in France. It has been estimated that “Kingdom-wide, for every person killed in the St. Bartholomew’s massacres, dozens returned to the Catholic fold or fled abroad.”94 One Catholic historian reports that Pope Gregory XIII (1502–1585), upon receiving the news of the massacre, decreed a jubilee of thanksgiving, struck a commemorative medal, and commissioned Italian artist Vasari to immortalize the event by a fresco on the walls in the Vatican Sala Regia.95 Protestants and Catholics were both prisoners of a system of thought that considered heresy the greatest enemy and mutual extermination an act of justice in the name of God.96 One major consequence of the massacre was “a flurry of publications about the limits of obedience to royal authority that made the years after 1572 one of the most fertile periods of political reflection in all of French history.”97 Another consequence was the change in relations between Catholics and Protestants shocked by the brutality of the massacre on a previously unknown scale:
Episodes that had become common during the previous twelve years—Protestant attacks on holy images or religious processions; Catholic attacks on Protestants returning from worship or seeking to bury their dead; the cold-blooded slaughter of neighbours of the opposite faith—all but disappeared from most corners of the kingdom after 1572, in part in revulsion from the sheer scale and horror of the events of that year.98
According to G. R. Evans, “The massacre had its effect, because it removed many of the leading figures of the Protestant movement and sent many Huguenots into exile in more sympathetic lands, and it may have contributed in that way to the eventual triumph of Roman Catholic dominance in France.”99 The following years cycled through brokered peace and revocations, times of limited freedom of worship for Protestants, and times of outcry and Catholic outrage whose “manifestos spoke of a ‘holy and Christian union’ to defend the Roman Church against ‘Satan’s ministers’ and of restoring provincial liberties ‘as they were in the time of king Clovis.’”100 The 1572 Saint Bartholomew’s massacre had not produced its desired effect to rid the kingdom of schismatic Protestants and in the course of time led to “a growing, if still begrudging, acceptance of the argument that religious toleration was less an evil than endless warfare.”101 As a result,
Many of both faiths [Catholics and Protestants] drew the lesson that where two religions were so deeply rooted in a single country that even violence could not exterminate them, a measure of toleration was preferable to the costs entailed in trying to restore religious uniformity, although no French author was as yet willing to defend freedom of worship as a positive good under all circumstances.102
In light of these events, Gaillard dates the concept of laïcité in France to the Edict of Nantes in 1598 conceived by Henry IV to end the civil and religious torment which plunged France into chaos. He calls it “embryonic laïcité.”103 The State became the guarantor of civil peace and liberty of conscience for the two religions. The edict’s import lay in considering individuals in two ways. First, as political subject, the individual was expected to obey the king, regardless of confession. Second, as a believer, the subject was free to choose his religion which was now considered a private matter. It is said that in the life of Henry IV, also known as Henry of Navarre, former Protestant and Huguenot leader, there “had never been a consistent practice of Huguenot morality.”104 However, his conversion to Catholicism and the Edict of Nantes brought the Wars of Religion to an end. His edict opened access for Protestants to universities and public offices. Protestants were allowed garrisons in several towns, most notably the port city of La Rochelle. Many in the Catholic Church disapproved, “railed violently against it, and cast innuendoes at the sincerity of the ‘conversion’ of the King, but Henry forced its general acceptance as a part of the law of the land.”105
It is noteworthy that in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France four cardinals (Richelieu, Mazarin, Dubois, and Fleury) and one archbishop (Loménie de Brienne) held the position of prime minister.106 Of these perhaps Richelieu (1585–1642), who served during the reign of Louis XIII (1601–1643), was the most able and has become the best known. It was said that “Louis XIII reigned, but that Richelieu governed.”107 Richelieu battled the Huguenots more out of political than religious motives. He was responsible for the siege and the fall of the Huguenot stronghold, La Rochelle. With the surrender of La Rochelle, the Huguenots lost political influence but retained their religious rights for another fifty years. This was one period of French history when “French Protestant lived with Catholic in a peace and harmony seldom seen elsewhere in any part of Europe save in Holland.”108
The Edict of Nantes of 1598 survived almost a century before its revocation, during which time French Catholics and Protestants cohabitated in relative calm (1598–1685).109 However, as early as 1629 with the Edict of Nîmes under Louis XIII, the Huguenots experienced the loss of some gains and their pastors had the right to preach, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, baptize, and officiate at marriages only in villages and cities authorized by the Edict of Nantes.110 His successor, Louis XIV, grandson of Henry IV, governed as an absolute monarch and claimed the divine right as God’s representative on earth. The French clergy pressured the king and obtained the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes on October 17, 1685, also known as the Edict of Fontainebleau. The king’s subjects were compelled to adopt the religion of the one who ruled by divine right. Protestant worship was forbidden in France and the edict led once again to the departure of thousands of French Protestants.111 Protestants lost the right to have separate cemeteries and were compelled to receive the sacraments of the Church. Many Protestants buried their dead in their cellars or gardens. To this day in the Cévennes, private cemeteries are common and allowed by exemption.112 The banned religion became officially designated RPR, religion prétendue réformée (so-called reformed religion).113
A cursory look at the articles of the Edict of Revocation reveals the drastic measures undertaken to extirpate the Protestant religion in France. Article one ordered the demolition of Protestant temples. Articles two and three forbade all religious assemblies with the threat of prison. Articles four, five, and six ordered the expulsion within fifteen days of all Protestant pastors who refused to convert to Catholicism. Article seven outlawed Protestant schools. Article eight obliged all infants to be baptized into the Catholic Church and receive religious instruction from village priests. Articles nine and ten forbade Protestant emigration under the threat of galleys for the men and imprisonment for the women. Article eleven stipulated punishment for those who relapsed into heresy in refusing the sacraments of the Church. Article twelve granted the right to remain in the kingdom to the not-yet-enlightened RPR conditioned by the interdiction of assemblies for worship or prayer. Many methods were utilized to pressure Protestants to convert. The Church opened centers of conversion (maisons de conversion) and placed mounted troops (dragons) in Huguenot homes (dragonnades) to ensure their attendance at mass. In effect, the Edict of Revocation forced hundreds of thousands of dissidents to convert to the prince’s religion without allowing them liberty to leave the territory.114 The fear of the dragons led to waves of conversions among entire villages and accelerated the disappearance of the RPR. In only a few months hundreds of thousands of Protestants converted to Catholicism. Those who converted were called NC (nouveaux convertis or nouveaux catholiques) and placed under strict surveillance. In their deaths the refusal of extreme unction could lead to their bodies being dragged in the streets and the confiscation of all their possessions which could not be passed on as inheritance. Those captured while seeking to flee the kingdom were sentenced to life on the king’s galleys or imprisoned for life. It has been estimated that from 1685 to 1715 over 200,000 Protestants escaped and emigrated to places of refuge including Geneva, England, Germany, and Holland.115
In Gaillard’s opinion the specificity of French laïcité cannot be understood apart from the memory of the Edict of Nantes and its later Revocation. The Catholic Church welcomed the Revocation, aligned itself with the Royal State, and instituted the Counter-Reformation with the rejection of religious liberty and freedom of thought.116 Religious unity was reestablished, and the Revocation engendered a return to oppression. André Chamson’s Suite Camisarde presents the Revocation as a foundational event which sheds light on the religious, regional, and historic collective memory of the Cévenol region of France and the war of the Camisards. The Camisards were Calvinist Cévenol insurgents during the persecutions which followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They owe
