Edict of Nantes (1598): Henry IV Grants Toleration in France

The Edict of Nantes, signed by Henry IV of France in April 1598, brought an end to more than thirty years of religious civil war. It granted French Protestants, the Huguenots, freedom of conscience, the right to worship publicly in defined places, equal access to offices and a network of fortified towns. Although limited and later revoked, it was one of the most ambitious attempts in early modern Europe to let two Christian confessions live under one crown.

Background: the Wars of Religion and the road to 1598

Protestantism, mostly in the Calvinist form spread from Geneva, grew rapidly in France in the 1550s. Its followers came to be called Huguenots. By the early 1560s they had perhaps 1,200 to 2,000 congregations and powerful noble protectors, including members of the Bourbon family.

Open war began in 1562 after the killing of Protestant worshippers at Wassy (Vassy) by the troops of the Duke of Guise. Over the next 36 years France went through eight wars, broken by short-lived peace edicts that granted Protestants varying degrees of toleration. The worst episode was the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of August 1572, when thousands of Protestants were murdered in Paris and other cities.

From 1584 the conflict became a struggle over the succession, because the heir to the throne was the Protestant Henry of Navarre. The Catholic League, supported by Spain, fought to exclude him. After the assassination of Henry III in 1589, Navarre became Henry IV but had to conquer his own kingdom. His victories, such as the Battle of Ivry in 1590, were not enough; only his conversion to Catholicism in July 1593 won over Paris and most League towns. The full background is told in French Wars of Religion.

Henry’s conversion alarmed his former Protestant allies. Between 1594 and 1597 Huguenot political assemblies, meeting at towns such as Sainte-Foy, Loudun, Saumur and Châtellerault, pressed the king for firm guarantees. Some leaders threatened to stop supporting him in the war against Spain, which had openly intervened in France since 1595.

By early 1598 Henry was close to final victory. The last great League leader, the Duke of Mercœur, submitted in Brittany in March, and peace talks with Spain were under way, leading to the Peace of Vervins on 2 May 1598. Henry travelled to Brittany, and it was at Nantes, in April 1598, that he signed the edict negotiated over many months by royal commissioners, including the jurist Jacques-Auguste de Thou and Gaspard de Schomberg, and Huguenot representatives such as Philippe Duplessis-Mornay.

What the edict contained

The settlement was not a single document but a package of four texts:

• The general articles, 92 in number (95 in some versions), the public edict addressed to the whole kingdom.
• 56 secret or particular articles, which dealt with specific places and exceptions and were not to be published in the same way.
• Two brevets, royal warrants issued on the king’s personal authority and not registered by the courts. One provided crown money to pay Protestant pastors; the other granted the Huguenots places of safety with royal-paid garrisons for eight years.

The main provisions were:

• Freedom of conscience for Protestants throughout the kingdom: nobody could be investigated or forced to act against their faith.
• Public Protestant worship in places where it had been held in 1596 and 1597, in two towns or villages in each bailiwick (a local judicial district), and in the households of nobles with high justice.
• A ban on Protestant worship in Paris and within five leagues of the capital, and at the royal court.
• Restoration of Catholic worship everywhere, including in Protestant-controlled towns, with church property returned.
• Equal eligibility for public offices, universities, schools and hospitals.
• Special courts, the “chambres de l’édit”, with Protestant judges in several parlements, so that Huguenots could have cases heard fairly.

The preamble described the edict as “perpetual and irrevocable”. The aim, it explained, was that God might be worshipped by all, if not yet in the same form, then at least with the same intention, until the kingdom could be reunited in one religion.

Opposition and registration

The edict faced strong resistance. Pope Clement VIII disapproved, many Catholic clergy denounced it, and the parlements, the sovereign law courts that had to register royal laws before they took effect, delayed. Henry personally summoned members of the Parlement of Paris in February 1599 and insisted on obedience. The Parlement registered the edict on 25 February 1599; some provincial courts held out for years, Rouen until 1609.

Huguenots too were dissatisfied. They had hoped for wider rights of worship and complained that the king, now a Catholic, favoured the old church. Still, most accepted the settlement as the best obtainable.

