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Religious Persecution in the French Enlightenment*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

David D. Bien
David D. Bien
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

In France, religious persecution outlived Pierre Bayle and nearly outlived Voltaire. Only in the mid-1760's, when the Enlightenment had long been affecting other aspects of their thinking, did Catholics at last accept a measure of religious toleration. Six Calvinist pastors were put to death after 1745, and Jean Calas was condemned as late as 1762. The purpose of this article is to study why the persecution of religions persisted in a non-theological age. Our understanding in this instance requires that we set aside strictly religious categories, and examine what role the secular state played in the thinking of Catholics and anti-Catholics alike; for it was this state to which the last Huguenot victims were sacrificed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1961 , pp. 325 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1961

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References

1. See the list of pastors executed in France in Coquerel, C., Histoire des églises du désert chez les protestants de France depuis la fin du règne de Louis XIV jusqu'd la révolution française, 1841, I, 507–509.Google Scholar

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8. This episode is treated in detail in the histories of the various parlements. See J. Egret for Grenoble, Dubédat and Bastard—D'Estang for Toulouse, Glasson for Paris, etc. My argument, based on records of the parlement of Toulouse, , is developed more fully in The Calas Affair: Persecution, Toleration, and Horesy in Eighteenth-Century Toulouse (Princeton, N. J., 1960), pp. 55–71.Google Scholar

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13. Oeuvres, XXV, 37.Google Scholar

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18. Bien, , Calas Affair, pp. 166–174.Google Scholar