Louis XIV: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The preamble classifies the Edict of Nantes as a temporary measure taken by Henry IV to protect the peace he had secured for his subjects from being threatened by the religion pretendu réformée (R.P.R., or “pretended Reformed religion”). It then argues that Henry and his successors mercifully enacted policies favorable to the Huguenots in order to reduce Catholic-Protestant hostility and, it was hoped, win the Huguenots back to the Roman Church. Although this strategy was successful in restoring most French Calvinists to Catholicism, an obstinate few Huguenots took advantage of France's involvement in foreign wars from 1635 to 1684 by engaging in a pattern of illegal activities. The preamble claims not only that, at the present time, the Reformed faith could be eliminated without undermining national tranquility but also that failure to crush the false religion endangered the commonweal. Under such circumstances, the edict ceased to be valid, a judgment with which the preamble asserts monarchs from Henry on would have agreed.

Article I formally repeals all French legislation beneficial to the Huguenots. As a result, all Calvinist temples in France were to be pulled down summarily. Article II forbids all public and private Protestant worship on pain of property confiscation plus banishment or death. Significantly, the article is so worded as to turn the singing of Psalms, a Calvinist hallmark, into a capital crime. Article III explicitly extends the prohibition of Reformed worship to the houses and lands of nobles.

Articles IV, V, and VI concern Reformed pastors. Pastors who refused to embrace Catholicism were commanded to leave France no more than fifteen days after the publication of the Revocation. In the meantime, they were not to preach or execute any other ministerial function, with enslavement to the galleys as punishment for noncompliance. But to those who chose to quit the pastorate and convert to the Roman faith, the Revocation offers an attractive package of benefits, including exemption from taxes and the obligation to lodge soldiers, an annual stipend one-third greater than their ministerial salary, and a sizable pension for their widows upon their passing. It even allows former pastors to take examinations for law degrees at half the normal cost and without the requisite three years of university study.

Article VII abolishes all Protestant schools, in particular, and everything in general that might imply compromise with Calvinism. Article VIII prescribes that all children born of Protestant parents be baptized by the parish priests and brought up in the Roman Church. In practical terms, this article entailed that all children five years and older at the time of its promulgation be removed from their Reformed families and placed in Jesu¬it schools or nunneries. Parents with children younger than five who refused to procure Catholic baptism for their children would be fined a minimum of five hundred livres.

Article IX gives Huguenots who fled France four months to return as Catholics, after which their property would be seized by the crown. Contrary to the option of flight afforded their pastors, Article X prohibits Protestant laypeople from leaving France or exporting their goods overseas, on penalty of the galleys for men and loss of property and life for women. Article XI makes all Huguenot converts to Catholicism who later revert to Protestantism or on their deathbeds decline the Catholic sacrament of extreme unction liable to the death penalty pronounced on those who relapse into heresy. Article XII disingenuously grants all Huguenots who keep their religious convictions totally private (by definition an impossible feat) full protection of the law. In this way, the Revocation shrewdly keeps the letter of the tolerance statutes in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia while denying their substance.