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The Protestant Reformation, begun under Martin Luther (1483–1546) in Germany in 1517 and continued shortly after in France under John Calvin (1509–1564), provides a convenient and significant reference in our understanding of historical influences in French society and religious experience. As Reformation church history professor Euan Cameron asserts,

The personal motives for the reformers’ conversions are ultimately inexplicable. However, this overlooks the fundamental point: they were personal motives. One did not become a first-generation reformer by habit, compulsion, or default. Where any evidence exists, it suggests that the reformers reached their position only after serious and earnest heart-searching. They were some of the most conscientious revolutionaries ever to rebel against authority.43

Five hundred years later, the Reformation’s historical and religious importance cannot be exaggerated. “No other movement of religious protest or reform since antiquity has been so widespread or lasting in its effects, so deep and searching in its criticism of received wisdom, so destructive in what it abolished or so fertile in what it created.”44 The late Catholic historian John Bossy questioned the use of Reformation in the singular while recognizing he had no better alternative. He wrote, “Yet it seems worth trying to use [Reformation] as sparingly as possible, not simply because it goes along too easily with the notion that a bad form of Christianity was being replaced by a good one, but because it sits awkwardly across the subject without directing anyone’s attention anywhere in particular.”45 Cameron asserts that although there were reformations throughout Europe in Catholic nations, Reformation in the singular is reserved “for a particular process of change, integrating cultural, political, and theological factors in a way never seen before and rarely since.”46 Walker recognizes that the “defensive action to the Protestant threat is appropriately called the Counter-Reformation” and also that “one may properly speak of an indigenous Catholic Reformation of the sixteenth century.”47 Yet the localized attempts at “spiritual renewal would not have won the support of popes and prelates—would not have been ‘institutionalized,’ so to speak,—were it not for the profound shock administered to the church at large by the Protestant Reformation.”48

The Protestant Reformers clearly believed that the Roman Catholic Church had departed from the truth of Scripture. Protestants generally consider the term Counter-Reformation a better descriptor of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) whose decrees “were clear and definite in their rejection of Protestant beliefs.”49 The Catholic Church may have experienced reforms, renewals or reformations in areas of practice, piety, and missionary zeal, but did not experience Reformation in the weighty sense of the word which describes the reestablishment of apostolic doctrine. Alister McGrath explains Luther’s theological priority:

For Luther, the reformation of morals and the renewal of spirituality, although of importance in themselves, were of secondary significance in relation to the reformation of Christian doctrine. Well aware of the frailty of human nature, Luther criticized both Wycliffe and Hus for confining their attacks on the papacy to its moral shortcomings, where they should have attacked the theology on which the papacy was ultimately based. For Luther, a reformation of morals was secondary to a reformation of doctrine.50

Luther became a priest in the Catholic Church in 1507 and received his doctorate in theology from the University of Wittenberg in 1512.51 Early on Luther accepted the Church’s teaching that God gives grace to those who do their best. According to Gerald Bray,

It took a spiritual crisis in his own life to shake Luther out of this way of thinking. He did his best but discovered that it was not good enough. . . . After much searching, he found the answer in the words of the prophet Habakkuk, quoted by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans: “The just shall live by faith” (Rom 1:17; cf. Hab 2:4). The scales dropped from his eyes as he realized that it is by grace that we are saved through faith and not by our works, however meritorious they are in themselves. The foundations of the old system were shaken to the root, and the result was the Protestant Reformation.52

On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his famous ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg and was ordered by the Church to recant his error. Benedict describes Luther’s resistance:

He dug in and soon was calling for a reduction in the sacraments from seven to three (later two) and the abolition of the monastic orders, while denouncing the Church of Rome as hopelessly corrupt. Although excommunicated by the pope and condemned by the Imperial diet of Worms, he was protected by the Elector of Saxony. Thanks to the printing press, Luther’s example and ideas galvanized widespread agitation for change in the structure of the Church across the German-speaking world. Parisian booksellers also began to sell his writings to eager customers as early as 1519. The Sorbonne condemned Luther’s teaching in 1521, and secular laws soon made possession of his writings a crime.53

Luther translated the Greek New Testament into German in 1522 and the Hebrew Old Testament into German in 1534, the latter considered a foundational work for modern German. He is credited with establishing five fundamental principles or solae: sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and soli Deo Gloria. These scriptural truths set his teaching apart from the teaching of the Church and announced an inevitable rupture.54 Luther’s influence in France would soon be eclipsed by that of Calvin, yet “between 1528 and the 1540s, Luther was by far the most widely translated foreign theologian in this period.”55 Questions have been raised about the Reformation’s necessity or inevitability. “Such questions cannot be answered with any degree of confidence. The fact remains, however, that Luther himself regarded the Reformation as having begun over, and to have chiefly concerned, the correct understanding of the Christian doctrine of justification.”56

Calvin was born in Noyon, France in the region of Picardy. He received a classical education through which he acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of authors from antiquity and from the patristic period. He later studied law until the death of his father in 1531.57 In 1533 he converted to Protestantism and in 1536 wrote the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “which evolved through subsequent revisions into the most forceful and successful exposition of Reformed Protestantism of the sixteenth century.”58 He established himself in Geneva in 1541 and began calling upon believers living in places with no Protestant church to separate from the Catholic Church and if necessary relocate to a place where they could worship freely:

As growing numbers of French evangelicals heard this call and fled to Geneva, the number of Genevan presses multiplied, and clandestine networks were established for distributing their products throughout France. . . . No less than 178 French-language editions of one or another of Calvin’s treatises, sermons, and commentaries appeared during his lifetime. His sharp critique of Catholic theology and worship and uncompromising call for separation from it increasingly dominated evangelical propaganda.59

The Reformers proclaimed the divine authority of the Scriptures and encouraged personal Bible reading. Consequently, there was no longer one authoritative voice and interpreter of the Holy Scriptures. As people began reading the Christian Scriptures for themselves the divide between ecclesiastical authority and the faithful grew. Andrew Fix writes,

For centuries the Catholic church had maintained that the only criterion of truth for a religious proposition was the authority of church tradition, pope, and councils. Luther proposed a radical new standard for religious truth at the Diet of Worms in 1521 when he maintained that whatever his conscience was compelled to believe when he read Scripture was religious truth.60

Baubérot asserts that in France in the early 1500s the piety, theology, and practices of the Church were not in crisis. He describes pre-Reformation times as a vast market of salvation and quest for personal salvation, which led a host of men and women to choose the religious life, the way of Christian perfection governed by perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.61 At least initially, the new ideas which came from Germany found favorable soil in diverse intellectual and religious milieu.62 As Trueman and Kim observe, “France, with a strong monarchy, a vibrant intellectual culture at the University of Paris, and indeed, an interest in exerting independence from the Roman church, looked in the early sixteenth century like fruitful soil for Protestant reform.”63 There were also attempts at reform from within the Church which targeted the clergy and religious life. Those who called for reform denounced the abuses of the clergy at all levels of the hierarchical ladder, from the absentee bishops accumulating undeserved privileges, to the ignorant and concubinary village priests, and to the lazy and drunken monks.64 Jonathan Bloch considers it an error to imagine that Christianity in France was united and strong at the dawn of the Reformation and maintains that pagan elements were present in the various expressions of Catholicism. He explains that this situation permitted Protestantism to progressively gain a foothold without meeting the resistance that a united Catholicism would have provided.65

