Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr is his first major published work and the longest that he ever wrote. As he argues in it about the relationship of the state and religion to each other, he establishes Henry IV of Navarre, king of France, as one of his models of a competent and tolerant king. Henry’s credentials for the title are his moderation, his steadfastness and fearlessness amid religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in his own country, and in the face of the power of the papacy. In the pages of Pseudo-Martyr, Donne calls upon the English Catholics to swear allegiance to James I as a political leader, in the same manner in which French Catholics and Protestants swore allegiance to Henry.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Raspa, A., (2025), "Donne's Model: Henry IV", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Raspa, Anthony. "Donne's Model: Henry IV." Renaissance and Reformation 29 (4): 2010. 41-50. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v29i4.11445. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.