THE EDICT OF NANTES by Dr. Philip Schaff

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 17, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 20.

THE EDICT OF NANTES.

By Dr. Philip Schaff

Its Revocation and Consequences.

[The following is a portion of the historic address delivered by Dr. Philip Schaff at the anniversary of the Huguenot Society of America, in New York, March 21, 1889. It is appropriate at this season to recall some of the crimes of Romanism, from whose tyranny the Reformation liberated the world.]

THE Edict of Nantes is one of the prominent landmarks in the history of religious liberty, which began with the toleration edict of Constantine, and culminated in the First Amendment of the American Constitution. The edict brought the stormy period of the French Reformation to a close. It was issued and signed by Henry IV., April 13, 1598.

Its Character.

The Edict of Nantes was prepared by a commission which included such men as Gaspard de Schomberg and the distinguished historian and jurist, Jaques Auguste de Thou. The edict proclaimed no general principle, but made important concessions. It was a statesman-like recognition of the rights of a highly respectable and influential minority, as far as existing circumstances seemed to demand and to permit. It was based upon previous pacification edicts of 1563, 1570, 1577, enlarged them, and gave them permanency.

The chief provisions of the edict were as follows:

The Huguenots were guaranteed full personal liberty in any part of France, without molestation on account of their religious opinions, and made eligible to all secular offices of trust, honor, or emolument. For their special protection special tribunals, called "Chambers of the Edict," were instituted in the Parliaments. They had free access to the schools, colleges, and hospitals; they might establish their own schools and universities and publish religious books in the places where their worship was allowed; portions of the public cemeteries or special cemeteries were assigned to them for the peaceful burial of their dead; they were authorized to hold consistories, colloquies, provincial and national synods. In the "brevet," or patent, the king pledges the annual sum of 45,000 crowns from the public treasury, for the support of their clergy and the expenses of the synods. The possession of their fortified cities was guaranteed them for a term of eight years, and an annual sum of 180,000 crowns was set apart for the maintenance of the garrisons.

But here the principles of justice and equality ceased. The public worship of the Huguenots was restricted to certain cities and places where it had been recently (in 1596 and 1597) maintained. It was forbidden in Paris and the surrounding district of five leagues, in the residences of the court and other large cities, where worship could only be held in private houses and within closed doors. Consequently the Huguenots had often to walk or ride from ten to thirty miles to hear a Protestant sermon (preche). Moreover, their creed is disparaged in the edict by the designation of the pretended reformed religion. The Roman Catholic religion remained in every respect the only religion of the State, and the Protestants were required to pay the tithe to the clergy, to respect the fasts and feasts, and to conform to the marriage laws of the Roman Church.

The edict, therefore, falls far short of religious liberty and equality. It recognizes fully the liberty of private conscience, but restricts the liberty of public worship. It is "a compromise between natural justice and social necessity." But it goes as far as practicable, and marks a great advance beyond the public opinion of that age. It deserves to be ranked "among the grandest monuments of European civilization." It is the first attempt to recognize two forms of worship under the common patronage of the civil government, tho with a decided preference for the religion of the majority. It anticipated the present system in France, which was introduced by the first Napoleon.

The edict was repeatedly confirmed,—by Marie de Medicis, May 22, 1610; by Louis XIII., October 1, 1614, and in March 1626; by Anne d'Autriche, the widow of Louis XIII., July 8, 1643; and by Louis XIV., May 21, 1652,—but never fully carried out, and often violated. At every national synod complaints were made of non-payment of promised aid.

Nevertheless the Reformed Church of France flourished for half a century after the edict, and commended herself to Christendom by a high order of intelligence, virtue, and piety.