Prior to the Reformation, the monarchy and the Church were wedded without religious competition. Kelley states that “within a generation the ostensibly religious upheaval precipitated by Luther involved not only the formal break-up of Christendom but a whole range of secular disturbances.” He further affirms that the Reformation must be understood “not merely as a changing design upon a historical fabric but as a violent, multi-dimensional, and perhaps multi-directional process which needs examining from several angles.”66 Scholars uniformly look to the Reformation as the beginning of religious, social, and political turmoil in France which would destabilize both the monarchy and the Church. Eugène Réveillard, deputy of Charente-Inférieure, wrote in 1907 that the Reformation, in the measure it brought back religion and Christian churches to the purity of their origins according to the intention of the Reformers, marked the beginning of the restoration of the principles of liberty of conscience and of worship, and at the same time, the separation of powers—civil and ecclesiastical.67

Xavier de Montclos considers it a mistake to only see reciprocal rejection and condemnation in the Reformation or Counter-Reformation. He believes that these two great branches of Christianity in modern times both responded to calls for a deeper and more evangelical religious life.68 Monod regards the sixteenth century as marked by several significant changes. First, it was the beginning of the individualization of faith which made adherence to faith traditions possible but not obligatory. Second, it was the time of the pluralization of the faith which in time would find protection by law. Monod considers that the religious revolution and schism of the sixteenth century, characterized by pluralism and individualism, led to relativism and the possibility of the “subjectivation of religious teaching.”69

In a few decades, the Reformation’s influence in France “not only shattered the unity of religion, but it led to the contesting of the monarchy itself.”70 This new religion became known as Calvinism and its followers were called Huguenots.71 According to Kelley, “The origin of the term ‘Huguenot’ has been long debated. The present consensus is that it derives from the word for the resisting Swiss confederations (Eidgenossem), but it seems to have emerged during the conspiracy of Amboise, and opponents of the ‘foreign house’ of Guise construed it as designating their allegiance to the descendants of the royal dynasty of ‘Hughes’ Capet.”72 However, Carter Lindberg states that “the French Calvinists preferred the term Réformés, the Reformed. Catholic satires of the time called them la Religion Déformée.”73 The first Reformed churches appeared in France beginning in 1555. In 1559 a national synod gathered in Paris and adopted a confession of faith which was ratified in 1571 at La Rochelle and called La Confession de la Rochelle.74 By 1561–1562 Calvinism became a considerable power in the kingdom, about two million people. Among them were academics and former religious workers, bourgeoisie from legal and commercial professions, representatives of high and low nobility, whose conversion led to the conversion of entire cities and villages.75 This Protestant religious expression “threatened the perception of nation forged by both king and subjects, because the king’s own coronation oath required him to protect and defend his realm and his subjects from heresy.”76 Montclos asserts that beginning in 1540 persecution became practically systematic with many Protestants dying at the stake. Their strength and determination frightened the Catholic hierarchy and constrained the authorities to seek a solution.77 The growth of this new faith raised fears and concerns that needed to be addressed by the royal family since the converts to Protestantism “were simply too numerous to suppress.”78

Wars of Religion

The concept of the inseparability of King and Church would initially lead to compromises under Catherine de Medici (1519–1589). The Edict of January accorded the Huguenots partial rights to privately practice their religion in government approved places in January 1562. Religious gatherings were forbidden in population centers where the Huguenots were concentrated. According to Lindberg, “Huguenot public worship was allowed in private homes in towns and outside the towns’ walls. This was the watershed for French Protestantism.”79 The edict was rejected by most French Catholics who raised the question, “How could the regent, wife, and mother of a king of France advocate the Huguenots’ legal right to exist within the kingdom, when the king’s own coronation required their suppression?”80 It was a fundamental principle that the “coronation oath required him to protect and defend his realm and his subjects from heresy” and that “much of the symbolism and ritual of the coronation itself served to imbricate the monarchy and the Catholic Church together, making Protestantism or any other form of heresy a threat to royal authority.”81 The authorities of the Church considered Catherine’s edict in contradiction with the Council of Trent (1545–1563) which had anathematized the heresy of Luther and Calvin. She soon became aware of the dangerous situation in which the edict placed her and sought to side with and placate the Catholic faction. War seemed inevitable. “The Huguenot political and military resources were not sufficient to bring France into Protestantism, but they were strong enough to ensure their existence as a rebellious minority.”82

The massacre of Protestants in Vassy in March 1562 by the Duke of Guise foreshadowed the bloodshed which would follow in the Wars of Religion for almost forty years. At stake was the status of the Reformed religion in the kingdom.83 At Vassy, the Duke, with 200 armed men, came across a large congregation of Huguenots gathered in a barn for worship and set upon them. Some 70 Huguenots were killed and many more wounded. The incident sparked more massacres, and the religious wars were on.84 The result was tragic and “only after four decades of civil war would the nation re-emerge with any semblance of community, imagined or otherwise.”85 Around this time, Sébastian Castellion (1515–1564), who ministered alongside Calvin for a time in Geneva, wrote in the preface of his Traité des hérétiques (1554), “Who would want to become a Christian when they see that those who confess the name of Christ are bruised at the hands of Christians, by fire, by water, by sword, and treated more cruelly than robbers and murderers?”86

The landscape of post-Reformation France was permanently altered. There would follow in the next centuries an innumerable succession of contestations, religious suppression, upheavals, bloodshed, governmental turbulence, and riots in the streets. It seemed that under then-present structures of government there could be no peaceful coexistence between two competing religions especially now that “when the Huguenots took up arms they lost the image of a persecuted church. And when in 1562 they looked to English Protestants for assistance . . . they lost their patriotic credibility.”87 However, Catherine de Medici’s Edict of January 1562 had broken with the past and “made France the first Western European kingdom to grant legal recognition to two forms of Christianity at once.”88 According to historian Philip Benedict,

Within three months, violent Catholic rejection of the legitimacy of toleration combined with Protestant hopes for the imminent triumph of their faith to plunge the country into the first of a deadly cycle of wars that would recur eight times over the next three decades. So frequent and gruesome were the massacres accompanying these conflicts, so searing the sieges, and so numerous the assassinations of leading political actors, that the events of the “time of religious troubles” burned themselves into French and European historical memory for centuries to come.89

In short order, the inability for two incompatible faiths to live peacefully side-by-side led to the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day on August 24, 1572, which then spread from Paris to other cities.90 What began as a “controlled operation against the leading Protestant noblemen grew into a vast bloodletting by ardently anti-Protestant members of the civic militia, who had allowed themselves to believe that the king had finally sanctioned the long-hoped-for eradication of all Huguenots.”91 Benedict claims that “if the exact division of responsibility for the massacre may never be apportioned with certainty, its broader ramifications are clear.”92 The massacre “precipitated a massive wave of defections from the Protestant cause. In the wake of the killing, Charles IX forbade the Reformed believers from gathering for worship—to protect them against violence, his edict proclaimed, but also because he undoubtedly realized that the massacre might end the Protestant problem once and for all.”93

