Huguenots
Huguenots. (poss. from the name Hugues, or Swiss Eidgnosse, ‘confederate’). French Calvinists. As Calvinism spread rapidly in France during the 1540s, so persecution increased, especially under Henry II (1547–59). On his death, a more confused political situation ensued, leading to civil war. Militant Catholics (above all the family of the Guises) refused compromise: the massacre of St Bartholomew's Day (1572) was made the more repugnant by the fact that Protestant leaders had been invited to Paris to celebrate the marriage of a Huguenot leader, Henry of Navarre, to a Catholic, Margaret, sister of Charles IX. The reconciliation which that event might have introduced was nevertheless brought near by the accession of Henry, who turned Catholic to gain the throne (hence the saying of himself or perhaps of his minister Sully, ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’, ‘Paris is well worth a mass’). He ended the civil war, and by the Edict of Nantes, in 1598, he extended toleration to the Huguenots. In 1685, the Edict of Nantes was revoked. The ensuing Camisard revolt persisted for twenty years, but again was suppressed with great violence. The differing groups were largely united in 1938 in the Reformed Church of France.
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Huguenots