Reformation and Counter-Reformation in France
The Reformation and Counter-Reformation were contradicting developments in France in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Beginnings
Around the time when the Reformation began in Germany through Luther's theses (1517), there was a situation in France in which Luther's ideas could fall on fertile ground:
Francis I , who had ruled France since 1515, had at this time increasingly expanded and rebuilt the Catholic Church into an administrative organ of the state: since the Bologna Concordat in 1516 he had the right to fill the high offices of the French Church at his own will . He used this skillfully to accommodate the French high nobility in the appropriate positions and to commit him in this way. The infrastructure of the church was also important for Franz: its presence in all cities and villages, the high reach that the pastors were able to achieve in their parishes, and the family registers that the parishes kept were elements that he needed for administrative tasks, for example the publication of edicts .
In Paris in particular , this secularization led to opposition from humanist circles, especially around Erasmus of Rotterdam (Didier Érasme) and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (Jakob Faber). Around 1520, people began to discuss Luther's theses in these circles, which made holy scriptures the standard of faith and called for the separation of state and church. Luther's theological theses were initially received rather positively by the royal family. The king's sister, Margaret of Navarre , and the Bishop of Bayonne , Jean du Bellay , and his brother Guillaume were members of the group around Lefèvre.
Franz I, already very enlightened and open-minded, and probably influenced by his sister, was also not averse to the theological aspects of the beginning Reformation movement. For example, he held his protective hand over Lefèvre when a heresy lawsuit was brought against him after a treatise on Mary Magdalene . Reforming a church from within was, at least in terms of theological interpretations, nothing that Francis I should have feared.
First of all, around 1520, the Reformation idea was allowed to gain a foothold in France. From the humanists he quickly found his way into the upper middle class , where the existing far-reaching trade relations not only helped to spread goods, but also ideas.
Beginning of persecution
However, a Catholic counter-movement set in very quickly. The ministers of the church saw their teachings endangered by the emerging movement: Luther was excommunicated by the Pope in 1521, and the Sorbonne University in Paris condemned his teachings. As a result, Francis I came under increasing pressure, for two reasons:
- The first was of a domestic political nature: after 1520 it quickly became clear that the Reformation was not just a theological matter that made itself felt in the study rooms of scholars, but that the theses reflected the existing clerical (and closely related also the secular) power structure began to attack. Franz could have no interest in the reformers now sawing the chairs of those nobles for whom he had just obtained ecclesiastical offices, dignities and sources of income, and who represented an essential pillar of his rule over France.
- Second, at this time, Franz I was in a serious conflict with the Habsburgs , more precisely, with the German Emperor Charles V. France was pinned down by the Habsburgs over the Netherlands , Germany and Spain , while in northern Italy France was at open war with the Habsburgs. Had Francis allowed the Reformation to run free in France, he would have had Rome against him, and Charles V, who had banished Luther from the empire in 1521 , would have - then supported by Rome - no longer have been prevented from invading France. This foreign policy consideration also forced Franz to distance himself more and more from Protestantism.
So there were increasing reprisals against the Protestants, which expanded into the persecution of at least public Protestantism: The first execution of a French Protestant is documented for August 8, 1523, when the Augustinian monk Jean Vallière was burned on a stake in Paris.
Underground Church
Protestantism was increasingly pushed underground until around 1530. Some of the Protestants fled, including to the Reformed towns in Switzerland , where Ulrich Zwingli was in the process of completely disempowering the Catholic Church. However, when pushed into political extinction, the Protestants from the underground appeared increasingly provocative. The first major clashes between Catholics and Protestants occurred in 1534 over the Affaire des Placards , in which anti-Catholic posters were posted in Paris and four other cities. The Catholic mass was then called idolatry . Various statues of the Virgin Mary were defaced. After those responsible for this action were put at the stake, relations between the two sides remained tense.
Around 1533, John Calvin joined Protestantism in Paris. Up to this time he too could be described as a Catholic humanist rather than a Reformed. After a Protestant-tinged speech by Nicolaus Cop , the rector of the University of Paris, which was most likely made with Calvin's participation, both had to flee Paris.
But despite the repression, the movement was still gaining traction. Around 1523, the first Protestant congregation in France was formed in Meaux , and in 1546 there were the first cremations of Protestant Christians, including Pierre Leclerc . In 1559 the first national synod of the Reformed Christians of France took place in Paris . A church ordinance and the Confessio Gallicana were passed . Fifteen churches sent their delegates; at the next, which took place two years later, around 2,000 parishes were already represented. At the beginning of the 1560s, the Reformed underground churches had about two million followers, which was about ten percent of the total French population.
