Michel de L'Hôpital

Michel de L'Hôpital (c. 1505–1573) was a French jurist, humanist scholar, and Chancellor of France under kings Francis II and Charles IX. Educated in law at the University of Padua, he was appointed to the Parlement of Paris and entered the royal council under the patronage of Catherine de' Medici, who named him Chancellor in 1560 on the eve of the French Wars of Religion.

L'Hôpital was a visionary leader of the 'Politiques'—moderate Catholic and Protestant intellectuals who believed civic peace and national survival required religious tolerance and the separation of civil loyalty from church dogma. At the Estates-General of Fontainebleau and through the 1562 Edict of Saint-Germain (Edict of January), he granted French Protestants freedom of conscience and private worship, proclaiming: 'Let us take away those wicked words: Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Papists; let us retain only the name of Christian'.