As the massacres continued in the provinces for several months, fearful Protestants defected and reembraced the Catholic religion. Others fled to find refuge abroad or in Protestant-controlled regions in France. It has been estimated that “Kingdom-wide, for every person killed in the St. Bartholomew’s massacres, dozens returned to the Catholic fold or fled abroad.”94 One Catholic historian reports that Pope Gregory XIII (1502–1585), upon receiving the news of the massacre, decreed a jubilee of thanksgiving, struck a commemorative medal, and commissioned Italian artist Vasari to immortalize the event by a fresco on the walls in the Vatican Sala Regia.95 Protestants and Catholics were both prisoners of a system of thought that considered heresy the greatest enemy and mutual extermination an act of justice in the name of God.96 One major consequence of the massacre was “a flurry of publications about the limits of obedience to royal authority that made the years after 1572 one of the most fertile periods of political reflection in all of French history.”97 Another consequence was the change in relations between Catholics and Protestants shocked by the brutality of the massacre on a previously unknown scale:

Episodes that had become common during the previous twelve years—Protestant attacks on holy images or religious processions; Catholic attacks on Protestants returning from worship or seeking to bury their dead; the cold-blooded slaughter of neighbours of the opposite faith—all but disappeared from most corners of the kingdom after 1572, in part in revulsion from the sheer scale and horror of the events of that year.98

According to G. R. Evans, “The massacre had its effect, because it removed many of the leading figures of the Protestant movement and sent many Huguenots into exile in more sympathetic lands, and it may have contributed in that way to the eventual triumph of Roman Catholic dominance in France.”99 The following years cycled through brokered peace and revocations, times of limited freedom of worship for Protestants, and times of outcry and Catholic outrage whose “manifestos spoke of a ‘holy and Christian union’ to defend the Roman Church against ‘Satan’s ministers’ and of restoring provincial liberties ‘as they were in the time of king Clovis.’”100 The 1572 Saint Bartholomew’s massacre had not produced its desired effect to rid the kingdom of schismatic Protestants and in the course of time led to “a growing, if still begrudging, acceptance of the argument that religious toleration was less an evil than endless warfare.”101 As a result,

Many of both faiths [Catholics and Protestants] drew the lesson that where two religions were so deeply rooted in a single country that even violence could not exterminate them, a measure of toleration was preferable to the costs entailed in trying to restore religious uniformity, although no French author was as yet willing to defend freedom of worship as a positive good under all circumstances.102

In light of these events, Gaillard dates the concept of laïcité in France to the Edict of Nantes in 1598 conceived by Henry IV to end the civil and religious torment which plunged France into chaos. He calls it “embryonic laïcité.”103 The State became the guarantor of civil peace and liberty of conscience for the two religions. The edict’s import lay in considering individuals in two ways. First, as political subject, the individual was expected to obey the king, regardless of confession. Second, as a believer, the subject was free to choose his religion which was now considered a private matter. It is said that in the life of Henry IV, also known as Henry of Navarre, former Protestant and Huguenot leader, there “had never been a consistent practice of Huguenot morality.”104 However, his conversion to Catholicism and the Edict of Nantes brought the Wars of Religion to an end. His edict opened access for Protestants to universities and public offices. Protestants were allowed garrisons in several towns, most notably the port city of La Rochelle. Many in the Catholic Church disapproved, “railed violently against it, and cast innuendoes at the sincerity of the ‘conversion’ of the King, but Henry forced its general acceptance as a part of the law of the land.”105

It is noteworthy that in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France four cardinals (Richelieu, Mazarin, Dubois, and Fleury) and one archbishop (Loménie de Brienne) held the position of prime minister.106 Of these perhaps Richelieu (1585–1642), who served during the reign of Louis XIII (1601–1643), was the most able and has become the best known. It was said that “Louis XIII reigned, but that Richelieu governed.”107 Richelieu battled the Huguenots more out of political than religious motives. He was responsible for the siege and the fall of the Huguenot stronghold, La Rochelle. With the surrender of La Rochelle, the Huguenots lost political influence but retained their religious rights for another fifty years. This was one period of French history when “French Protestant lived with Catholic in a peace and harmony seldom seen elsewhere in any part of Europe save in Holland.”108

The Edict of Nantes of 1598 survived almost a century before its revocation, during which time French Catholics and Protestants cohabitated in relative calm (1598–1685).109 However, as early as 1629 with the Edict of Nîmes under Louis XIII, the Huguenots experienced the loss of some gains and their pastors had the right to preach, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, baptize, and officiate at marriages only in villages and cities authorized by the Edict of Nantes.110 His successor, Louis XIV, grandson of Henry IV, governed as an absolute monarch and claimed the divine right as God’s representative on earth. The French clergy pressured the king and obtained the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes on October 17, 1685, also known as the Edict of Fontainebleau. The king’s subjects were compelled to adopt the religion of the one who ruled by divine right. Protestant worship was forbidden in France and the edict led once again to the departure of thousands of French Protestants.111 Protestants lost the right to have separate cemeteries and were compelled to receive the sacraments of the Church. Many Protestants buried their dead in their cellars or gardens. To this day in the Cévennes, private cemeteries are common and allowed by exemption.112 The banned religion became officially designated RPR, religion prétendue réformée (so-called reformed religion).113

A cursory look at the articles of the Edict of Revocation reveals the drastic measures undertaken to extirpate the Protestant religion in France. Article one ordered the demolition of Protestant temples. Articles two and three forbade all religious assemblies with the threat of prison. Articles four, five, and six ordered the expulsion within fifteen days of all Protestant pastors who refused to convert to Catholicism. Article seven outlawed Protestant schools. Article eight obliged all infants to be baptized into the Catholic Church and receive religious instruction from village priests. Articles nine and ten forbade Protestant emigration under the threat of galleys for the men and imprisonment for the women. Article eleven stipulated punishment for those who relapsed into heresy in refusing the sacraments of the Church. Article twelve granted the right to remain in the kingdom to the not-yet-enlightened RPR conditioned by the interdiction of assemblies for worship or prayer. Many methods were utilized to pressure Protestants to convert. The Church opened centers of conversion (maisons de conversion) and placed mounted troops (dragons) in Huguenot homes (dragonnades) to ensure their attendance at mass. In effect, the Edict of Revocation forced hundreds of thousands of dissidents to convert to the prince’s religion without allowing them liberty to leave the territory.114 The fear of the dragons led to waves of conversions among entire villages and accelerated the disappearance of the RPR. In only a few months hundreds of thousands of Protestants converted to Catholicism. Those who converted were called NC (nouveaux convertis or nouveaux catholiques) and placed under strict surveillance. In their deaths the refusal of extreme unction could lead to their bodies being dragged in the streets and the confiscation of all their possessions which could not be passed on as inheritance. Those captured while seeking to flee the kingdom were sentenced to life on the king’s galleys or imprisoned for life. It has been estimated that from 1685 to 1715 over 200,000 Protestants escaped and emigrated to places of refuge including Geneva, England, Germany, and Holland.115

