Huguenots

HUGUENOTS.

I. Huguenots in France. Beginnings (§ 1). History, 1525-1534 (§ 2). History, 1534-1547 (§ 3). Persecutions, 1547-1580 (§ 4). Growth of Protestantism, 1560-1561 (§ 5). First and Second Wars, 1562-1588 (§ 6). Third and Fourth Wars, 1588-1573 (§ 7). Further Struggles, 1574-1589 (§ 8). Henry IV., Edict of Nantes, 1589-1824 (§ 9). Richelieu and Mazarin, 1824-1881 (§ 10). Revocation of Edict of Nantes (§ 11).
II. Huguenot Refugees. The Netherlands and Switzerland (§ 1). England and America (§ 2). Germany and Elsewhere (§ 3). Influence of Huguenot Refugees (§ 4).

1. Huguenots in France: The term "Huguenots," a party name of uncertain origin, was applied by their opponents to the Protestants of i. Begin- France from Mar., 1560, onward (posnings. sibly from Eidgenomen, " confeder- ates " or " conspirators "; possibly from Hugo in the sense of ghost of the night, from the popular superstition that the spirit of Hugh Capet wanders about at night, in allusion to the nocturnal and secret meetings of the persecuted people). The influence of the radical Evangelicals of the twelfth and following centuries, notwithstanding inquisitorial proceedings against them intended to be exterminating, still persisted in considerable force at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The interest of Francis I. (1515-47) in ecclesiastical matters was political and humanistic. His sister Margaret drew around her a coterie of humanists and religious enthusiasts (see Margaret of Navarre). Among the humanistic reformers who influenced Margaret, and were influenced by her, were Guillaume Briçonnet and Faber Stapulensis (qq.v.). The last-named anticipated Luther in denying the , efficacy of external works and in rejecting transubstantiation (1512). The excommunication of Luther (1520) and his condemnation by the Diet of Worms (1521) was followed by a denunciation of Luther's books by the Sorbonne and an order from the Parliament of Paris for the surrender of Brigonnet and Faber Stapulensis. Brigonnet submitted; Faber Stapulensis, protected by Brigonnet and Margaret, held his ground. Guillaume Farel (q.v.), a zealous young disciple of Faber, soon made his way to Switzerland. Gérard Roussel (q.v.) was, like Faber, obliged to leave the diocese in Oct., 1525. A woolcarder, Jean Leclerc, provoked persecution by tearing down a papal indulgence bull and posting in its place a denunciation of the pope as Antichrist (Dec., 1524). His continued zeal led to his execution at Metz (July, 1525).

The defeat and imprisonment of the king by the emperor (1524-26) left France bleeding and discouraged in the hands of the queens. History, mother, Louise de Savoie, who attrib-

1525-34; uted the misfortunes of France to the divine displeasure at the toleration of heresy. An inquisitorial commission was established in Mar., 1525. Several of the leaders of the Reformation in Meaux, a town only a dozen miles east of Paris, had to flee for their lives. Having suffered such humiliation at the hands of the emperor, without effective protest on the part of the pope, it was natural that the king should allow his humanistic spirit of tolerance to control for the time his policy, especially as his sister Margaret had entered into correspondence with Protestant nobles and led him to believe that he might retrieve his fortunes by forming an alliance with them against the house of Hapsburg. . The Meaux Evangelicals returned to France, and Faber Stapulensis became tutor to the king's son. The fact that two of the French princes were still held by the emperor as hostages to guarantee the treaty on which Francis had been liberated made alliance with the Lutheran princes impracticable. The sending of a Lutheran army by the emperor to capture and sack Rome and to imprison the pope provoked the indignation of French Roman Catholics, who, at an assembly of notables (Dec., 1527), offered to contribute to the exhausted royal exchequer 1,300,000 livres if the king would "uproot and extirpate the damnable and insufferable Lutheran sect." This he rashly promised to do. Cardinal Bourbon caused provincial ecclesiastical councils to be held (1528) at Seas, Bourges, and Lyons for the intensification of antiLutheran sentiment. The shocking mutilation of an image of the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms by some overzealous Evangelical in a street of Paris precipitated the onslaught on the "Lutherans." Expiatory processions intensified Catholic zeal, while the martyrdom of Louie de Berquin (q.v.) made many friends for the Evangelical cause. The preparation of the Protestants of Germany for armed resistance to the emperor after the rejection of their confession at the Diet of Augsburg (1530) revived the hope of the king for an alliance with the Lutheran princes and with Henry VIII. of England. Persecution ceased; an Evangelical minister was invited to preach in the Louvre; and members of the Sorbonne were banished for accusing Margaret of Navarre of heresy. On Nov. 1, 1533, Nicholas Cop, rector of the University of Paris, delivered an Evangelical address, in the composition of which his young friend John Calvin is thought to have had a part, which created such commotion that both fled precipitately from France. Catholics and Evangelicals alike made large use of strongly corded broadsides, which were printed and posted in public places in Paris and elsewhere.

In Oct., 1534, an unusually denunciatory placard was posted throughout the principal streets of Paris entitled " True Articles respecting the

3. History, horrible, great, and insupportable 1534-47; abuses of the Papal Mass." Pope, clergy, and monks were stigmatized as " false prophets, damnable deceivers, apostates, false shepherds, idolaters, seducers, liars, and exe crable blasphemers, murderers of souls, renouncers of Jesus Christ, . . . false witnesses, traitors, thieves, and robbers of the honor of'God, and more detestable

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than devils." A copy of the placard was affixed to the door of the king's bedchamber. The king, infuriated beyond measure, now became a violent persecutor. Margaret interceded in vain. He even went so far as to prohibit (Jan., 1535) any exercise of the art of printing, but when parliament refused to register the decree, its execution was suspended. It was reported that the Protestants had formed a plot on a certain occasion to assassinate Roman Catholics gathered for worship in all the churches. Large numbers were executed, and an expiatory procession aroused Roman Catholic enthusiasm to the highest pitch. At the close of the ceremony Francis declared that if one of his arms were infected with the poison of heresy he would cut it off, and if his own children were contaminated he would immolate them. The remonstrance of Lutheran princes and measures of toleration in the Netherlands may have influenced Francis to discontinue the frightful persecution that followed. He now (Mar., 1535) invited and urged Melanchthon to come to Paris to aid in restoring religious harmony, hoping to further an alliance with the Lutheran princes against the emperor; but the elector peremptorily refused to let Melanchthon go. Appeals for toleration came from Swiss and Lutheran theologians alike. Calvin dedicated his "Institutes" " to the Very Christian King of France," with the hope of allaying his persecuting fury. With the publication of this monumental work and his settlement in Geneva, Calvin soon became the recognized leader of French Protestantism, and Geneva the trainingschool from which hundreds of ministers returned to France (see CALvix, Jomv; and Geusva). Royal edicts (1538, 1539, 1540, 1542) intensified efforts for the extermination of heresy. The Waldenses of Piedmont had come into close relations with the Swiss Reformers (1532). Francis protected them until 1545, when he ordered their extermination. Twenty of their villages were burned, and nearly 4,000 were massacred, while 700 of the stronger men ware sent to the galleys. A considerable number fl:d to Switzerland. The Calvinists at Meaux were seiz4d at a meeting and many of them executed.