Gentillet, Innocent (d. c.1595). Protestant magistrate from Grenoble who fled to Geneva in 1572. He is now remembered for his Discours d'état … contre Machiavel (1576), which reflects Protestant fury at the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Gentillet's work is important in so far as it enabled the Protestants to present their resistance to the French monarchy as legitimate self-defence. It also did more than perhaps any other contemporary text to spread the view of the ‘murderous Machiavelli’ in France. His attacks were directed in particular at Catherine de Médicis, the granddaughter of the man to whom Il Principe had been dedicated. Catherine was certainly involved in the plot against Coligny; but she was far from being the cynical disciple of Machiavelli (whose views are in any case distorted) presented by Gentillet. The Anti-Machieavel (as it is often known) is typical, however, of the growing anti-Italian feeling of this period.
[James Supple]
