Huguenot Political Theory

1573

Huguenot writers in exile began publishing radical tracts arguing that subjects could resist and even depose tyrannical rulers, borrowing from Calvinist theology and classical republicanism. The Vindiciae contra Tyrannos, printed a few years later, would influence political thinkers from Grotius to Locke. Resistance theory had been born. The Vindiciae contra Tyrannos argued magistrates had a duty to resist tyrants, establishing philosophical foundations echoing through subsequent centuries.