Edict of Nantes

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In April 1598 Henry IV (himself an ex-Protestant who had converted to Catholicism to ensure his control of the whole country) issued the Edict of Nantes [see Wars of Religion]. This complex edict guaranteed the existence in France of the Calvinist religion as an independent force. It was not motivated by a belief in toleration for its own sake (a principle in which neither Catholics nor Protestants at that time believed), but by a recognition that some settlement would have to be reached with the Calvinists (or Huguenots) if further civil war was to be avoided. The Edict guaranteed the freedom of Protestant worship, under certain strict limitations, particularly concerning where churches might be set up. Most importantly, it nominated about 150 lieux de refuge, of which 66 were places de sûreté, garrisoned by Protestant troops paid out of royal funds. La Rochelle and Montauban were the most famous. This meant in fact that Protestantism constituted a sort of state within a state.

As French absolutism intensified in the 17th c. this situation was unlikely to last. There was sporadic fighting from 1615 onwards (accompanied by far from sporadic atrocities on both sides), culminating in Richelieu's siege and subjugation of La Rochelle, followed by the Peace of Alès in 1629, which put an end to the places de sûreté and to the military independence of the Calvinists—though without much effect on their numbers. In the 1680s repression was stepped up, culminating in 1685 in the dragonnades. On 17 October 1685 Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, formally revoking the Edict of Nantes, and making even the practice of the Protestant religion in private homes illegal. At least 200, 000 Huguenots fled the country [see Refuge]; most others conformed outwardly, but maintained the Protestant tradition underground [see Camisards; Protestantism].

[Ralph Gibson]

As Catholics flocked to Henry IV's side after his 1593 conversion to Catholicism, the French Calvinists, or Huguenots, began to consider the once unthinkable possibility that they would have to go to war against the very man who had for so long championed their cause. One sign of their disaffection was the fact that few Huguenots lent their support to the king's war against Spain, declared in 1595. They greatly worried that their precarious freedom to worship might be taken away from them. Henry IV also dreaded the notion of fighting the Huguenots, even though Catholic pressure grew upon him to restrict their rights in order to prove his sincerity as a Catholic. The situation called for decisive action by the king lest a new religious war break out, especially as negotiations to end the war with Spain moved ahead, culminating in the Treaty of Vervins in May 1598.

In a bold move to avert this crisis, Henry IV reached a historic settlement with the Huguenots on 13 April 1598 in the Edict of Nantes. This famous accord has been seen as an important step forward for the idea of religious toleration as well as a victory for the notion that politics takes precedence over religion. Upon closer examination, however, neither of these interpretations can be sustained. The Edict of Nantes stated as its principal goal the eventual peaceful reunion of the king's subjects in one agreed-upon faith. In the meantime, the king wished to ensure religious coexistence of the two confessions so that this process of reunion could go forward. The Edict of Nantes therefore affirmed the age-old French heritage of "one king, one faith, one law" rather than looking forward to modern ideas about toleration and secularism. It testified more to the growing authority of the crown than any willingness to accept religious differences on a permanent basis.

In the Edict of Nantes, Henry IV tried to solve the dilemma he faced of reassuring the Huguenots without alienating the Catholics. A closer look at the edict shows how he hoped to achieve these contrasting goals. Four separate documents actually made up the Edict of Nantes. The first one consisted of ninety-two general articles, while the second one had fifty-six "secret articles" that granted exemptions from the general articles to particular towns and persons. The last two documents were royal writs known as brevets. The reason for all this complexity in the edict stemmed from the political circumstances that Henry IV faced. The first two sets of articles had to be registered in the Parlement of Paris, which was the chief judicial court in France, in order to receive the force of law. Royal brevets, by contrast, did not need to be registered because they ended once the king who originally issued them had died. They were thus provisional in nature. Henry IV put the most controversial concessions to the Huguenots in the royal brevets because he knew that the Parlement of Paris, which was controlled by the Catholics, would never register them. In fact, it took nearly a year for the parlement to accept the first two sets of articles. How long the Edict of Nantes would last was therefore, from a legalistic point of view, an open question right from the outset. Henry IV's declaration in the preamble that the edict was "perpetual and irrevocable" actually meant only until such time as another edict was issued and registered to replace it.