However, these Reformed congregations were no longer influenced by Lutherans: the persecution had created close ties between the French Reformed and Calvin, who lived in Geneva. Between 1535 and 1560, Calvinism increasingly penetrated French Protestantism, and it was Calvinism that attracted the dissident population. This is how the name " Huguenots " came up.
Huguenot Wars
Francis I died in 1547, and his son Henry II ascended the French throne. He continued the repression against the Huguenots unabated. Henry II wanted to prevent similar conditions as in the Holy Roman Empire in any case. Increasingly, aristocrats had now joined the Huguenots, and an agreement based on the Augsburg principle for France would have seriously damaged the successful centralization of France under Francis I. Political discrimination against Protestantism in France finally began .
A new institution and three edicts were enough to suppress the Huguenots more and more: First of all, there was the establishment of the Chambre ardente in Paris, a chamber that persecuted the Huguenot MPs. Heinrich set up this chamber in the first year of his reign. In June 1551 this principle was extended to the provincial parliaments in the Edict of Châteaubriand . The Edict of Compiègne followed in July 1557: Protestants “who disrupted order in any way” were placed under secular jurisdiction; Heinrich left the condemnation for heresy in the hands of the Church. The final point was then on June 2, 1559 in the Edict of Écouen : From now on the courts for heresy were only allowed to impose the death penalty. Heinrich died shortly after the edict.
The expulsion that had begun continued under Heinrich's son Franz II . In 1562 Catholic soldiers attacked Protestants at Vassy during a service . The Bartholomew Night 23./24. August 1572 in Paris again triggered numerous streams of refugees. Important Protestant figures were murdered. The death toll was around 3,000 in Paris and between 10,000 and 30,000 in the countryside. Finally, in 1598, the Edict of Nantes brought the situation to a halt temporarily, but this only lasted until the conquest of La Rochelle (1628). After the death of Cardinal Mazarin , the "Sun King" Louis XIV took over the government in 1661 and initiated a large-scale systematic persecution of Protestants associated with conversion and proselytizing actions, which he combined with a ban on emigration in 1669 due to the waves of refugees that began and which eventually became the notorious Dragonades reached their climax in 1681. Despite the ban, around 200,000 refugees left their homeland over the course of around fifty years .
In the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Anyone who was now recognizable as a Protestant was punished with imprisonment or a galley penalty. As a result, many went to an underground church and partially offered resistance in the Cevennes ( Camisards ). Civil war broke out there between 1703 and 1706, after which Louis XIV had over 400 villages razed to the ground. Singing psalms and reading the Bible are punishable by heavy penalties. Many people were forcibly converted to Catholicism, also to avoid the dreaded dragons. But Protestantism could not be exterminated because the persecuted and punished Protestants were venerated as martyrs.
Since members of the Protestant upper class, including most of the clergy, fled abroad, the Church was led by lay pastors who felt called by divine inspiration. That is why prophetic and ecstatic forms of religiosity emerged. They took effect in the Inspired Movement across Europe.
In the neighboring countries, the Huguenots who had lost their property, who were among the most productive strata of society, found willing acceptance, privileges and credits from the rulers , which in turn aroused incomprehension, envy and hostility in the rest of the population. Especially since they came across Lutherans as Reformed, so that they in turn embodied a religious minority .
The countries that became a new home for around 200,000 Huguenots included Switzerland, the Netherlands, England , Germany and America . With the Edict of Potsdam of October 29, 1685, the Reformed Huguenots were admitted to Lutheran Prussia .
They ensured a flourishing of the economy and especially of agriculture and opened wide horizons for the cultural and intellectual life. Above all, they significantly developed textile and silk manufactories and trades ( silkworm breeding ), introduced tobacco cultivation (mainly in the Uckermark with the center of Schwedt / Oder ) and were active in the manufacture and trade of jewelry.
In France, on the other hand, it was not until Louis XVI. the Edict of Tolerance in 1787 opened up a new possibility for Protestant life.
literature
- Jacques Vienot: Histoire de la Réforme française. Fischbacher, 2005
- Philippe Wolff (Ed.): Histoire des Protestants en France de la Réforme à la Révolution. Private, Toulouse 2001
Individual evidence
- ↑ On the disputes, see also Julien Coudy (ed.): The Huguenot Wars in eyewitness reports. Edited by Julien Coudy. Forewords by Pastor Henry Bosc and A.-M. Roguet OP Historical outline by Ernst Mengin. Düsseldorf 1965.