This dissertation investigates the representation of persecutors in martyr narratives published between 1554 and 1616 in France and Geneva. While scholars of Reformation martyrdom have focused on the legal and literary portrayal of martyrs and the construction of martyrologies, this is the first study to turn the spotlight on the portrayal of persecutors across a variety of martyr narratives in an effort to understand how martyr stories helped fashion enemies. This study also distinguishes itself from previous studies in its scope. Whereas scholars have restricted their corpus to martyrologies such as John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments or Jean Crespin’s Livre des martyrs, I have expanded mine to include religious tragedies. Through a study of persecutors in Jean Crespin’s Livre des martyrs, La Tragédie du sac de Cabrières, books 4 and 5 of Agrippa d’Aubigné’s epic poem Les Tragiques (“Les Feux” and “Les Fers”), and Pierre Matthieu’s La Guisiade, I show that Reformation martyr narratives not only celebrated the heroism of historic victims of persecution but also intervened in contemporary political and theological controversies. I also demonstrate that the representation of persecutors varied according to changing social conditions. Whereas martyr narratives produced prior to the start of the Wars of Religion depicted persecutors as threats to confessional orthodoxy, narratives produced after 1562 increasingly characterized persecutors as tyrants who undermined the integrity of the kingdom. Correspondingly, the representation of martyrdom shifted from passive endurance to active resistance. In each period of the second half of the 16th century, martyr narratives helped reinforce orthodoxy-heresy binaries and condemn accommodation of the enemy.