In Gaillard’s opinion the specificity of French laïcité cannot be understood apart from the memory of the Edict of Nantes and its later Revocation. The Catholic Church welcomed the Revocation, aligned itself with the Royal State, and instituted the Counter-Reformation with the rejection of religious liberty and freedom of thought.116 Religious unity was reestablished, and the Revocation engendered a return to oppression. André Chamson’s Suite Camisarde presents the Revocation as a foundational event which sheds light on the religious, regional, and historic collective memory of the Cévenol region of France and the war of the Camisards. The Camisards were Calvinist Cévenol insurgents during the persecutions which followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They owe their name to the white shirt they wore over their clothing in order to be recognized among themselves.117 The Camisards fought to defend and to reclaim their religious rights obtained under the Edict of Nantes in 1598. They fought above all for the liberty of conscience to freely worship the God of their religion. The war was triggered by the desire of Louis XIV to impose one law and one faith which tore apart the Cévennes from 1702 to 1705. Thousands of men were imprisoned, deported, sent to the galleys, tortured, and more than five hundred villages suffered the great burning [le grand brûlement].118 The power of the Church and the exclusion and exile of hundreds of thousands of Protestants would harden antagonisms for the next century. Yet, according to Montclos, the idea of tolerance was born.119

One of the ironies of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV is found in the defeat of the French almost two centuries later in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 which will be discussed later. Thousands of Protestant Huguenots, who refused to convert to the king’s religion, fled the waves of persecution for places where they could practice their religion unmolested. In 1870, the descendants of persecuted Huguenots from the previous century were counted among Prussia’s military forces. France was soundly defeated at one of the most devastating battles in French military history at Sedan, a center of French Protestantism until the persecution following the Revocation. The humiliating defeat resulted in the capture of Emperor Napoleon III and his army and ended the Second Empire.120

War of Ideas

Changes in the world of ideas preceded radical change in Europe. According to Fix, “Few transformations of worldview have been as decisive and influential as that which changed the religious worldview of traditional Europe into the rational and secular worldview of modern Europe.”121 The sixteenth century experienced what Jean-Michel Ducomte calls a “laïcisation de la pensée” with the influences of diverse Renaissance thinkers like Erasmus (1466–1536), Francois Rabelais, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.122 Erasmus and Luther were contemporaries with some shared criticism of the Church and criticisms of each other. As Stumpf explains it,

Erasmus criticized scholastic jargon not only because of its lack of elegance but even more because it obscured the true teachings of the Gospels. . . . He sensed a deep incongruity between the simple teachings of Christ and the opulence and arrogance of the Papal Court. . . . But he was neither a religious skeptic nor did he become a Lutheran. His was a lover’s quarrel with the church. He wished to harmonize the church’s teaching with the new humanistic learning.123

Erasmus and Luther have been compared in this way: “If Erasmus looked back to antiquity for the treasure of the classics, the Reformers, particularly Luther, looked back to the primitive community of Christians for the original spirit of Christianity. In this way the Renaissance and the Reformation both epitomized a revival of the past.”124 Walker asserts, “The Renaissance was far from being a revival of paganism” and the humanists “perceived no fundamental contradiction between classical and Christian ethics. . . . Renaissance culture, in short, though primarily ‘secular’ and ‘laic,’ was not intrinsically ‘irreligious’ or ‘anticlerical.’”125 However, faith and reason became recognized as two distinct modes of knowledge. Free will won the day against blind religious devotion and the political arena ceased to be considered as the fulfillment of a divine project. Scientific and technical progress in both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries associated with Ambroise Paré, Copernicus, Kepler or Galileo, contributed to demonstrate that human reason was equipped with the capacity of investigation. There were no longer absolute truths. There were only convictions or hypotheses, all necessarily relative. With Descartes (1596–1650) arrived methodological doubt leading to a new orientation with man thrown into history and seeking to change its course.126

The seventeenth century likewise left its mark on the world of ideas. Fix writes,

It has long been accepted that the great discoveries of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century played a major role in the gradual displacement of the traditional European religious worldview by an outlook based on reason and secularism. . . . The demonstrated power of human reason to discover the fundamental natural laws governing the operation of the physical universe awakened in people a great confidence in the ability of reason to provide humankind with knowledge of other vital aspects of human experience as well.127

The eighteenth century was marked by the Enlightenment (le siècle des Lumières), known also as the Age of Reason. This period extends from the death of Louis XIV in 1714 to the French Revolution in 1789. The laicization of the State in France finds its origins in the philosophy of Enlightenment thinkers in opposition to religion and the power of the Catholic Church.128 Enlightenment philosophy created the conditions for the recognition of laïcité as a principle of a society open to freedoms and philosophical thinking, some agnostic, some atheistic, yet detached from religion.129 Many of these great thinkers were deists and not opposed to religion as such. They were hostile toward an intolerant religion which became humanly and politically unacceptable.130 Kärkkäinen provides the following caution:

With regard to a more tolerant attitude toward other religions, we should not ignore the radical transformation of intellectual climate brought about by the Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment and the rise of classical liberalism that followed, most people took it for granted that an exclusive claim to the superiority of Christianity needed no extensive justification. The Enlightenment eradicated major pillars of orthodoxy, however, and left theology and the church to rethink major doctrines and convictions.131

In Davis’s view, “The spirit of the age may be summed up in four words—Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Encylclopæedists. In them, were to lie almost all the Revolutionary law and the prophets.”132 Whether theists like Voltaire or Rousseau, or atheists like Diderot, the philosophers shared the idea of the necessity of separation between the Church and State. Montesquieu advanced a theory on the separation of powers; Voltaire advocated for an enlightened monarchy; Rousseau chose the Republic, but they all condemned the obscurantism of the Church, symbolized by the affairs of Calas, Sirven, and Chevalier de la Barre.133

The Enlightenment cried out for the autonomy of the individual, equality, and tolerance. Luc Ferry remarks concerning the Enlightenment thinkers, that with their critique of superstition, many have considered the birth of a democratic universe as the effect of a rupture with religion.134 The publication of l’Encyclopédie (1751–1780) with 150 scholars, philosophers and specialists from a multitude of disciplines pushed the quest for knowledge and was condemned by the Church. Gaillard describes the times as a “blast of knowledge in constant movement shaking things up, like a steady tide against the cliffs of dogma. And when the insatiable thirst of change met the aspirations of the enlightened nobility, of the dynamic bourgeoisie, and of the miserable commoners, the result was the Revolution.”135

