The Edict of Nantes and the Edict of Fontainebleau

The Edict of Nantes, issued by Henry IV in 1598

“And not to leave any occasion of trouble and difference among our Subjects, we have permitted and do permit to those of the Reformed Religion, to live and dwell in all the Cities and places of this our Kingdom and Countreys under our obedience, without being inquired after, vexed, molested, or compelled to do any thing in Religion, contrary to their Conscience, nor by reason of the same be searched after in houses or places where they live, they comporting themselves in other things as is contained in this our present Edict or Statute.”

Article 6 of the Edict of Nantes codifies the peace between Protestants and Catholics in France after the Wars of Religion, which were a series of civil wars occurring from 1562 and lasting until the issuance of this Edict in 1598. Henry IV, a former Protestant himself, reinstated many measures which promoted pacification of both Protestants and Catholics with this Edict. These measures included a number of precursors to modern law: the right to exercise religion, freedom from harassment, protections against unwarranted seizure of property or persons, and similar articles which did not favor either religious group, but accorded to each some measure of autonomy in practice.

Click here for more excerpts from the Edict of Nantes.

Edict of Fontainebleau issued by Louis XIV in 1685

The Edict of Fontainebleau, also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, was issued by Louis XIV in order to eliminate the practice of the Protestant faith in France. It prohibited the exercise of the Protestant faith, “in any place or private house, under any pretext whatever excuse it can be.” Among other articles, it also forbade nobles from joining or practicing the Protestant faith, forced the expulsion of those who were unwilling to convert to Catholicism from France and dictated that all children born to Protestants were to be baptized as Catholics. Somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 Huguenots left France in the late 17th century. While they mainly settled in Protestant European countries such as the Dutch Republic, Britain and Germany, some settled in South Africa and a few hundred left for the American Colonies.

Click here for a link to the full text of the Edict of Fontainebleau.

As you can see, we have wildly differing leadership between Henry IV and Louis XIV, who was Henry’s grandson. The Revocation was one of the main reasons that Huguenots left France. It’s likely that Jean de Jarnat was among these refugees.

On a somewhat related note, is anyone else watching Versailles? I know the first series/season is done in the UK, but we just started it here in the States. I’m interested to see how it stacks up to the historical realities of King Louis XIV’s court. So far, it seems interesting, even if it is drawing from the more sensational elements of the time period.

Sources

1. Henry IV. “Edict of Nantes.” Edict of Nantes. Accessed September 27, 2016. http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/classes/edictnantes.html.
2. Henry IV. “Edit De Nantes Avril 1598.” Digital image. Wikimedia Commons. June 6, 2009. Accessed September 27, 2016. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edit_de_Nantes_Avril_1598.jpg.
3. Louis XIV. “Edict of Fontainebleau (October 22, 1685).” Internet Modern History Sourcebook. July 1998. Accessed October 2, 2016. http://huguenotsweb.free.fr/english/edict_1685.htm.
4. Louis XIV. “The Edict of Fontainebleau, Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685.” Digital image. Wikimedia Commons. August 13, 2010. Accessed October 2, 2016. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Revocation_of_the_Edict_of_Nantes.jpg.
5. Murdoch, T. V. “Dispersion.” In The Quiet Conquest: The Huguenots 1685-1985, 51. London: Museum of London, 1985.

 

The St.Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

The entire day of Sunday, August 24, was spent killing, raping, and pillaging, such that the number killed on that day in Paris and the faubourgs is believed to be more than ten thousand persons, including lords, gentlemen, presiding magistrates and counselors [in the sovereign courts], lawyers, students, doctors, solicitors, merchants, artisans, women, girls, youths, and preachers. The streets were covered with dead bodies; the river tinted with blood; the doors and entrances to the king’s palace painted the same color. But the killers were not yet sated. (1)

This is an account of one of the bloodiest incidents that occurred during the conflicts between the Catholics and Protestants in France. On August 24, 1572, numerous unarmed Protestants had come to celebrate a royal wedding in Paris. Various events which occurred during the proceedings set off a massacre which took the lives of two to three thousand Protestants. The spread of violence to other towns killed what is believed to be another five to six thousand people. (2)

The following lecture given by Barbara Diefendorf at Boston University, Blood Wedding: The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in History and Memory, is an excellent introduction to this topic and explains the possible reasons for the outbreak of violence:

(3)

I agree with Diefendorf that we must not get bogged down in the religious aspect of these massacres. There are many and conflicting accounts of why and how this event occurred,  and whether it was primarily personality conflicts among the nobility or popular religious fervor the importance of this massacre to the history of the Huguenots can’t be overstated.

