300-Year-Old Decree Seen Now as Shameful : France Recalls Ban of Protestants

France marked the 300th anniversary Thursday of what is now regarded as a shameful act in French history--a decree by King Louis XIV that outlawed the Protestant religion and drove several hundred thousand Protestants out of France.

Despite the shame, the French government has encouraged the commemoration, helping to finance exhibitions, conferences and ceremonies over the past few weeks.

President Francois Mitterrand took part in a solemn observance with 200 descendants of Protestants who fled from France in the 17th Century. The National Archives is displaying engravings of the slaughter of Protestants who stayed behind.

The decree of Louis XIV ensured that France would remain a predominantly Catholic nation with only a tiny Protestant minority. Protestantism, in fact, is so little understood in modern France that the press has felt obliged this week to explain to its mainly Catholic and agnostic readers what Protestants believe.

Nowhere was the ignorance more evident, however, than at the French post office. Postal officials issued a commemorative stamp that mixed up the history completely. Using the term by which French Protestants were known for centuries, the stamp’s legend proclaimed, “1685-1985 Welcome of the Huguenots. Tolerance. Plurality. Fraternity.” It should have read something like, “Rejection of the Huguenots. Intolerance. Exclusion. Massacres.”

Glories Commemorated

The confusion by postal officials may be understandable. Most nations celebrate the glories of their history, not the embarrassments.

“Why commemorate an event so sinister, an act so cruel with intolerance?” Roger Mehl of the influential Paris newspaper Le Monde said in a typical commentary on the anniversary. Mehl concluded that a world still intolerant of dissent needs reminders “of one of the most pathetic moments in our national history and the history of all Europe.”

Although Protestants are small in number in France, they are influential. Five Cabinet members are Protestant, including, ironically, Louis Mexandeau, the minister of the post office and thus the boss of the officials who failed so badly at Protestant history. An ancestor of Georgina Dufoix, the minister of social affairs, was condemned to years as a galley slave for his Protestantism.

Michel Rocard, the former Cabinet member who is ranked by pollsters as the most popular politician in the country, is Protestant. So are Lionel Jospin, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, and Louis Mermaz, the president of the National Assembly. Peugeot cars and Guerlain perfumes bear the names of Protestant families.

4% Feel Hostile

There are believed to be 850,000 Protestants in France, 1.5% of the population. A generation or two ago, many Protestants believed that other French citizens looked on them as strange and different. But a recent poll showed that more than 90% of the French regard themselves as either sympathetic or indifferent to Protestants. Only 4% said they felt hostile.

The tricentennial commemorated Thursday has a complex history. On Oct. 17, 1685, Louis XIV, known as the “Sun King” because of the splendor of his court, signed a decree that revoked the 87-year-old Edict of Nantes. The edict, issued in 1598 by King Henry IV, a Catholic king with close ties to Protestantism, had guaranteed freedom of conscience to Protestants, allowing them to practice their religion in their churches.

Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes in the hope of ending the religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants in France. For a while, the edict did this. But many Catholics ignored the edict throughout the 17th Century and persecuted Protestants despite its provisions. Churches were burned and Protestants forcibly converted. This led to Protestant rebellion and Catholic reprisals. Nevertheless, though oppressed, the Protestants remained legal.

That changed with Louis XIV’s decree revoking the edict. That made it illegal to practice the Protestant religion. The king’s soldiers imprisoned Protestant pastors and destroyed their churches. Catholics pillaged and slaughtered. Somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 Protestants fled the country, a large percentage of the Protestant population.

A Spent Force

Those who stayed behind converted to Catholicism or practiced Protestantism in secret. Those who were caught were executed or sentenced to serve as galley slaves. Protestantism, which once had the allegiance of almost 10% of France, seemed like a spent force in this country.

In the 17th Century, Louis XIV’s decision to revoke the Edict of Nantes was generally approved. As Henri Dubief, a French education official, has written, “It was a time when religious intolerance was looked on everywhere as a virtue.”

But in the view of most historians now, the act hurt France by driving out many of its artisans and small businessmen.

On top of this, the act damaged the image of the Catholic Church, helping to galvanize feelings against the church during the French Revolution in 1789 and contributing to the anti-clericalism of many French politicians during the 19th Century.

Too Late for Many

The Protestants were granted their rights again after the French Revolution, too late to bring back the Huguenot refugee communities from Holland, Germany, England, Switzerland, the United States and elsewhere.

From a religious point of view, the French regard French Protestants, who belong mostly to Calvinist and Lutheran Churches, as conservative. Yet in politics, Protestants have played their largest role on the left, most prominently in the Socialist Party. This stems from the 19th Century, when the left was prominent in the battle against the influence of the Catholic Church.