The provisions making up the Edict of Nantes did not break new ground but rather returned quite explicitly to earlier edicts of pacification, such as the Peace of Bergerac (1577) and Peace of Fleix (1580), sometimes word for word. First, the king consigned all events since 1585 to oblivion, making it a crime to stir up the memories of past grievances. The edict recognized the Huguenots' right to freedom of conscience and liberty to worship in all towns that they controlled as of August 1597. It also guaranteed the right of Huguenots to hold political office and established special new courts with both Huguenot and Catholic judges to enforce the provisions of the edict. At the same time, the Edict of Nantes also addressed Catholic concerns. It reaffirmed, for example, the Catholic character of both the crown and the kingdom. While Huguenots could only worship in specially designated areas, Catholics could practice their faith anywhere in France. In fact, the Edict of Nantes called for the reintroduction of Catholicism in places where Huguenots had long forbidden it, most notably Béarn. All of these general principles in the first set of articles became decidedly less firm when considering all the exceptions to them contained in the second set of"secretarticles."The most significant concessions to the Huguenots cameinthe two royal brevets, the first of which provided generous royal funds to help subsidize the French Calvinist Church, while the second allowed the Huguenots to fortify and garrison towns under their control. These measures thus provided financial and military security to the Huguenots, but only while Henry IV was king.

The Edict of Nantes thus brought a temporary end to the Wars of Religion, which broke out once again after Henry IV's assassination in 1610 as the Huguenots tried to secure the substantial gains they had made in the royal brevets. They ultimately failed to do so when Henry IV's son, Louis XIII, finally defeated the Huguenots in 1628 after the siege of La Rochelle. Louis XIII stripped the Huguenots of their former military independence and subsidies in the Grace of Alais (1629), though he recognized their right to worship in places already established. The provisions in the two sets of articles came to an end in 1685 when Henry IV's grandson, Louis XIV, revoked the remaining provisions of the Edict of Nantes in the Edict of Fontainebleau. He did so because he mistakenly believed that most of the Huguenots had returned to the Catholic Church. The resulting persecution forced the French Calvinist Church to go underground, while many Huguenots emigrated to Germany, England, and North America. French Calvinists only enjoyed the right to worship publicly later on, in 1787, just prior to the French Revolution.

Bibliography

Goodbar, Richard L. The Edict of Nantes: Five Essays and a New Translation. Bloomington, Minn., 1998. A new translation of the edict and five essays assessing its general significance.

Labrousse, Elisabeth. Essai sur la révocation de l'Édit de Nantes. Paris, 1985. An excellent study of the forces shaping Louis XIV's fateful decision to rescind the edict.

Roelker, Nancy Lyman. One King, One Faith: The Parlement of Paris and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley, 1996. A probing examination of the law court's role in engaging the subject of religious reform, including the controversies surrounding the Edict of Nantes.

Sutherland, N. M. The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition. New Haven, 1980. The definitive work on the political and military dimensions of the Huguenot efforts to secure a place in late-sixteenth-century French society.

—MICHAEL WOLFE

The Edict of Nantes, April 1598.

The Edict of Nantes (sometimes spelled Edict of Nantz) was issued on April 13, 1598^[1] by Henry IV of France to grant the Calvinist Protestants of France (also known as Huguenots) substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic. The main concern was civil unity,^[2] and the Edict separated civil from religious unity, treated some Protestants for the first time as more than mere schismatics and heretics, and opened a path for secularism and tolerance. In offering general freedom of conscience to individuals, the edict offered many specific concessions to the Protestants, such as amnesty and the reinstatement of their civil rights, including the right to work in any field or for the State and to bring grievances directly to the king. It marks the end of the religious wars that tore apart the population of France during the second half of the 16th century.

