Dr Sophie Nicholls

I am an historian of ideas, specialising in the history of Early Modern Europe and Britain. I read Ancient and Modern History as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, which has influenced the direction of my research and informed my interest in the reception of classical ideas in the Early Modern era. I did my MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, specialising in political thought and intellectual history, after which I returned to Oxford as a JRF and, subsequently, college lecturer.

Research Interests

My first monograph, Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion (CUP 2021), explores political ideas in the religious and civil crisis of the French wars (1562-1629). It looks particularly at the French Catholic League (c.1576-1595), and the political thought of its affiliates as they responded to militant Calvinists and the so-called ‘politiques’ caught in the middle and trying to find a compromise in the shape of religious toleration. The role of ideas such as the common good, the ideal constitution and the best statesman in political thinking are important themes, read in the context of the challenge of Machiavelli. The impact of these ideas on developing conceptions of sovereignty, church-state relations and political science are a particular focus of the monograph. 

Since completing this book, I have developed my argument that the political treatises produced in the French wars should not be seen to stand for monolithic, static ideologies such as absolutism, but instead should be understood within a process of evolution, responding to the vicissitudes of civil war. This palimpsestic and multi-layered nature of Early Modern political thought is the subject of my most recent article for the History of European Ideas (2024). 

My current research project is on the concept of the truth in Early Modern European thought. The status of the truth is especially important in the era connecting the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, be that religious truth; the true nature of human beings; the truth of how to live a virtuous life; or the truth of the ideal constitution. The appearance of the truth; nature versus artifice; the morality of lying; the art of persuasion, are all features of discussions of the nature of the truth in this era which interconnect with one another in the context of the reception of pagan and Christian ideas on virtue in the late Renaissance. 

My next book will be a critical edition and translation of Étienne de La Boétie's De la Servitude Volontaire (On Voluntary Servitude), and his treatise on the issue of religious difference in France, the Mémoire touchant l’édit de janvier 1562 (Thoughts on the Edict of January, 1562). It will be published in the ‘Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought’ series, with Cambridge University Press in 2025. 

I am also writing a trade publication on the French Wars of Religion for Bloomsbury Press.