The Edict of Nantes
Religious tolerance comes to France — briefly
Henry IV of France has converted to Catholicism four times and Protestantism twice. He is a pragmatist of considerable gifts and even more considerable survival instinct, a man who has watched religious war destroy his country for four decades and wants it to stop.
On April 13, 1598, he issues the Edict of Nantes.
The Edict grants the Huguenots the right to practice their faith in designated places, to hold public office, to maintain Protestant-controlled towns as places of safety, and to have their legal cases tried by courts with Protestant members. It is not full religious equality — Catholicism remains the state religion and Huguenots are still second-class subjects in many respects. But it is the first formal grant of religious liberty in French history.
It holds for eighty-seven years.
In 1685 Louis XIV, the Sun King, revokes it. The Edict of Fontainebleau expels the Huguenots from France. Perhaps four hundred thousand leave — to England, Prussia, the Netherlands, South Africa, America — taking their skills, their industries, and their capital with them. France is permanently impoverished by their loss.
The tolerance that Henry IV built in 1598 is dismantled by his grandson in 1685. Religious liberty in France will not be permanently established until the Revolution — and that Revolution will produce its own terror.
The Edict of Nantes stands as a testimony to what is possible and how fragile it is.
“Those of the Reformed Religion shall be able to live and dwell in all the cities of our kingdom, without being inquired after, vexed, molested, or compelled to do anything in the matter of religion.”
— Edict of Nantes, Article VI, April 13, 1598 AD
“But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of Hosts has spoken it.”
The Edict of Nantes lasted eighty-seven years. Then it was revoked.
Every advance in religious liberty in human history has been fragile — contingent on the willingness of those with power to maintain it. The tolerance that Henry IV built required his grandson to respect it, and Louis XIV did not.
Four hundred thousand people had built lives on the assumption that the edict would hold. When it did not, they lost everything and France lost them.
Religious liberty is not the natural state of human societies. It is an achievement, won at cost, maintained by vigilance, and always vulnerable to the person who decides the cost of tolerance is too high.
What freedoms do you inhabit that were built by others who will not always be here to maintain them? And what are you doing to maintain them for the people who will come after you?