The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

II. Revocation of Edict of Nantes the Prelude to Persecution

Picture the setting of the seventeenth century. Midway through we find Louis XIV (1643-1715) sitting on the throne of France, after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, taking the reins in his own hands in 1661. With his mistress, Madame de Maintenon, by his side, and the Jesuit confessor Pere de la Chaise behind her, the king is guided politically by the opportunist maxims of Cardinal Richelieu. Attempting to suppress the Jansenists and quartering his dragoons on the Huguenots, he deprived both of all rights. In the Piedmontese Alps the survivors of the dreadful Waldensian massacre still clung to their ancient mountain fastnesses. In England, James II was struggling to restore papal domination, and to enslave the children of the Puritans. Then, in France, came the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes-the crowning perfidy of king and court—with the wail of thousands of Protestants robbed of their children. ⁶ This was but the prelude to the last papal persecution of the Huguenots, which was later to be followed by the French Revolution with its retributive element. PFF2 624.5

1. LAW OF 1681 AUTHORIZED FORCIBLE CONVERSION

Back in June, 1681, a terrible law authorizing the wholesale conversion of all Huguenot children, from seven years of age upward, had struck terror to the hearts of parents. It was a deadly blow at the existence of the Protestant family. Priests and monks could ensnare the children into confession of the Roman faith and tear them away from the parental home. The noted Hugue not Jurieu uttered his flaming protest against this outrage in his Derniers efforts de I’innocence affligee(Last Efforts of Afflicted Innocence), and had to flee to Rotterdam. Then, as the parents and older children still clung to their faith, the dragoons were commissioned to convert them. ⁷ PFF2 625.1

2. ATTEMPT TO EXTIRPATE FOLLOWED BY GREAT EXODUS

But the statute still remained. So the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, and all gatherings of Protestants forbidden on pain of death. Their ministers were ordered to leave within fifteen days. If the lay people attempted to leave the country, the men would be sent to the galleys, the women imprisoned, and their goods confiscated. Marriages were declared null and void. All the children born thereafter must be baptized by Roman priests. And all Protestant churches must be torn down. ⁸ PFF2 625.2

Louis XIV decreed these stringent measures for the specific extirpation of the Huguenots. ⁹ And for this he was adorned with a medal struck at Rome—reading on one side Sacr. Romano, Restituta (The Roman Rites Restored) ¹⁰—and lauded as a second Constantine who had severed the head of the dragon of heresy. ¹¹ PFF2 626.1

Then came the great exodus. Nothing could stay it. About 184,000 Protestants left the province of Normandy, and a very moderate calculation suggests that 400,000 left France and found refuge in England, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and America. France lost by this exodus the most learned and industrious of her citizens. ¹² Many other thousands, whose flight was frustrated by the government, died by the gallows, or in dungeons and galleys. In 1686 Louis XIV even sent 14,000 men under Marshal de Catinat to join the Piedmontese army in enforcing submission of the Vaudois. ¹³ PFF2 626.2

3. CALLED THEMSELVES “CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS.”

For a whole century the French Government and the Papacy joined hands in an attempt to crush the Huguenots, who, like the Waldenses before them, called themselves the Eglise du desert (Church of the wilderness), for they had to meet in caves, forests, and desolate places. ¹⁴ Even their baptismal and marriage certificates were dated from “The Wilderness.” Their meeting places and the whereabouts of their pastors had to be kept carefully secret. These pastors had to wander about, separated from their families, ever watching for spies, and constantly changing their location. ¹⁵ Though Louis XIV declared, in 1715, that the Reformed Church was extinct, nevertheless the courageous preachers of the church in the wilderness preached on in the place prepared of God, though countless numbers were imprisoned and perished. PFF2 626.3