13
April 1598 A.D. Edict
of Nantes Issued in France and Religious Freedom for French Calvinists. The story (in the public domain) is told at
the following URL. We would add that
English Reformed Churchmen were well aware of the French Wars of Religion and
persecution of French Calvinists by the IOOs (Inquisitor-Office-operatives).
Editors. “Edict of Nantes.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Jan. 10, 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/402718/Edict-of-Nantes.
Accessed April 9, 2014.
Edict of Nantes, French
Édit De Nantes, law promulgated at Nantes in Brittany on April 13, 1598, by Henry
IV of France. It granted a large measure of religious
liberty to his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots.
The edict upheld Protestants in freedom of conscience and permitted them to
hold public worship in many parts of the kingdom, though not in Paris. It
granted them full civil rights and established a special court, the Chambre de
l’Édit, composed of both Protestants and Catholics, to deal with disputes
arising from the edict. Protestant pastors were to be paid by the state and
released from certain obligations; finally, the Protestants could keep the
places they were still holding in August 1597 as strongholds, or places de sûreté, for eight
years, the expenses of garrisoning them being met by the king.
The edict also
restored Catholicism in all areas where Catholic practice had been interrupted;
and it made any extension of Protestant worship in France legally impossible.
Nevertheless, it was much resented by Pope Clement
VIII, by the Roman
Catholic clergy in France, and by the parlements.
Catholics tended to interpret the edict in its most restrictive sense. The
Cardinal de Richelieu, who regarded its political clauses
as a danger to the state, annulled them by the Peace of Alès (1629). On Oct.
18, 1685, Louis
XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and deprived the French Protestants
of all religious and civil liberties. Within a few years, more than 400,000
Huguenots emigrated—to England, Prussia, Holland, and America—depriving France of its most industrious commercial
class.
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