The edict in practice

Enforcing the settlement depended on royal commissioners, usually pairs made up of one Catholic and one Protestant, who toured the provinces from 1599 onwards. They decided where Protestant worship was allowed, settled disputes over churches and cemeteries, and oversaw the return of Catholic clergy to towns where the Mass had been suppressed for decades.

Daily coexistence varied greatly. In some mixed towns, especially in the south, Catholics and Protestants shared councils, markets and even family ties, and mixed disputes could be taken to the chambers of the edict. Elsewhere, local authorities interpreted the rules narrowly, and quarrels over burials, processions and bells were frequent. Protestants were also required to observe Catholic feast days in public and to pay tithes to the Catholic Church.

The financial clauses mattered too. The brevet on pastors’ salaries promised an annual royal grant, reported as 45,000 écus, while the brevet on the security towns paid for garrisons in around 50 fortified places, part of a wider list of some 150 Huguenot strongholds. Payment was often late, and the arrangement depended on the goodwill of the king who had signed it.

For Henry IV the edict was as much about royal authority as about religion. By placing both churches under the protection and control of the crown, he made the monarchy the arbiter of religious peace rather than a party to the conflict.

Key people

• Henry IV (1553–1610), first Bourbon king of France, raised a Protestant, converted to Catholicism in 1593, and saw the edict as essential to restoring royal power.
• Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1549–1623), Huguenot statesman and writer, a leading negotiator for the Protestants and later governor of Saumur.
• Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553–1617), Catholic magistrate and historian, one of the royal commissioners who drafted the terms.
• Gaspard de Schomberg (1540–1599), soldier and diplomat in royal service who helped lead the negotiations.
• Pope Clement VIII (pope 1592–1605), who had absolved Henry in 1595 but objected to the concessions to heretics.

Consequences

The edict ended the civil wars and helped Henry rebuild the kingdom with his minister Sully. Huguenots gained a secure legal existence, with around 700 to 800 churches, synods, academies such as Saumur and Sedan, and garrisoned towns. In practice it created a protected minority with its own political and military organisation, almost a state within the state, which later kings found hard to accept.

After Henry IV was assassinated in 1610 tensions rose again. A series of Huguenot revolts in the 1620s led to the royal siege of La Rochelle in 1627 and 1628. The Peace of Alès in 1629 confirmed the religious articles of the edict but removed the Huguenots’ political assemblies and fortified towns.

Under Louis XIV pressure mounted through closures of churches, exclusion from professions and the “dragonnades”, the quartering of soldiers on Protestant families to force conversions. On 22 October 1685 Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking the Edict of Nantes. An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Huguenots emigrated to the Dutch Republic, England, Brandenburg-Prussia, Switzerland and beyond, an event told in Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Legal toleration for French Protestants returned only with the Edict of Versailles in 1787.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Edict of Nantes established religious freedom in France. It guaranteed freedom of conscience, but worship was restricted by place, Catholicism remained the religion of the state, and Protestants could not worship in Paris. It was a political compromise between two armed parties rather than a principle of equality.

Myth: Henry IV was a Protestant when he signed it. Henry had converted to Catholicism five years earlier. His past made him trusted, to a degree, by both sides.

Myth: it was the first toleration edict in France. Earlier edicts, such as those of January 1562, Beaulieu in 1576 and Poitiers in 1577, had already granted limited rights. Nantes drew heavily on them; its novelty was that the crown was strong enough to enforce it.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1562, 1 March: Killings at Wassy begin the first War of Religion.
• 1572, 24 August: St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris.
• 1589, August: Henry of Navarre becomes King Henry IV.
• 1593, 25 July: Henry IV converts to Catholicism.
• 1598, 13 April: Edict of Nantes signed at Nantes.
• 1598, 2 May: Peace of Vervins ends the war with Spain.
• 1599, 25 February: Parlement of Paris registers the edict.
• 1629, 28 June: Peace of Alès removes Huguenot fortresses but keeps religious rights.
• 1685, 22 October: Louis XIV revokes the edict at Fontainebleau.
• 1787, November: Edict of Versailles restores civil status to Protestants.

Why it matters

The Edict of Nantes showed that a European monarchy could survive with two religions under the law at a time when most rulers believed one faith was essential to order. Its revocation, and the flight of the Huguenots, became a lasting example of what intolerance could cost a state.