Contents 1 Background 2 The edict 3 Revocation 4 See also 5 Notes 6 Sources 7 External links

Background

Henry IV, as Hercules vanquishing the Lernaean Hydra (i.e. the Catholic League), by Toussaint Dubreuil, circa 1600.

The Edict aimed primarily to end the long-running, disruptive French Wars of Religion. Henry IV also had personal reasons for supporting the Edict. Prior to assuming the throne in 1589 he had espoused Protestantism, and he remained sympathetic to the Protestant cause: he had converted to Catholicism in 1593 only in order to secure his position as king, supposedly saying "Paris is well worth a Mass". The Edict succeeded in restoring peace and internal unity to France, though it pleased neither party: Catholics rejected the apparent recognition of Protestantism as a permanent element in French society and still hoped to enforce religious uniformity, while Protestants aspired to parity with Catholics. "Toleration in France was a royal notion, and the religious settlement was dependent upon the continued support of the crown."^[3]

Re-establishing royal authority in France required internal peace, based on limited toleration enforced by the crown. Since royal troops could not be everywhere, Huguenots needed to be granted strictly circumscribed possibilities of self-defense.^[3]

The edict

Henry IV of France by Frans Pourbus the younger.

The Edict of Nantes that Henry IV signed comprised four basic texts, including a principal text made up of 92 articles and largely based on unsuccessful peace treaties signed during the recent wars. The Edict also included 56 "particular" (secret) articles dealing with Protestant rights and obligations. For example, the French state guaranteed protection of French Protestants travelling abroad from the Inquisition. "This crucifies me," protested Pope Clement VIII, upon hearing of the Edict. The final two parts consisted of brevets (letters patent) which contained the military clauses and pastoral clauses. These two brevets were withdrawn in 1629 by Louis XIII, following a final religious civil war.

The two letters patent^[4] supplementing the Edict granted the Protestants places of safety (places de sûreté), which were military strongholds such as La Rochelle, in support of which the king paid 180,000 écus a year, along with a further 150 emergency forts (places de refuge), to be maintained at the Huguenots' own expense. Such an act of toleration was unusual in Western Europe,^[5] where standard practice forced subjects to follow the religion of their ruler — the application of the principle of cuius regio, eius religio.

While it granted certain privileges to Huguenots, the edict reaffirmed Catholicism as the established religion of France. Protestants gained no exemption from paying the tithe^[6] and had to respect Catholic holidays and restrictions regarding marriage. The authorities limited Protestant freedom of worship to specified geographic areas. The Edict dealt only with Protestant and Catholic coexistence; it made no mention of Jews, or of Muslims, who were offered temporary asylum in France when the Moriscos were being expelled from Spain.^[7]

The original Act which promulgated the Edict, has disappeared. The Archives Nationales in Paris preserves only the text of a shorter document modified by concessions extracted from the King by the clergy and the Parlement of Paris, which delayed ten months, before finally signing and setting seals to the document in 1599. A copy of the first edict, sent for safekeeping to Protestant Geneva, survives. The provincial parlements resisted in their turn; the most recalcitrant, the parlement of Rouen, did not unreservedly register the Edict until 1609.^[8]

Revocation

Main article: Edict of Fontainebleau

Louis XIV, by Hyacinthe Rigaud

The Edict remained in unaltered effect, registered by the parliaments as "fundamental and irrevocable law", with the exception of the brevets, which had been granted for a period of eight years, and were renewed by Henry in 1606 and in 1611 by Marie de Médecis, who confirmed the Edict within a week of the assassination of Henry, stilling Protestant fears of another St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. The subsidies had been reduced by degrees, as Henry gained more secure control of the nation.^[9] By the peace of Montpellier in 1622, concluding a Huguenot revolt in Languedoc, the fortified Protestant towns were reduced to two, La Rochelle and Montauban. The brevets were entirely withdrawn in 1629, by Louis XIII, following the Siege of La Rochelle, in which Cardinal Richelieu blockaded the city for fourteen months.

