010, 24(1), 20-39.
  • Racaut L. Education of the Laity and Advocacy of Violence in Print during the French Wars of Religion. History: The Journal of the Historical Association 2010, 95(318), 159-176.
  • Racaut L. Nicolas Chesneau, Catholic Printer in Paris during the French Wars of Religion. The Historical Journal 2009, 52(1), 23-41.
  • Racaut L. Anglicanisme et Gallicanisme entre Rome et Genève? Une mise au point historiographique. Histoire, Economie et Société 2005, (2), 163-170.
  • Racaut L. Anglicanism and Gallicanism: Between Rome and Geneva?. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 2005, 96, 198-220.
  • Racaut L. The Polemical use of the Albigensian Crusade during the French Wars of Religion. French History 1999, 13(3), 261-279.
  • Racaut L. The "Book of Sports" and Sabbatarian Legislation in Lancashire, 1579-1616. Northern History 1997, 33, 73-87.

• Authored Books

  • Racaut L, Ryrie A. Moderate Voices in the European Reformation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.
  • Racaut L. Hatred in Print : Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity during the French Wars of Religion. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.

• Book Chapters

  • Racaut L. «N’estans chrestiens que de nombre & nom»: René Benoist et l’abjuration d’Henri IV. In: Daubresse S; Haan B, ed. La Ligue et ses frontières : Engagements catholiques à distance du radicalisme à la fin des guerres de Religion. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015, pp.229-241.
  • Racaut L. Le sacrifice de la messe en France avant le concile: ni Rome ni Genève?. In: Salesse, F, ed. Le bon historien sait faire parler les silences: Hommage à Thierry Wanegffelen. Toulouse: Méridiennes, 2012, pp.311-330.
  • Racaut L. L'agneau sacrifié: le crime de la messe denoncé 1554-1600. In: Véronique Castagnet, Olivier Christin and Naïma Ghermani, ed. Les Affrontements religieux en Europe: du début du XVIe au milieu du XVIIe siècle. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2008, pp.244-257.
  • Racaut L. La confession de foi d'Anne Askew: le martyre au féminin en 1546. In: Véronique Castagnet, Olivier Christin and Naïma Ghermani, ed. Les affrontements religieux en Europe: du début du XVIe au milieu du XVIIe siècle. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2008, pp.165-176.
  • Racaut L. Sacrifice, Society and Religion in The Wicker Man. In: Benjamin Franks; Stephen Harper et al, ed. The Quest for the Wicker Man: History, Folklore and Pagan Perspectives. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2006, pp.56-69.
  • Racaut L. Persecution or Pluralism? Propaganda and Opinion-Forming during the French Wars of Religion. In: Bonney R; Trim DJB, ed. Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 1550-1700. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006, pp.65-87.
  • Racaut L. Religious polemic and Huguenot self-perception and identity, 1554-1619. In: Raymond A. Mentzer, Andrew Spicer, ed. SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN THE HUGUENOT WORLD 1559-1685. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.29-43.
  • Racaut L. Accusations of infanticide on the Eve of the French Wars of Religion. In: Jackson M, ed. Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550-2000. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002, pp.18-34.
  • Racaut L. A Protestant or Catholic superstition? Astrology and eschatology during the French Wars of Religion. In: Parish H; Naphy WG, ed. Religion and superstition in Reformation Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002, pp.154-169.
  • Racaut L. The cultural obstacles to religious pluralism in the polemic of the French Wars of Religion. In: Cameron K; Greengrass M; Roberts P, ed. The adventure of religious pluralism in Early Modern France : papers from the Exeter conference, April 1999. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000, pp.115-127.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)

  • Racaut L. »une juste moitié de vos livres«: le rôle de la propagande religieuse dans la production pamphlétaire. In: Médialité et intépretation contemporaine des premières guerres de Religion. 2014, Paris: De Gruyter.

• Review

  • Racaut L. Reason of state, religious passions, and the French Wars of Religion. Historical Journal 2009, 52(4), 1075-1083.