Edict of Fontainebleau

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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).
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Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685)

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The Edict of Fontainebleau (22 October 1685) was an edict issued by French

King Louis XIV and is also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted Huguenots the right to practice their
religion without state persecution. Protestants had lost their independence in
places of refuge under Cardinal Richelieu on account of their supposed
insubordination, but they continued to live in comparative security and political
contentment. From the outset, 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]

Contents

 1Edict of Nantes
 2Revocation
 3Effects
 4Abolition
 5Apology
 6Famous Huguenots who left France
 7See also
 8References
 9Further reading
 10External links

Edict of Nantes[edit]
Plaque commemorating Edict of Nantes

The Edict of Nantes had been issued on 13 April 1598 by Henry IV of France and

granted the Calvinist Protestants of France, also known as Huguenots,
substantial rights in the predominantly-Catholic state. Henry aimed at promoting
civil unity by the edict.[3] The edict treated some Protestants with tolerance and
opened a path for secularism. It offered general freedom of conscience to
individuals and many specific concessions to the Protestants, such
as amnesty and the reinstatement of their 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[edit]

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 dragonnades that he had created in 1681 to intimidate
Huguenots into converting to Catholicism. As a result of the officially-sanctioned
persecution by 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, Engl
and, 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.
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.
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 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[edit]

French Huguenots fleeing to Brandenburg

The Edict of Fontainebleau is compared by many historians with the

1492 Alhambra Decree ordering the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain and
the Expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 to 1614. All three are similar both as
outbursts of religious intolerance ending periods of relative tolerance and in their
social and economic effects. In practice, the revocation caused France to suffer a
kind of early brain drain, as it lost many skilled craftsmen, including key
designers such as Daniel Marot. Upon leaving France, Huguenots took with them
knowledge of important techniques and styles, which had a significant effect on
the quality of the silk, plate glass, silversmithing, watchmaking and cabinet
making industries of those regions to which they relocated. Some rulers, such
as 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 occurred
in Fredericia and other locations.[6]

Abolition[edit]
In practice, the stringency of policies outlawing Protestants was opposed by
the Jansenists[7] and was relaxed during the reign of Louis XV, especially among
discreet members of the upper classes. "The fact that a hundred years later,
when Protestants were again tolerated, many of them were found to be both
commercially prosperous and politically loyal indicates that they fared far better
than the Catholic Irish", R.R. Palmer concluded.[2]
By the late 18th century, numerous prominent French philosophers and literary
men of the day, including Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, were arguing strongly for
religious tolerance. Efforts by Guillaume-Chrétien de Malesherbes, minister
to Louis XVI, and Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne, a spokesman for the
Protestant community, together with members of a provincial appellate court
or parlement of the Ancien Régime, were particularly effective in persuading the
king to open French society despite concerns expressed by some of his advisors.
Thus, on 7 November 1787, Louis XVI signed the Edict of Versailles, known as
the edict of tolerance registered in the parlement two-and-a-half months later, on
29 January 1788. The edict offered relief to the main alternative faiths
of Calvinist Huguenots, Lutherans and 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 Citizen of 1789. The 1787 edict was a
pivotal step in eliminating religious strife, however, and officially ended religious
persecution in France.[8] 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[edit]
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.[9]

Famous Huguenots who left France[edit]

 Jean Barbot
 Jean Chardin
 de la Font
 Jean Luzac (see also Nouvelles Extraordinaires de Divers Endroits)
 Daniel Marot
 Abraham de Moivre
 Denis Papin
 Duke of Schomberg

See also[edit]
 Christianity portal

 France portal

 1702 rebellion in the Cévennes

 French Wars of Religion
 Religions in France
 Edict of Potsdam
 1731 Expulsion of Protestants from Salzburg
 Savoyard–Waldensian wars
 Brain Drain
 End of the persecution of Huguenots and restoration of French citizenship
 Right of return to France

References[edit]
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. ^ Jump up to: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", Federicia Museum. Accessed 26 April 2020.
7. ^ 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.
8. ^ Encyclopedia of the Age of Political Ideals, Edict of Versailles
(1787) Archived 2012-07-14 at the Wayback Machine, downloaded 29 January 2012
9. ^ "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[edit]
 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[edit]
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
 Edict of Fontainebleu - text