Each of the above-mentioned philosophers and others merit more attention than can be given here. Stumpf sees them as “dissident voices who challenged the traditional modes of thought concerning religion, government, and morality. Believing that human reason provides the most reliable guide to man’s destiny, they held that ‘Reason is to the philosophe what grace is to the Christian.’”136 Among these men, Barzun considers Voltaire “the Enlightenment personified and the supreme master in all genres.”137 Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), did not live to see the French Revolution. Yet he is representative of Enlightenment personages who were influential in their advocacy of freedom of and freedom from religion. French was considered the diplomatic language of the eighteenth century and Voltaire’s writings were read throughout Europe. He was no friend to religion, at least as he knew it in France. As a Deist, he mercilessly attacked the established Church in France. For him the Church represented “all the traditionalism, mediævalism, intolerance, and political absolutism as it then existed in France.”138 He became the idol of free thinkers and the reference for an enlightened bourgeoisie. He considered Catholicism harmful to the nations and Christianity as the principal cause of injustice in the world.139 History records the example of Voltaire’s defense of the chevalier, Jean-François de la Barre, who was condemned to death in 1766 for refusing to remove his hat at the passing of a religious procession. The defense was in vain and the nineteen-year-old chevalier was executed, decapitated, his body burned, and for good measure a banned copy of Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary was added to the flames.140

Walker captures well Voltaire and his genius, a man who has achieved almost mythic status:

In Voltaire, eighteenth-century France had its keenest wit. No philosopher, vain, self-seeking, but with genuine hatred of tyranny, especially of religious persecution, no one ever attacked organized religion with a more unsparing ridicule. . . . Voltaire was a true Deist in his belief in the existence of God and of a primitive natural religion consisting of a simple morality and in his rejection of all that rested on the authority of the Bible or church.141

In his Philosophical Letters Voltaire contrasts religion in France with the religious tolerance he found in England during a period of exile there. He states, “If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but, as there is such a multitude, they all live happy, and in peace.”142 What Voltaire described in England, at least in the first two statements, somewhat accurately depicts the history of religion in France as he had known it. The multitude of religions and any ensuing peace and happiness were a long way off in France. The relation of Voltaire to laïcité is debated and the term did not yet exist at the time he wrote. We have seen, however, that Gaillard speaks of embryonic laïcité originating in the sixteenth century.143 André Magnan, professor emeritus at the University of Paris and president of honor of the Société Voltaire, considers Voltaire the precursor of notions of laïcité in his thought and writings in opposition to religious fanaticism.144 Philosophy professor Christophe Paillard disagrees with the claim that Voltaire represents a step which led to the elaboration of the concept of laïcité. He argues that Voltaire never affirmed the necessity of the religious neutrality of the State. To the contrary, he affirms that Voltaire believed the State needed to exercise control over religions to prevent them from imposing themselves on peoples’ consciences.145 In any case, Paillard admits that Voltaire is situated between tolerance and laïcité, the latter word invented one hundred twenty-five years after his death.146 He concedes that Voltaire created the intellectual climate of that which Jean Baubérot conceptualizes as the “first threshold of laicization,” which one might interpret as interconfessional tolerance.147

Tolerance and incipient laïcité are related ideas in Voltaire’s search for freedom from religion. It is important, however, to understand the origin and nuances of the French word tolérance. The word comes from the Latin tolerare which initially had the sense “to bear,” “to endure,” or “to put up with” in a pejorative sense that which one could not prevent. The edicts of tolerance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sometimes called edicts of pacification, were concessions to which the monarchy resigned itself in order to stop the bloodshed. It was not until the time of Voltaire that tolerance became a virtue, not simply resignation. Paillard develops the Voltairean concept of tolerance as a principle of mediation between the ancient notion of State religion, Cujus regio, ejus religio [whose realm, whose religion], and the present conception of the laïque State. He contends that Voltaire, more than anyone else, made tolerance a positive and universal value to the point of imposing it on public opinion as the cardinal virtue of an enlightened spirit.148 Denis Lacorne describes the tolerance advanced by Voltaire and others in the context of terrorist attacks which have afflicted Europe for several years:

The great emancipating project for the freedom of conscience and the freedom of expression, inaugurated in the sixteenth century and generalized in the century of the Enlightenment, continues to be fought throughout the world. . . . The very conceptions of tolerance have evolved from one century to another up until now, but their final object remains the same: tolerance is that which leads to religious pluralism, whatever may be the nature of relations between Churches and the State.149

The tolerance found in the edicts of tolerance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, was viewed negatively by “princes and peoples who were unable to conceptualize tolerance as an ‘amicable coexistence’ of religious communities separated by strong doctrinal differences.”150 Lacorne explains how tolerance in a pejorative sense was transformed from a pragmatic inconvenience to what he calls the tolérance de Modernes. This modern tolerance produced rights and new freedoms—freedom of conscience, the free exercise of religion, the freedom of expression and by extension the freedom to blaspheme.151 The struggle for these freedoms would eventually lead to the Law of Separation in 1905. Today, in the context of religion, and particularly in the context of radical Islam, “this tolerance has its limits and the ultimate limit is fanaticism.”152

The influence of Enlightenment thinking contributed at least indirectly to the development of laïcité and the eventual separation of Church and State. Dusseau argues that its firstfruits are found in philosophers’ ideas as well as in political practices of the French monarchy.153 When Enlightenment philosophy imprinted its mark on the movement of ideas, there was an intense clash with the all-powerful Church in its total alliance with the absolute monarchy.154 The ideals of tolerance, equality, and autonomy could not exist alongside religious constraints imposed by a State Church. These ideals would ferment and lead to the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.

Revolution

Ducomte considers that the French Revolution marks the starting point of the laicization of French society and her institutions. The term laïcité was not yet in use at the time. Its substantive form appeared as a neologism in the nineteenth century in the context and struggle of removing the Church’s influence over public education. Laïcité however gave a name to a reality which already long existed beginning with the French Revolution and the attempts to free the State from all confessional control.155

The French Revolution has been described as “the most far-reaching political and social explosion in all European history.”156 It was more than an event. It was a series of events which played out for a tumultuous decade. The period extends from 1789 to 1799 with the introduction of a constitutional monarchy and the inception of the disestablishment of the official and dominant Church. “The Revolution, for those who made it, was the construction of a new political order symbolised by the terms liberty, equality, and (later) fraternity.”157 The arrival of the Revolution must be viewed as a break with the past model of governance (Ancien Régime) with its societal divisions and the mingling of Church and State in the affairs of the citizenry. Michel Vovelle has characterized the Ancien Régime by three interlocking themes. Economically, in its mode of production, the nation was dominated by the feudal system; its class structure revolved around a three-tiered hierarchy; its political system was one of absolutism, the divine right of kings consecrated by the Church.158 “Absolute monarchy legitimated by divine right was replaced by the sovereignty of the people with power vested in their elected representatives.”159

The Revolution would be interrupted with the coup d’état and rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 followed by his ascension as hereditary emperor in 1804. He became the founder of the First Empire which lasted until his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, then exiled on the island of Saint Helena until his death in 1821. However, the ideals of the Revolution would return in force and compete with counter-revolutionary forces for the next century. Davis quotes approvingly French historian Ernest Lavisse to describe this period:

No country has ever influenced Europe as France did between 1789 and 1815. Impelled by two dreams—the dream of a war against kings on behalf of the people, and the dream of the foundation of an empire of the Cæsarian or Carolingian type—the French armies overran the continent, and trampled underfoot as they went, much rank vegetation which has never arisen again.160

