The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term was in common use by around 1550 and may be derived from the name of burgomaster Besançon Hugues, who defended Geneva from Catholic Savoy but then let it fall to Protestantism. Huguenot was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. By contrast, the Protestant populations of eastern France, in Alsace, Moselle, and Montbéliard, were mainly Lutherans.
In his Encyclopedia of Protestantism, Hans Hillerbrand wrote that on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, the Huguenot community made up as much as 10% of the French population. By 1600, it declined to 7–8%, and was further reduced later in the century after the return of persecution under Louis XIV, who instituted the Dragonnades to forcibly convert Protestants, and then finally revoked all Protestant rights in his Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685. In 1686, Protestants comprised just 1% of the population.
The Huguenots were concentrated in the southern and western parts of the Kingdom of France. As Huguenots gained influence and more openly displayed their faith, Catholic hostility grew. A series of religious conflicts followed, known as the French Wars of Religion, fought intermittently from 1562 to 1598. The Huguenots were led by Jeanne d'Albret; her son, the future Henry IV (who would later convert to Catholicism in order to become king); and the princes of Condé. The wars ended with the Edict of Nantes of 1598, which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political, and military autonomy.
Huguenot rebellions in the 1620s resulted in the abolition of their political and military privileges. They retained the religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until the rule of Louis XIV, who gradually increased persecution of Protestantism until he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685). This ended legal recognition of Protestantism in France and the Huguenots were subject to violent Dragonnades, forced to either convert to Catholicism (possibly as Nicodemites) or flee as refugees. Louis XIV claimed the French Huguenot population was reduced from about 900,000 or 800,000 adherents to just 1,000 or 1,500. He exaggerated the decline, but the Dragonnades were devastating for the French Protestant community. The exodus of Huguenots from France created a brain drain, as many of them had occupied important places in society.
The remaining Huguenots faced continued persecution under Louis XV. By the time of his death in 1774, Calvinism had been all but eliminated from France. Persecution of Protestants officially ended with the Edict of Versailles, signed by Louis XVI in 1787. Two years later, with the Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, Protestants gained equal rights as citizens.Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 1780–1804 (2000) pp. 245–250 The Reformed Church of France represented the main continuation of the Huguenot tradition in modern France. In 2013, it merged with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in France to form the United Protestant Church of France, which today represents the largest Protestant denomination in France and includes both Reformed (Calvinist) and Lutheran traditions descended in part from the Huguenots.
Etymology
A term used originally in derision, Huguenot has unclear origins. Various hypotheses have been promoted. The term may have been a combined reference to the Swiss politician Besançon Hugues (died 1532) and the religiously conflicted nature of Swiss republicanism in his time. It used a derogatory pun on the name by way of the Dutch word (literally "housemates"), referring to the connotations of a somewhat related word in German ('Confederate' in the sense of 'a citizen of one of the states of the Swiss Confederacy').
In Geneva, John Calvin's adopted home and the centre of the Calvinist movement, Hugues, though Catholic, was a leader of the "Confederate Party", so called because it favoured independence from the Duke of Savoy. It sought an alliance between the city-state of Geneva and the Swiss Confederation. The label Huguenot was purportedly first applied in France to those conspirators (all of them aristocratic members of the Reformed Church) who were involved in the Amboise plot of 1560: a foiled attempt to wrest power in France from the influential and zealously Catholic House of Guise. This action would have fostered relations with the Swiss.
O. I. A. Roche promoted this idea among historians. He wrote in his book, The Days of the Upright, A History of the Huguenots (1965), that Huguenot is:
a combination of a Dutch and a German word. In the Dutch-speaking North of France, Bible students who gathered in each other's houses to study secretly were called ("housemates") while on the Swiss and German borders they were termed , or "oath fellows", that is, persons bound to each other by an oath. Gallicised into , often used deprecatingly, the word became, during two and a half centuries of terror and triumph, a badge of enduring honour and courage.
Some disagree with such non-French linguistic origins. Janet Gray argues that for the word to have spread into common use in France, it must have originated there in French. The "Hugues hypothesis" argues that the name was derived by association with Hugues Capet, king of France, who reigned long before the Reformation. He was regarded by the Gallicians as a noble man who respected people's dignity and lives. Janet Gray and other supporters of the hypothesis suggest that the name would be roughly equivalent to "little Hugos", or "those who want Hugo".
