The Huguenots of Paris and the Coming of Religious Freedom, 1685–1789

This book investigates the reasons why the Catholic population of Paris increasingly tolerated the minority Protestant Huguenot population between 1685 and 1789.

David Garrioch (Author)

9781107047679, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 February 2014

307 pages, 3 b/w illus. 4 maps 4 tables
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.58 kg

'Although the Huguenots are a central theme in the historiography of sixteenth - and seventeenth -century France, they tend to fade from view in studies of the eighteenth, appearing in a few dramatic episodes … Garrioch, an expert on eighteenth-century Paris, gives us a fuller picture. He shows how this banned minority managed to survive and eventually thrive in the capital, thanks to the rise of religious toleration over the course of the eighteenth century.' Charles Walton, The Journal of Modern History

How did the Huguenots of Paris survive, and even prosper, in the eighteenth century when the majority Catholic population was notorious for its hostility to Protestantism? Why, by the end of the Old Regime, did public opinion overwhelmingly favour giving Huguenots greater rights? This study of the growth of religious toleration in Paris traces the specific history of the Huguenots after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. David Garrioch identifies the roots of this transformation of attitudes towards the minority Huguenot population in their own methods of resistance to persecution and pragmatic government responses to it, as well as in the particular environment of Paris. Above all, this book identifies the extraordinary shift in Catholic religious culture that took place over the century as a significant cause of change, set against the backdrop of cultural and intellectual transformation that we call the Enlightenment.

Introduction
1. The campaign against the Protestants
2. Paris: 'ville de tolérance'
3. Who were the Huguenots of Paris?
4. Keeping the faith: family and religious culture
5. Networks: the Protestants in the city
6. Catholics and Protestants: hostility, indifference, and coexistence
7. Growing acceptance
8. Changing beliefs and religious cultures
9. A non-confessional public domain
10. Conclusion: the coming of religious freedom.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], History of religion [HRAX], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], European history [HBJD]