Edict of Fontainebleau

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Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
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This article is about the edict passed by Louis XIV. For the edict similarly persecuting Protestants passed by Francis I, see Edict of Fontainebleau (1540).
Louis XIV
The Edict of Fontainebleau in the Archives Nationales

The Edict of Fontainebleau (18 October 1685, published 22 October 1685) was an

religious toleration in France had been a royal, rather than popular, policy.[1]

The lack of universal adherence to his religion did not sit well with Louis XIV's vision of perfected autocracy.[2]

Edict of Nantes

Plaque commemorating Edict of Nantes

The

civil rights, including the rights to work in any field, including for the state, and to bring grievances directly to the king. It marked the end of the French Wars of Religion
, which had afflicted France during the second half of the 16th century.

Revocation

The palace at Fontainebleau as it now stands

By the Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and ordered the destruction of Huguenot churches as well as the closing of Protestant schools. The edict made official the policy of persecution that was already enforced since the

dragoons, who were billeted upon prominent Huguenots, many Protestants, estimates ranging from 210,000 to 900,000, left France over the next two decades. They sought asylum in the United Provinces, Sweden, Switzerland, Brandenburg-Prussia, Denmark, Scotland, England, Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire, the Cape Colony in Africa and North America.[4] On 17 January 1686, Louis XIV claimed that out of a Huguenot population of 800,000 to 900,000, only 1,000 to 1,500 had remained in France. [citation needed
]

It has long been said that a strong advocate for persecution of the Protestants was Louis XIV's pious second wife, Madame de Maintenon, who was thought to have urged Louis to revoke Henry IV's edict. There is no formal proof of that, and such views have now been challenged. Madame de Maintenon was by birth a Catholic but was also the grand-daughter of Agrippa d'Aubigné, an unrelenting Calvinist. Protestants tried to turn Madame de Maintenon and any time she took the defence of Protestants, she was suspected of relapsing into her family faith. Thus, her position was thin, which wrongly led people to believe that she advocated persecutions.[citation needed]

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought France into line with virtually every other European country of the period (with the exception of the Principality of Transylvania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), which legally tolerated only the majority state religion. The French experiment of religious tolerance in Europe was effectively ended for the time being.

Effects

Frederick Wilhelm, Duke of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg, who issued the Edict of Potsdam in late October 1685, encouraged the Protestants to seek refuge in their nations. Similarly, in 1720 Frederick IV of Denmark invited the French Huguenots to seek refuge in Denmark,[5] which they accepted, settling in Fredericia and other locations.[6][7]

Abolition

In practice, the stringency of policies outlawing Protestants was opposed by the

R.R. Palmer concluded.[2]

By the late 18th century, numerous prominent French philosophers and literary men of the day, including

Jews
by giving their followers civil and legal recognition as well as the right to form congregations openly after 102 years of prohibition.

Full religious freedom had to wait two more years, with enactment of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The 1787 edict was nonetheless a pivotal step in eliminating religious strife, and it officially ended religious persecution in France.[9] Moreover, when French revolutionary armies invaded other European countries between 1789 and 1815, they followed a consistent policy of emancipating persecuted or circumscribed religious communities (Roman Catholic in some countries, Protestant in others and Jewish in most).

Apology

In October 1985, in the tricentenary of the Edict of Fontainebleau,

French President François Mitterrand issued a public apology to the descendants of Huguenots around the world.[10]

Famous Huguenots who left France

See also

References

  1. ^ "The fate of Catholics at the hands of a triumphant Parliament in England suggests that the Protestants in France would have been no better off under more popular institutions", observed R.R. Palmer, A History of the Modern World, rev. ed. 1956:164.
  2. ^ a b Palmer, eo. loc.
  3. ^ 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).
  4. ^ Spielvogel, Western Civilization—Volume II: Since 1500 (5th Edition, 2003) p. 410
  5. ^ Hermansen, Cathrin Kyø. "Immigration: The New Comers,". Accessed 26 April 2020.
  6. ^ "MEMORIAL OBELISK", Fredericia Museum. Accessed 26 April 2020.
  7. ^ "Huguenot Society :: Blog".
  8. ^ Charles H. O'Brien, "The Jansenist Campaign for Toleration of Protestants in Late Eighteenth-Century France: Sacred or Secular?" Journal of the History of Ideas, 1985:523ff.
  9. ^ Encyclopedia of the Age of Political Ideals, Edict of Versailles (1787) Archived 2012-07-14 at the Wayback Machine, downloaded 29 January 2012
  10. ^ "Allocution de M. François Mitterrand, Président de la République, aux cérémonies du tricentenaire de la Révocation de l'Edit de Nantes, sur la tolérance en matière politique et religieuse et l'histoire du protestantisme en France, Paris, Palais de l'UNESCO, vendredi 11 octobre 1985. - vie-publique.fr". Discours.vie-publique.fr. 1985-10-11. Archived from the original on 2015-06-30. Retrieved 2016-04-04.

Further reading

  • Baird, Henry Martyn. The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1895) online.
  • Dubois, E. T. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes — Three hundred years later 1685–1985." History of European Ideas 8#3 (1987): 361-365. reviews 9 new books. online
  • Scoville, Warren Candler. The persecution of Huguenots and French economic development, 1680-1720 (1960).
  • Scoville, Warren C. "The Huguenots in the French economy, 1650–1750." Quarterly Journal of Economics 67.3 (1953): 423-444.

External links

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