Dr. Schaff then painted in vivid colors the persecution of the Huguenots by Louis XIV. (1643-1715), which had the approval of the leading Roman Catholic bishops, of Bossuet, of Flechier, of Massillon, and of Pope Innocent XI. Continuing, Dr. Schaff said:

The Verdict of History

differs widely from Louis XIV., Bossuet, and the Pope. Catholic France was by no means unanimous in the approval of the revocation, even at that time. The Duke de Saint-Simon, a courtier of Louis XIV., a great writer and a good Catholic (a zealous Jansenist and a friend of Fenelon), was only ten years of age when the edict of revocation was issued, but lived long enough to see its consequences, and described them in the darkest yet most truthful colors. The voice of Protestant Europe condemned it, and answered by offers of hospitality to the victims of persecution. Among modern historians there is scarcely a difference of opinion on the subject.

The Great Exodus.

The revocation was a moral crime, a political blunder, and a national disaster. It deprived France of many thousands of her best citizens, ruined her manufactures and commerce, subjected her for a long time to the pillage of the dragoons, brought untold misery upon individuals, families, and communities, armed parents against children and children against parents, covered the land with hypocrisy, perjury, and sacrilege, roused the indignation of the Protestant world, filled the refugees with hatred

of their native country, and was the remote cause of the French Revolution.

We may go even further and say that the recent humiliation of France in the war of 1870 was the result of the policy of Louis XIV. with his Protestant subjects, and his unjust wars against Holland and Germany, the savage devastation of the Palatinate, and the robbery of Strasburg. When the German historian, Ranke, met the French historian and statesman, Thiers at Wien, after the downfall of the second empire at Sedan, he is reported to have told him that the Germans were making war, not upon Napoleon, nor the empire, nor the republic, still less upon the French people, but upon Louis Quatorze; whereupon Thiers wondered at the long memory of the Germans.

The Triumph of Infidelity.

The revocation forced the Protestant ministers to leave the country, and the laymen to remain at home. Now the emigration which had begun in the early stages of the persecution assumed the proportions of a vast exodus, which may be compared to the exodus of Israel from the oppression of Pharaoh, and forms one of the most glorious, as the revocation forms one of the most inglorious chapters in the history of the French people. The Huguenot emigration for the sake of religion throws all similar emigrations into the shade. No church can boast of a larger army of confessors and martyrs of conscience than the Calvinistic churches of France and of Holland. Their high moral character is shown by the very fact of their emigration. They left their property and native land in obedience to their conscience, and at the risk of their lives. They showed their heroism in flight under the greatest hardships, in constant dread of their heartless pursuers. They made their way to a place of safety, singly or with women and children, in all sorts of disguises—as pilgrims, as courtiers, as sportsmen with their guns upon the shoulder, as peasants driving cattle, on untrodden roads, traveling by night and passing the day in forests, in caverns, hid under bales of goods and heaps of coal, or in empty casks on English and Dutch merchant vessels. "Persons brought up in every luxury, pregnant women, and men, invalids and children, rivaled each other in constancy, hoping to escape their persecutors."

The total number of French refugees can not be exactly ascertained, and is variously stated at from three hundred thousand up to a million. Counting all the Huguenots who emigrated before and after the revocation for the sake of religion, half a million is probably not too high an estimate.

The Huguenots in Foreign Lands.

The loss of France was a gain to foreign lands. The curse of the revocation was turned into a blessing. Providence overrules the deeds of bad men, and brings good out of evil.

The Huguenot refugees found hospitable homes in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, England, and North America, and enriched those countries by their industry, intelligence, virtue, and piety, and charm of refined manners. Our own nation is indebted to France for one of its best elements: Three of the seven Presidents of the Continental Congress, Laurens, Jay, and Boudinot; two of the four commissioners who signed the Treaty of Peace at Paris in 1782, Laurens and Jay; the first Chief Justice of the State of New York, John Jay.

France rejected the Reformation and reaped the Revolution. The tyranny of Romanism provoked infidelity. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was followed by the temporary destruction of the church in France.

The Influence of America.

In the meantime the American colonies, with the aid of France, achieved their independence, and the Constitutional Convention of 1787 made religious liberty the law of the land. This example was not without moral effect upon public opinion. General Lafayette acted a mediator and friend of both countries, and freely advocated the same principle on his return—Lutheran Observer.