He further states, “There is not a single civilized man on the earth today whose life, thought, and destinies have not been profoundly influenced by what happened in or near France during those five and twenty years of action, wrath, and fire.”161 Davis’s remarks may sound like hyperbole to those in the twenty-first century as he writes from his early twentieth-century perspective. However, the influence of the French Revolution on future generations cannot be denied. The Revolution’s significance undoubtedly goes far beyond the nation of France and has been studied and considered an essential foundational moment, not only for French national history, but in the history of humanity.162

There is some debate as to whether France was more miserable than other European nations at the time of the Revolution. In Davis’s opinion “the French were probably, all things considered, the most progressive, enlightened, and in general fortunate people of continental Europe.”163 While that may be true in relative terms, we may question whether this description applied to the common people. The pre-revolutionary feudal system functioned in a world dominated by a rural economy. The majority of the French population, estimated at 85 percent, was concentrated in rural areas. The French peasantry lived under the seigneurial system where the seigneur levied heavy taxes and meted out justice. Roger Magraw discusses the social-political consequences of the Revolution and the mobilization of the peasantry. In his opinion, “it was the anti-seigneurial peasant revolution of 1789–1793 which swept away the ancien régime.”164

It should then come as no surprise that the populace in principle welcomed the French Revolution. The atrocities of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror which followed are well known and in hindsight rightly criticized. Less well known is the oppression endured by the people under the nobility and the clergy which wielded secular power. An assessment of life in France at the time of the Revolution provides a sobering picture of the wealth of the Church and its princes. In 1789, France had a population of 26 million and 130,000 clergy. The clergy, representing a tiny fraction of the population, possessed large swaths of territory in the kingdom.165 The pre-revolutionary social hierarchy in France was composed of three orders or estates (les trois états): clergy, nobility, and peasantry (le tiers-état). The first two groups were largely exonerated from the crushing taxes imposed on the peasantry. Added to the contempt felt by the peasants was their exclusion from the ranks of military officers. Magraw states, “Until 1789, the ‘Second Estate,’ some 1 percent of the population, owned 25 percent of the land and monopolised posts in Army, Administration, and Church, giving aristocratic bishops and monastic heads access to income from church lands and tithes.”166 The monarchy was the third rail in the structure of the Ancien Régime, having reached its zenith under Louis XIV and then greatly weakened under the mediocre Louis XVI (1754–1793) beginning in 1774. The king remained the living symbol of a system in which the Church was the state religion and which hardly flinched during the last years of the Ancien Régime by the promulgation of the Edict of Tolerance in 1787 for the benefit of Protestants.167

Montclos sketches three grand moments which constitute the revolutionary process regarding religion. These are the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790, the antireligious terror from October 1793 to April 1794, and the separation of the Church from the State in the 1795 Constitution. He remarks that during the Terror there was a brutal fight against persons and possessions led by proconsuls who not only preyed on Catholicism but also on Protestantism and Judaism.168 These moments coincided with the foundational texts of the Revolution—the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790, and the Constitutions of 1791 and 1795. The Declaration was adopted on August 26, 1789, and would soon be considered foundational for modern politics in France. These revolutionary actions ended the Concordat of Bologna from 1516 between King Francis I (1494–1547) and Pope Leo X (1475–1521), known especially for the sale of indulgences to embellish Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The adoption of this early Concordat had introduced a division between high clergy composed of courtesans and a lower clergy which was often poor and lacking in both status and possessions. This Concordat had recognized papal power over national councils where the king was accorded authority to name those to ecclesiastical positions—abbots, bishops, and archbishops.169

The Revolution introduced sweeping changes in France. Religious liberty was proclaimed and activities transferred from the Church to the State (i.e., civil status, marriage). The State introduced legal divorce, abolished religious crimes of blasphemy, heresy, and sorcery, and adopted a revolutionary calendar.170 Despite open revolt against the Church, the French people were not yet ready to exclude God from the life of the nation. Religious references remained in French official documents until the 1946 Constitution of the Fourth Republic (des droits inaliénables et sacrés) and were later excluded from the 1958 Constitution of the Fifth Republic still in effect to our day. Article 10, one of the most oft-cited statements of the 1789 Declaration, recognized the liberty of opinion and declared that no one should be disturbed for their opinions, not even religious ones, as long as their expression did not trouble the public order (Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, même religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l’ordre public établi par la Loi).

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy in July 1790 was preceded by other actions against the Church to weaken her position in France. A year earlier, in August 1789, the clergy lost its position as the first of the three orders in France. In November 1789, all the possessions, property, and holdings of the Church became property of the nation. The National Assembly elaborated what would become part of the future Constitution concerning the organization of the Church of France. Priests were required to take an oath of allegiance to the nation, to the king, and to the Constitution. Many clergy refused to obey this law. Their refusal was at the origin of political conflict which led revolutionary France toward a civil war.171 The Constitution of 1791 was short-lived and would be followed by several others as issues arose and were addressed in 1793, 1795, 1799, 1802, and 1804. The Constitution of 1795 founded the First Republic. The Constitution of 1802 established Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul for Life (Premier Consul à vie). The Constitution of 1804 named Napoleon emperor. That these were tumultuous times is an understatement.

Many have tried to capture the essence and the seismic importance of the French Revolution. Evangelical missiologist Paul Hiebert writes,

The Holy Roman Empire had been in decline since the late Middle Ages, but it was the French Revolution that shattered the sacred foundations of history. The secular state emerged based on rationalism and the will of the citizens. Public life was now the realm of reason alone and had no place for a seemingly unknowable God. Religion was relegated to the private sphere of life and seen as imagination, and God ceased to be relevant to public life. A rigidly materialistic, atheistic philosophy emerged that reduced the spirit to matter and morals to social constructs defined in terms of material progress.172

According to Stumpf, “Some saw in the Revolution a contest of power whose effect was to destroy the legitimate power and authority both of the government and of the church, an effect that could only result in the further destruction of the institutions of the family and private property.”173 Former pope Benedict XVI (b. 1927) likewise understands the importance of the French Revolution in the disintegration of the spiritual influences without which Europe would not have come into existence. He asserts that religion became a private matter related to feelings, irrelevant in the public square, and reason became the supreme arbitrator to determine what is best for civil society. The pope argues,

The sacred foundation for history and for the existence of the State was rejected; history was no longer gauged on the basis of an idea of a preexistent God who shaped it; the State was henceforth considered in purely secular terms, founded on reason and on the will of the citizens. For the very first time in history, a purely secular State arose, which abandoned and set aside the divine guarantee and the divine ordering of the political sector, considering them a mythological world view.174

However, the Revolution was well received in many Protestant quarters, at least in its ideals if not in its reality. Protestants welcomed with favor the Revolution which brought about their emancipation from the intolerance and persecution at the hands of the Church.175 They had received limited civil status rights in 1787. Then in 1789 they were granted equal rights and the liberty of worship. The Assembly tacitly authorized them to organize at their discretion, which they did notably in opening places of worship in cities where that had been previously forbidden.176