During the remainder of Louis XIII's reign, and especially during the minority of Louis XIV, the implementation of the Edict varied year by year, voiced in declarations and orders, and in case decisions in the Council, fluctuating according to the tides of domestic politics and the relations of France with powers abroad.^[10]

In October 1685, Louis XIV, the grandson of Henry IV, renounced the Edict and declared Protestantism illegal with the Edict of Fontainebleau. This act, commonly called the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had very damaging results for France. While the wars of religion did not re-ignite, many Protestants chose to leave France, most moving to Great Britain, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, Switzerland and the new French colonies in North America.^[11] Huguenots also settled in South Africa. This exodus deprived France of many of its most skilled and industrious individuals, who would from now on aid France's rivals in Holland and England. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes also further damaged the perception of Louis XIV abroad, making the Protestant nations bordering France even more hostile to his regime. Upon the revocation of the edict, Frederick Wilhelm issued the Edict of Potsdam, which encouraged Protestants to come to Brandenburg.

See also

• Peace of Vervins
• Warsaw Confederation (1573)
• Freedom of religion
• List of treaties
• Michel de l'Hôpital, a precursor to Henry IV’s policies.
• Edict of Toleration

Notes

1. ^ The Edict itself states merely that it is "given at Nantes, in the month of April, in the year of Our Lord one thousand five hundred and ninety-eight". By the late 19th century the Catholic tradition reported in Baedeker, Northern France, 1889, sited the signing in the "Maison des Tourelles", home of prosperous Spanish trader André Ruiz (it was destroyed by bombing in World War II). A detailed chronological account of the negotiations that led to the Edict's promulgation has been offered by Janine Garrisson, L'Édit de Nantes: Chronique d'une paix attendue (Paris: Fayard) 1998.
2. ^ In 1898 the tricentennial celebrated the Edict as the foundation of the coming Age of Toleration; the 1998 anniversary, by contrast, was commemorated with a book of essays under the evocatively ambivalent title, Coexister dans l'intolérance (Michel Grandjean and Bernard Roussel, editors, Geneva, 1998).
3. ^ ^{a b} George A. Rothrock, Jr., "Some Aspects of Early Bourbon Policy toward the Huguenots" Church History 29.1 (March 1960:17-24) p. 17.
4. ^ Texts published in Benoist 1693 I:62-98 (noted by Rothrock).
5. ^ For Eastern Europe, see Mehmed II's Firman on the Freedom of the Bosnian Franciscans or the Warsaw Confederation.
6. ^ The King engaged to support the Protestant ministers in part recompense.
7. ^ The ordonnance of 22 February 1610 stipulated that the emigrés settle north of the Dordogne (safely away from the manipulations of Spanish agents) and that they embrace the Catholic faith; those who did not wish to do so were granted right of passage to French ports on the Mediterranean, to take ship for Barbary. (L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 2005:318). By the time the ordonnance was published Henri IV had been assassinated.
8. ^ Rothrock 1960:23 note 6.
9. ^ A point made in Rothrock 1960:19.
10. ^ Ruth Kleinman, "Changing Interpretations of the Edict of Nantes: The Administrative Aspect, 1643-1661" French Historical Studies 10.4 (Autumn 1978:541-571.
11. ^ See History of the French in Louisville.

Sources

The source followed by most modern historians is the Huguenot refugee Élie Benoist's Histoire de l'édit de Nantes, 3 vols. (Delft, 1693-95). E.G. Léonard devotes a chapter to the Edict of Nantes in his Histoire général du protestantisme, 2 vols. (Paris) 1961:II:312-89.

External links

• The Edict of Nantes

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