Paul Ristelhuber, in his 1879 introduction to a new edition of the controversial and censored, but popular 1566 work Apologie pour Hérodote, by Henri Estienne, mentions these theories and opinions, but tends to support a completely Catholic origin. As one legend holds, a gateway area in the streets of Tours was haunted by the ghosts of (a generic term for these spirits), "because they were wont to assemble near the gate named after Hugon, a Count of Tours in ancient times, who had left a record of evil deeds and had become in popular fancy a sort of sinister and maleficent genius. This count may have been Hugh of Tours, who was disliked for his cowardice. Additionally, it is related that it was believed that these spirits, instead of spending their time in Purgatory, came back to rattle doors and haunt and harm people at night. Protestants went out at night to their lascivious conventicles, and so the priests and the people began to call them Huguenots in Tours and then elsewhere." The name, Huguenot, "the people applied in hatred and derision to those who were elsewhere called Lutherans, and from Touraine it spread throughout France." The ("supposedly reformed") were said to gather at night at Tours, both for political purposes and for prayer and singing psalms."Who Were the Huguenots?" , The National Huguenot Society Reguier de la Plancha (d. 1560) in his offered the following account as to the origin of the name, as cited by The Cape Monthly:
Reguier de la Plancha accounts for it [the name] as follows: "The name was given to those of the religion during the affair of Amboyse, and they were to retain it ever since. I'll say a word about it to settle the doubts of those who have strayed in seeking its origin. The superstition of our ancestors, to within twenty or thirty years thereabouts, was such that in almost all the towns in the kingdom they had a notion that certain spirits underwent their Purgatory in this world after death, and that they went about the town at night, striking and outraging many people whom they found in the streets. But the light of the Gospel has made them vanish, and teaches us that these spirits were street-strollers and ruffians. In Paris the spirit was called ; at Orléans, ; at Blois ; at Tours, ; and so on in other places. Now, it happens that those whom they called Lutherans were at that time so narrowly watched during the day that they were forced to wait till night to assemble, for the purpose of praying God, for preaching and receiving the Holy Sacrament; so that although they did not frighten nor hurt anybody, the priests, through mockery, made them the successors of those spirits which roam the night; and thus that name being quite common in the mouth of the populace, to designate the evangelical in the country of Tourraine and Amboyse, it became in vogue after that enterprise."De l'Estat de France 1560, by Reguier de la Plancha, quoted by The Cape Monthly (February 1877), No. 82 Vol. XIV on p. 126.
Some have suggested the name was derived, with intended scorn, from (the "monkeys" or "apes of Jan Hus").Bibliothèque d'humanisme et Renaissance, by Association d'humanisme et renaissance, 1958, p. 217William Gilmore Simms, The Huguenots in Florida; Or, The Lily and the Totem, 1854, p. 470 By 1911, there was still no consensus in the United States on this interpretation.George Lunt, "Huguenot – The origin and meaning of the name", New England Historical & Genealogical Register, Boston, 1908/1911, 241–246
Symbol
The Huguenot cross is the distinctive emblem of the Huguenots (). It is now an official symbol of the (French Protestant church). Huguenot descendants sometimes display this symbol as a sign of (recognition) between them.
Demographics
The issue of demographic strength and geographical spread of the Reformed tradition in France has been covered in a variety of sources. Most of them agree that the Huguenot population reached as many as 10% of the total population, or roughly 2 million people, on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572.Hans J. Hillerbrand, Encyclopedia of Protestantism: 4-volume Set, paragraphs "France" and "Huguenots"The Huguenot Population of France, 1600–1685: The Demographic Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority by Philip Benedict; American Philosophical Society, 1991. p. 164
Links to nobility The new teaching of John Calvin attracted sizeable portions of the nobility and urban bourgeoisie. After John Calvin introduced the Reformation in France, the number of French Protestants steadily swelled to ten percent of the population, or roughly 1.8 million people, in the decade between 1560 and 1570. During the same period, there were some 1,400 Reformed churches operating in France. Hans J. Hillerbrand, an expert on the subject, in his Encyclopedia of Protestantism: 4-volume Set claims the Huguenot community reached as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, declining to 7–8% by around 1600, and further after heavy persecution began once again with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685. Among the nobles, Calvinism peaked on the eve of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Since then, it sharply decreased as the Huguenots were no longer tolerated by both the French royalty and the Catholic masses. By around 1600, Huguenots constituted 7–8% of the whole population, or 1.2 million people. By the time Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Huguenots accounted for 800,000 to 1 million people.