The removal of the Catholic Church from public influence and the overthrow of the monarchy were among the objectives achieved by the Revolution. The tithe, the Church’s principal source of revenue, was eliminated in August 1789 in the name of fiscal justice. The Civil Clergy Constitution of 1790, which nationalized French Catholicism, was approved by Louis XVI. Tolerance was granted to non-Catholics and ecclesiastical properties were nationalized. The number of bishops was reduced. Priests and bishops were elected by districts and departments respectively and both became civil servants remunerated by the State. Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) condemned this action and priests were divided between those who swore loyalty to the Republic and those who looked to Rome for guidance. Persecution and division followed.177 Walker explains,

When the tremendous storm of the French Revolution broke, it swept away many of the privileges of the church, the nobility, the throne, and kindred ancient institutions. The revolutionary leaders were filled with rationalistic zeal. They viewed the [Catholic] churches as religious clubs. In 1789, church lands were declared national property. . . . The constitution of 1791 pledged religious liberty. Then in 1793 came a royalist and Catholic uprising in the Vendée, and in retaliation the Jacobin leaders sought to wipe out Christianity. Hundreds of ecclesiastics were beheaded.178

The Revolution would not remain unopposed by the Catholic Church. The Church had its defenders even if they are not as well remembered by posterity. The Counter-Revolution continued the battle for ideas and divided France into two camps reminiscent of the Wars of Religion. The battles were not only ideological but bloody and divided France into two parts.179 The counter-revolutionaries, many of whom had lost privileges, whose lands were confiscated and titles revoked, sought the restoration of the monarchy. In Magraw’s opinion, “Religion was the most divisive issue in French society. The counter-revolution’s fervour stemmed less from loyalty to King or seigneurs than from villagers’ determination to defend local religious cultures against a dechristianising Revolution.”180

Louis XVI himself was executed after being found guilty of treason by the Convention on January 21, 1793. Two groups, la Gironde and la Montagne, disputed his fate. The former group, a political entity formed in 1791 by several deputies from the region by the same name, argued for clemency.181 The latter group, among whom was Robespierre, referred to elevated places at the Convention where the political left sat led by Robespierre and Danton.182 They demanded the king’s death for public salvation and the necessities of the Revolution.183 According to Robespierre, the Revolution required virtue and terror, “virtue, without which terror is harmful; and terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice. It is an emanation of virtue.”184 The death of the king prepared the way for further changes in the Church-State relationship. In 1795, the separation of Church and State was introduced for the first time constitutionally in France in terms close to the future law of 1905. The arrival of Napoleon would throw these separatist initiatives into confusion when he seized the initiative to bring religion into his service. Yet the future would reveal that many people freed from obligatory religious duties and rituals would soon fall away from an organized religion which no longer wielded political power. Over the next one hundred years the work of the Revolution was constantly threatened with the successive rise and fall of republics and empires. The battle for Republican values intensified while the Church fought vigorously to reverse the losses suffered under the Revolution.

Napoleon and Concordat of 1801

A religious crisis occupied France for ten years before Napoleon came to power to reverse many of the gains of the Revolution. By all accounts, Napoleon was a man without strong religious leanings. However, he recognized that the majority of French people were Roman Catholic and sought to bring the Church under his control for political purposes. An alliance with the Church became a political necessity since many French were still attached to the Church. The State needed the Church to assume tasks, such as education, that the State did not wish to administer. Pope Pius VII (1742–1823) was elected in 1800 and desired to restore the unity of the Church in a nation that was the most powerful Catholic nation at the time. As seen earlier, in 1789 the Church had been forced to relinquish its possessions and land holdings and in 1790 the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had provoked a schism. The Church had been nationalized and its ministers were elected by church members without any consultation with or approval of the Church. In 1794, all exterior manifestations of worship were forbidden and the Church was confined to the private sphere.185

The Concordat was signed in 1801 between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII and “was to rule the relations between France and the papacy for more than a century.”186 The Concordat recognized that Catholicism was not the religion of the State but the majority religion of French citizens (la grande majorité des citoyens français).187 Three other confessions—Lutheran, Reformed, and later Jewish—were recognized and also brought into the service of the State.188 Although the Concordat offered a level of religious pluralism, Napoleon’s objective was the control of religion for societal submission. Religions were considered a public service and on equal footing. The head of State appointed bishops while those bishops previously loyal to Rome (réfractaires) were forced to resign. The State retained possession of Catholic property seized after the Revolution and assured the upkeep of certain properties. In December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as emperor in Notre-Dame Cathedral in the presence of Pope Pius VII.189

After one hundred years of struggle and persecution, it was not surprising that many Protestants welcomed the Concordat imposed by Napoleon. According to French historians, Protestantism had lost half its population and it appeared that its spiritual forces were spent. Believers seemed to have conserved little of the Reformers’ teaching and were marked by the rationalism of the eighteenth century. The Concordat gave Protestants access to most public positions. Pastors became paid employees of the State with an oath of loyalty to the State. Churches were reorganized into consistories which called pastors requiring government confirmation.190

A revival (Réveil), originating in Geneva, took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century with an emphasis on the evangelization of Catholics and in favor of the separation of church and State. Concordataire Protestants were divided in their views of the Concordat with the more conservative leaders coming to believe that it was no longer possible to defend it.191 There were also efforts to unite the two concordataire Protestant churches, Lutheran and Reformed.192 The revival was not welcomed by all Reformed churches. From 1820 to 1848, independent churches of professing believers were founded and existed alongside Lutheran and Reformed churches who themselves were divided into orthodox and liberal. The most contentious issue concerned the necessity of a confession of faith which liberals rejected. The orthodox wanted a confession of faith but did not want to divide the Reformed church. Several leaders, among them Pastor Fréderic Monod and Agénor de Gasparin, maintained the necessity of a confession of faith. After failing in their attempts to persuade others of their conviction, they resigned from their positions, and called on others to follow them in organizing an evangelical Reformed church.193 Few followed Monod and de Gasparin in their resolve which led to their association with independent evangelical churches and the founding in 1849 of the Union of Evangelical Churches of France (l’Union des Églises évangéliques de France) for which a confession of faith was adopted in 1849. The two articles were clear in their affirmation that their churches would be composed of members who made an explicit and personal profession of faith.194

Conservative monarchists and Catholics desired that France return to her status as elder daughter of the Catholic Church. The Republicans wanted to make France the daughter of the Revolution of 1789. The resolution to this struggle began in 1879 when Republicans gained a parliamentary majority and worked to remove the influence of religion and the Church from the Republic and from public school teaching. The Republicans abrogated the 1850 Law Falloux which was a major setback for the Church in its influence on education. This conflict between the two Frances of the monarchists and Republican anticlericalists would reach its summit with the arrival to power of Émile Combes in 1902 and continue until the Law of Separation in December 1905.

Despite these tensions, the Concordat survived for over one hundred years. “The Church believed in an alliance with the State on principle, and the anticlerical and many other Frenchmen were glad to see the ecclesiastics bridled by specific agreements.”195 Owing to historical factors which will be discussed later, the Concordat survives today in the region of Alsace-Moselle. These departments were annexed by Germany in 1871 after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and were returned to France following World War I and Germany’s defeat in 1918. A condition of their reintegration into France was the continuance of the Concordat.196

43. Cameron, European Reformation, 131.

44. Cameron, European Reformation, 1.

45. Bossy, Christianity in the West, 91.

46. Cameron, European Reformation, 1.

47. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 502.

48. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 502.

49. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 510.

50. McGrath, Luther’s Theology, 19–20.

51. Bloch, Réforme Protestante, 13.

52. Bray, “Late-Medieval Theology,” 93.

53. Benedict and Reinburg, “Religion and the Sacred,” 135–36.

54. Bloch, Réforme Protestante, 17–18.

55. Benedict and Reinburg, “Religion and the Sacred,” 137.

56. McGrath, Luther’s Theology, 21–22.

57. Bloch, Réforme Protestante, 14.

58. Benedict and Reinburg, “Religion and the Sacred,” 138.

59. Benedict and Reinburg, “Religion and the Sacred,” 138.

60. Fix, Prophecy and Reason, 9–10.

61. Baubérot and Carbonnier-Burkard, Histoire des Protestants, 14–16.

62. Baubérot and Carbonnier-Burkard, Histoire des Protestants, 13.

63. Trueman and Kim, “Reformers and Their Reformation,” 136.

64. Baubérot and Carbonnier-Burkard, Histoire des Protestants, 16.

65. Bloch, Réforme Protestante, 7.

66. Kelley, Beginning of Ideology, 7.

67. Réveillard, La séparation, 23.

68. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 57.

69. Monod, Sécularisation et laïcité, 48.

70. Holt, “Kingdom of France,” 23.

71. Carbonnier-Burkard, La révolte des Camisards, 13.

72. Kelley, Beginning of Ideology, 257.

73. Lindberg, European Reformation, 282.

74. Carbonnier-Burkard, La révolte des Camisards, 10.

75. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 60.

76. Holt, “Kingdom of France,” 23.

77. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 60.

78. Holt, “Kingdom of France,” 25.

79. Lindberg, European Reformation, 289.

80. Holt, “Kingdom of France,” 25.

81. Holt, “Kingdom of France,” 23–24.

82. Lindberg, European Reformation, 290.

83. Carbonnier-Burkard, La révolte des Camisards, 14–15.

84. Carbonnier-Burkard, La révolte des Camisards,15.

85. Holt, “Kingdom of France,” 25.

86. Delumeau, Le christianisme, 81.

87. Lindberg, European Reformation, 290.

88. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 147.

89. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 147.

90. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 155.

91. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 156.

92. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 157.

93. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 157.

94. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 158.

95. Delumeau, Le christianisme, 32.

96. Delumeau, Le christianisme, 35.

97. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 159.

98. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 161.

99. Evans, Roots of the Reformation, 352.

100. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 162.

101. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 163.

102. Benedict, “Wars of Religion,” 174.

103. Gaillard, “L’invention de la laïcité,” 20–21.

104. Davis, History of France, 125.

105. Davis, History of France, 127.

106. Delumeau, Le christianisme, 97.

107. Davis, History of France, 134.

108. Davis, History of France, 135.

109. Dusseau, “L’histoire de la Séparation,” 13.

110. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 67.

111. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 69.

112. Cabanel, Les mots de la laïcité, 16.

113. Carbonnier-Burkard, La révolte des Camisards, 9.

114. Carbonnier-Burkard, La révolte des Camisards, 17–19.

115. Carbonnier-Burkard, La révolte des Camisards, 21–23.

116. Gaillard, “L’invention de la laïcité,” 21–22.

117. Robert et al., Nouveau Petit Robert, 335.

118. Chamson, Suite Camisarde, iii.

119. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 69.

120. Smiles, Huguenots in France, v–vi.

121. Fix, Prophecy and Reason, 5.

122. Ducomte, La Laïcité, 5.

123. Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 208.

124. Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 209.

125. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 394.

126. Ducomte, La Laïcité, 4–5.

127. Fix, Prophecy and Reason, 7.

128. Jeantet, “L’école et la laïcité,” 29.

129. Coq, Laïcité et République, 36–37.

130. Mamet-Soppelsa, “Les femmes et la laïcité,” 40.

131. Kärkkäinen, Theology of Religions, 19.

132. Davis, History of France, 223.

133. Dusseau, “L’histoire de la Séparation,” 13.

134. Ferry, L’homme-Dieu, 37.

135. Gaillard, “L’invention de la laïcité,” 22.

136. Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 290.

137. Barzun, Dawn to Decadence, 378.

138. Davis, History of France, 226.

139. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 81.

140. Monod, Sécularisation et laïcité, 52.

141. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 584.

142. Voltaire, “Presbyterians,” 219.

143. Gaillard, “L’invention de la laïcité,” 20–21.

144. Magnan, “Lire Voltaire pour être libre.”

145. Paillard, “Voltaire,” 35.

146. Paillard, “Voltaire,” 44.

147. Paillard, “Voltaire,” 50.

148. Paillard, “Voltaire,” 36–37.

149. Lacorne, Les frontières, 9.

150. Lacorne, Les frontières, 11.

151. Lacorne, Les frontières, 11–12.

152. Lacorne, Les frontières, 13.

153. Dusseau, “L’histoire de la Séparation,” 13.

154. Gaillard, “L’invention de la laïcité,” 22.

155. Ducomte, La Laïcité, 3.

156. Davis, History of France, 244.

157. Gildea, French History, 20.

158. Vovelle, Révolution française, 6.

159. Gildea, French History, 20.

160. Davis, History of France, 268.

161. Davis, History of France, 268.

162. Vovelle, Révolution française, 4.

163. Davis, History of France, 243.

164. Magraw, France 1800–1914, 3.

165. Delumeau, Le christianisme, 46–47.

166. Magraw, France 1800–1914, 15.

167. Vovelle, Révolution française, 9.

168. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 87.

169. Bloch, Réforme Protestante, 11.

170. CNEF, Laïcité française, 13.

171. Bruley, La séparation, 40–41.

172. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews, 142.

173. Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre, 355.

174. Ratzinger, Europe Today and Tomorrow, 20–21.

175. Vovelle, Révolution française, 22.

176. Montclos, Histoire religieuse, 106.

177. Gaillard, “L’invention de la laïcité,” 23–24.

178. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 668.

179. Tulard, “Contre-Révolution,” para. 1.

180. Magraw, France 1800–1914, 159.

181. Robert et al., Nouveau Petit Robert, 1154.

182. Robert et al., Nouveau Petit Robert, 1630.

183. Vovelle, Révolution française, 29.

184. Robespierre, Œuvres, 357.

185. Gastaldi, “Le Concordat de 1801.”

186. Walker et al., History of the Christian Church, 669.

187. Cabanel, Les mots de la laïcité, 21.

188. Machelon, La laïcité demain, 17.

189. McManners, Church and State, 4.

190. Baty, “Églises évangéliques,” 1–2.

191. Pédérzet, Cinquante ans, 140.

192. Pédérzet, Cinquante ans, 146–49.

193. Baty, “Églises évangéliques,” 53–67; Pédérzet, Cinquante ans, 143.

194. Baty, “Églises évangéliques,” 294.

195. McManners, Church and State, 4.

196. CNEF, Laïcité française, 14.