1598 / 1685 · Nantes / Fontainebleau, France
Edict of Nantes and Its Revocation
France tried religious coexistence in 1598, then destroyed it in 1685 when Louis XIV revoked the edict and forced hundreds of thousands of Protestants to convert, flee, or die.
The French Wars of Religion had torn the country apart for over thirty years. Catholics and Huguenots (French Calvinists) slaughtered each other in a series of civil wars that included the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, when Catholic mobs killed thousands of Huguenots in Paris and across France. In 1598, King Henry IV, a former Huguenot who had converted to Catholicism, issued the Edict of Nantes, granting Protestants limited freedom of worship and certain civil rights. It was not full tolerance — Protestants could worship only in designated places — but it ended the wars and allowed a fragile coexistence for eighty-seven years. Then Louis XIV destroyed it. In 1685, convinced that most Huguenots had already converted, he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking the Edict of Nantes entirely. Protestant churches were demolished. Pastors were exiled. Laypeople were forbidden to leave France, though an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 fled anyway, taking their skills and wealth to England, the Netherlands, Prussia, and the American colonies. Those who remained faced forced conversions, the quartering of soldiers in their homes, and imprisonment. The Catholic Church largely supported the revocation. Pope Innocent XI congratulated Louis, though he privately worried about the methods used.
Why it matters
The edict was an early experiment in religious tolerance; its revocation was a catastrophic act of persecution that cost France hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens.
What Happened
After decades of religious civil war, Henry IV's Edict of Nantes in 1598 granted French Protestants legal protection and limited worship rights. It was imperfect but functional. Eighty-seven years later, Louis XIV decided France should be entirely Catholic. The Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 revoked every protection. Protestant churches were razed. Pastors who refused to leave were sentenced to the galleys. Families were forbidden to emigrate but hundreds of thousands escaped anyway, devastating French commerce, industry, and intellectual life.
Why It Still Matters
The revocation is one of the clearest examples of the Church supporting state-sponsored religious persecution in the early modern period. It cost France dearly and gave its rivals — especially England and the Netherlands — an influx of skilled, motivated refugees. The story contributed to the Enlightenment critique of organized religion and to the fierce anticlericalism of the French Revolution a century later. It is also a reminder that the Catholic commitment to religious liberty, articulated at Vatican II, was a relatively recent development.