Sources

1. “The Wake-Up Call for the French and Their Neighbors.” In The St.Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents, translated by Barbara B. Diefendorf, 113. Boston, MA: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2009.
2.  Diefendorf, Barbara B. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009, 1.
3.  Diefendorf, Barbara B. “Blood Wedding: The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in History and Memory.” Lecture, Boston University, Boston, MA, October 25, 2006. March 30, 2010. Accessed September 10, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UIfXUoEKgo.

Who Were the Huguenots, Really?

It would be impossible for me to cover every historical detail about the Huguenots in one post, so I’ll give a bare bones overview and a chronology of events which we may need to round back to and expand upon at a later date.

Portrait of a Man, Anonymous, 1550s, Depiction of John Calvin

Huguenots are, generally speaking, any French Protestants who were persecuted for practicing their faith in 16th and 17th century France. (1) In 1519, German reformer Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith and his ideas about emphasizing the importance of Scripture had reached Paris. The protestant belief system, aided by the popularity of French humanist philosophy, led to the spread of Calvinism among the population. Calvin’s belief was that Catholic masses were blasphemy since he saw communion not  as a sacrifice but as a memorial service.

Many wealthier French nobles took to the Protestant faith and joined John Calvin in exile in Geneva. Robert J. Knecht, the author of Essential Histories: The French Religious Wars 1562-98, writes:

In the towns, Protestantism began appealing to the lower orders of society, particularly the artisans…Protestantism appealed to virtually all social strata and to a wide variety of occupations.

By 1559 we see an official gathering in Paris, considered the first Protestant national synod, where a ‘Confession of the Faith’ was endorsed. For those who are studying genealogy and are curious to know where the largest concentrations of Huguenots in France were, Knecht elaborates, “…the majority of Calvinist churches in France were south of the river Loire, in a broad sweep stretching from La Rochelle in the west to the foothills of the Alps in the east.” (2)

An Eyewitness Account of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre by Francois Dubois, 1529-1584

The most important question to ask is perhaps not how, but why the Protestant faith came into such bloody conflict with the Catholicism. The reasons are myriad, but I like Barbara Diefendorf’s explanation from her fantastically complex book Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris:

We are used to viewing the wars of the early modern period as almost uniquely the affairs of princes and kings, but the religious wars were different. They had a resonance among the common people…They did not just affect people in material ways, in terms of higher taxes and devastated fields, but also appeared to threaten the very bases on which civil society was built…the doctrinal differences that separated Catholics and Huguenots were not perceived by the common people as abstruse scholarly debates but rather as crucial choices between truth and error…the religious war represented a crusade against heresy, a crusade that had to be won if civil society was to be preserved and salvation to be assured. (3)

Propaganda depicting Huguenot aggression against Catholics at sea, 16th Century

This was the world which Jean deJarnat and others like him were born into and subsequently expelled from. Further study is needed to determine what Jean was leaving from more than what he was coming towards. After leaving France, did he go straight to England? Did he join William of Orange’s army in the Netherlands?

The following is a chronology of events that would have influenced the emigration of the Huguenots, some of which we will cover in later posts:

Partial Chronology of Huguenot History from Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora (4)

While there may never be concrete answers, drawing reasonable conclusions from existing sources and creating a coherent narrative is certainly not outside the realm of possibility. That is exactly what I will attempt to do over the next few months.

Sources

1.Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016. s.v “Huguenot | French Protestant.” Accessed September 6, 2016. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Huguenot.

2.Knecht, Robert Jean. The French Religious Wars: 1562-1598. Oxford: Osprey, 2002, 15-16.

3.Diefendorf, Barbara B. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-century Paris. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, 178.

4.Ruymbeke, Bertrand Van, and Randy J. Sparks. Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003, xv.